About
I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at George Mason University, where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. David Porfirio in the Autonomous Robot Interaction (ARI) Lab.
I have worked as a Research Assistant in the Computational Engineering & Robotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Kenji Shimada, and as a research assistant with Prof. Dajiang Liu at Chongqing University.
Previously I worked as a backend engineer at Walmart Global Tech and completed a game-AI internship at Tencent.
Research interests
My research focuses on embodied AI and robot learning: building systems that perceive, act, and improve through interaction with the physical world. I am particularly interested in learning-based task and motion planning—including long-horizon skill composition, reasoning under partial observability, and integrating learned policies with structured planners for reliability.
I also care about generalization and deployment: transferring behaviors across embodiments and environments, grounding high-level goals in executable controllers, and closing the sim-to-real gap for fieldable autonomy in assistive, construction, or mobile-manipulation settings.
News
- [2026]
I will join George Mason University as a Ph.D. student in Computer Science, advised by Prof. David Porfirio in the Autonomous Robot Interaction (ARI) Lab.
Selected publications

Towards High-Quality CGRA Mapping with Graph Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning
Yan Zhuang, Zhihao Zhang, and Dajiang Liu. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2022. DOI:10.1145/3508352.3549458
Projects
GNN–RL CGRA mapping optimization
GNN + RL maps loop DDGs onto CGRAs (min II, legal routes). ICCAD 2022.


ActivityTracker — metric-aware construction safety
Metric depth + BEV distances for single-camera construction safety (LiDAR cal., SAM2 regions). CMU CER.


Education
George Mason University
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Cincinnati
Chongqing University
Work Experience
Walmart Global Tech
Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.
Get in Touch
Please contact me at zzhang34 AT gmu DOT edu, or through this form.