Embodied AI · Robot Learning · Cultural Analytics
Columbia University
M.I.A. / M.B.A. Candidate
Data Science & Artificial Intelligence
New York, NY
Creative roboticsReTracing · Watch the performance ↗
Embodied AIRobot co-design · Explore the project ↗
AI & accountabilityWho Gets Heeded? · Explore the study ↗
I am an M.I.A. / M.B.A. candidate at Columbia University, focusing on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. My research spans robotic co-design, human–robot interaction, and algorithmic accountability. My background in art history and visual culture at the University of Oxford and the University of British Columbia informs my work on creative robotics and cultural analytics.
At Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab, I contribute to research in creative robotics and embodied AI. As a Data and AI Fellow in the United Nations Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG), I support data and AI workflows for the Complex Risk Analytics Fund (CRAF’d). My work connects computational methods with questions of culture, governance, and human experience.
My path began with art history: a B.A. (Honours) at the University of British Columbia, followed by an M.St. in History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Oxford. I later worked in banking and management research before pursuing international affairs and business at Columbia University.
At Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, I worked on policy frameworks and data-supported workforce planning. At CEIBS, I contributed to business cases and white-paper research on entrepreneurship and internationalization. That experience continues to inform my research on AI, institutions, and technology governance.
An Obligation-Level Audit of Responsiveness in EPA Rulemaking
An AI-assisted framework for studying public participation and regulatory responsiveness at the level of specific legal obligations, combining regulatory text analysis, LLM-as-judge evaluation, and blind human validation.
ACM EAAMO 2026 · Accepted for Oral Presentation
Body, machine & generative systems.
I co-architected a pipeline that turns language into shared movement for a human performer and a quadruped robot, then reconstructs their interactions as 3D motion traces.
NeurIPS 2025 · Creative AI Track
CVPR 2026 · Art Gallery
Exploring how robot bodies and learned movement evolve together, through 18 configurations on a modular icosahedral platform.
IROS 2026 Workshop · Accepted
Art, mathematics & computation.
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Where does visual style live in an image? Exploring paintings and photographs through singular value decomposition and multiscale analysis.
Bruce Fan · Yue Yao · William Chang · Leonard Holler
View analysis
How do acquisition histories shape whose art we see? A visual exploration of gender and representation in MoMA’s collection.
Explore the projectExploratory notebooks extracting people, organizations, and places from AI news, then mapping their co-mentions as networks.
Jianing Fan* and Yue Yao*
* Co-first authors; equal contribution
ACM EAAMO 2026 · Accepted for Oral Presentation
Jiong Lin, Yue Yao, and Hod Lipson
Accepted to an IROS 2026 workshop
Yitong Wang* and Yue Yao*
* Co-first authors; equal contribution
NeurIPS 2025 · Creative AI Track
CVPR 2026 · Art Gallery
Yue Yao · Columbia University, USA
Yitong Wang · Carnegie Mellon University, USA
ICSR 2026 Grand Challenge
International Conference on Social Robotics
Jean Lee and Yue Yao
Award-winning case, 2025 Global Contest for the Best China-Focused Cases.
Research contributor
Contributed to the Teckwah and Brico Group case research.
Tracing Shape of the Wind
An essay on how ink, paper, bodily gesture, and landscape transform as Bingyi’s monumental scroll moves from the Fuchun Mountains to a Berlin church.
Yin Xiuzhen’s Heterotopographic Vision of Beijing
An essay on clothing as a carrier of memory, examining how Yin Xiuzhen’s fabric cityscapes and salvaged interiors register urban change, displacement, and belonging.
Research Collaborator
Robotic co-design, simulation, creative robotics, and embodied AI research.
Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG)
Data and AI Fellow · CRAF’d
AI-enabled workflows for crisis-response financing and institutional analysis.
Research Assistant, Management Science
Data Science Intern
Management Associate, Headquarters