Kuan Fang

Email: kuanfang [at] cornell [dot] edu
Office: Room 463, CIS Building

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. I conduct research at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and computer vision.

I received a Ph.D. and M.S. from Stanford University, advised by Fei-Fei Li and Silvio Savarese, and a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University. Prior to joining Cornell, I was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, working with Sergey Levine. I have also spent time at Boston Dynamics AI Institute, Google Brain, Google X, and Microsoft Research Asia.

Prospective students: I am actively seeking motivated students and postdocs of relevant backgrounds to join our lab. If you are interested in working with me, please review the information on this page before reaching out.

Research

My research aims to enable robots to perform diverse and complex tasks in unstructured environments. To achieve this, my lab and I develop scalable algorithms and systems for robot perception and control with the following focuses:
  • Learning versatile sensorimotor skills from large-scale, diverse multimodal data.
  • Autonomous data generation and collection to continually expand and refine robot capabilities.
  • Boosting generalization to novel environments, tasks, and robots by incorporating prior knowledge from broad sources.

PhD Students

Teaching

Publications

Teaser figure for Unified Motion-Action Modeling for Heterogeneous Robot Learning

Unified Motion-Action Modeling for Heterogeneous Robot Learning
Yunhao Cao*Equal contribution, Shitong Liu*Equal contribution, Chao Feng*Equal contribution, Meryl Zhang, Xuanchen Lu, Andrew Owens, Kuan Fang
arXiv

Teaser figure for KITE: Decoupling Kinematics and Interaction for Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Manipulation

KITE: Decoupling Kinematics and Interaction for Zero-Shot Cross-Embodiment Manipulation
Qianxu Wang, Kuan Fang
arXiv

Teaser figure for Correspondence-Oriented Imitation Learning: Flexible Visuomotor Control with 3D Conditioning

Correspondence-Oriented Imitation Learning: Flexible Visuomotor Control with 3D Conditioning
Yunhao Cao, Zubin Bhaumik, Jessie Jia, Xingyi He, Kuan Fang
arXiv

Teaser figure for SAGA: Open-World Mobile Manipulation via Structured Affordance Grounding

SAGA: Open-World Mobile Manipulation via Structured Affordance Grounding
Kuan Fang, Yuxin Chen, Xinghao Zhu, Farzad Niroui, Lingfeng Sun, Jiuguang Wang
RA-L 2026

Teaser figure for Generate, Transfer, Adapt: Learning Functional Dexterous Grasping from a Single Human Demonstration

Generate, Transfer, Adapt: Learning Functional Dexterous Grasping from a Single Human Demonstration
Xingyi He, Adhitya Polavaram, Yunhao Cao, Om Deshmukh, Tianrui Wang, Xiaowei Zhou, Kuan Fang
ICRA 2026

Teaser figure for Planning-Guided Diffusion Policy Learning for Generalizable Contact-Rich Bimanual Manipulation

Planning-Guided Diffusion Policy Learning for Generalizable Contact-Rich Bimanual Manipulation
Xuanlin Li, Tong Zhao, Xinghao Zhu, Bo Ai, Jiuguang Wang, Tao Pang, Kuan Fang
ICRA 2026

Teaser figure for Should We Learn Contact-Rich Manipulation Policies from Sampling-Based Planners?

Should We Learn Contact-Rich Manipulation Policies from Sampling-Based Planners?
Huaijiang Zhu, Tong Zhao, Xinpei Ni, Jiuguang Wang, Kuan Fang, Ludovic Righetti, Tao Pang
RA-L 2025 (Best Paper Award)

Teaser figure for Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Flexible Interlimb Coordination

Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Flexible Interlimb Coordination
Xinghao Zhu*Equal contribution, Yuxin Chen*Equal contribution, Lingfeng Sun*Equal contribution, Farzad Niroui, Simon Le Cleac'h, Jiuguang Wang, Kuan Fang
CoRL 2025 (Oral Presentation)

Teaser figure for Temporal Representation Alignment: Emergent Compositionality in Instruction Following with Successor Features

Temporal Representation Alignment: Emergent Compositionality in Instruction Following with Successor Features
Vivek Myers*Equal contribution, Bill Chunyuan Zheng*Equal contribution, Anca Dragan, Kuan Fang, Sergey Levine
NeurIPS 2025

Teaser figure for Prompting with the Future: Open-World Model Predictive Control with Interactive Digital Twins

Prompting with the Future: Open-World Model Predictive Control with Interactive Digital Twins
Chuanruo Ning, Kuan FangEqual advising, Wei-Chiu MaEqual advising
RSS 2025

Teaser figure for Blox-Net: Generative Design-for-Robot-Assembly using VLM Supervision, Physics Simulation, and A Robot with Reset

Blox-Net: Generative Design-for-Robot-Assembly using VLM Supervision, Physics Simulation, and A Robot with Reset
Andrew Goldberg, Kavish Kondap, Tianshuang Qiu, Zehan Ma, Letian Fu, Justin Kerr, Huang Huang, Kaiyuan Chen, Kuan Fang, Ken Goldberg
ICRA 2025

Teaser figure for KALIE: Fine-Tuning Vision-Language Models for Open-World Manipulation without Robot Data

KALIE: Fine-Tuning Vision-Language Models for Open-World Manipulation without Robot Data
Grace Tang*Equal contribution, Swetha Rajkumar*Equal contribution, Yifei Zhou, Homer Rich Walke, Sergey LevineEqual advising, Kuan FangEqual advising
ICRA 2025

Teaser figure for Affordance-Guided Reinforcement Learning via Visual Prompting

Affordance-Guided Reinforcement Learning via Visual Prompting
Olivia Y. Lee, Annie Xie, Kuan Fang, Karl Pertsch, Chelsea Finn
IROS 2025

Teaser figure for Policy Adaptation via Language Optimization: Decomposing Tasks for Few-Shot Imitation

Policy Adaptation via Language Optimization: Decomposing Tasks for Few-Shot Imitation
Vivek Myers*Equal contribution, Bill Chunyuan Zheng*Equal contribution, Oier Mees, Sergey LevineEqual advising, Kuan FangEqual advising
CoRL 2024

Teaser figure for Jacta: A Versatile Planner for Learning Dexterous and Whole-Body Manipulation

Jacta: A Versatile Planner for Learning Dexterous and Whole-Body Manipulation
Jan Bruedigam, Ali Adeeb Abbas, Maks Sorokin, Kuan Fang, Brandon Hung, Maya Guru, Stefan Georg Sosnowski, Jiuguang Wang, Sandra Hirche, Simon Le Cleac'h
CoRL 2024

Teaser figure for MOKA: Open-World Robotic Manipulation through Mark-Based Visual Prompting

MOKA: Open-World Robotic Manipulation through Mark-Based Visual Prompting
Kuan Fang*Equal contribution, Fangchen Liu*Equal contribution, Pieter Abbeel, Sergey Levine
RSS 2024

Teaser figure for Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Models

Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Models
Open X-Embodiment Collaboration
ICRA 2024

Teaser figure for Stabilizing Contrastive RL: Techniques for Offline Goal Reaching

Stabilizing Contrastive RL: Techniques for Offline Goal Reaching
Chongyi Zheng, Benjamin Eysenbach, Homer Walke, Patrick Yin, Kuan Fang, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Sergey Levine
ICLR 2024

Teaser figure for Multi-Stage Cable Routing Through Hierarchical Imitation Learning

Multi-Stage Cable Routing Through Hierarchical Imitation Learning
Jianlan Luo*Equal contribution, Charles Xu*Equal contribution, Xinyang Geng*Equal contribution, Gilbert Feng, Kuan Fang, Liam Tan, Stefan Schaal, Sergey Levine
T-RO 2024

Teaser figure for Goal Representations for Instruction Following: A Semi-Supervised Language Interface to Control

Goal Representations for Instruction Following: A Semi-Supervised Language Interface to Control
Vivek Myers*Equal contribution, Andre He*Equal contribution, Kuan Fang, Homer Walke, Philippe Hansen-Estruch, Ching-An Cheng, Mihai Jalobeanu, Andrey Kolobov, Anca Dragan, Sergey Levine
CoRL 2023

Teaser figure for BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scale

BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scale
Homer Walke, Kevin Black, Abraham Lee, Moo Jin Kim, Max Du, Chongyi Zheng, Tony Zhao, Philippe Hansen-Estruch, Quan Vuong, Andre He, Vivek Myers, Kuan Fang, Chelsea Finn, Sergey Levine
CoRL 2023

Teaser figure for Active Task Randomization: Learning Robust Skills Via Unsupervised Generation of Diverse and Feasible Tasks

Active Task Randomization: Learning Robust Skills Via Unsupervised Generation of Diverse and Feasible Tasks
Kuan Fang*Equal contribution, Toki Migimatsu*Equal contribution, Ajay Mandlekar, Li Fei-Fei, Jeannette Bohg
IROS 2023

Teaser figure for Generalization with Lossy Affordances: Leveraging Broad Offline Data for Learning Visuomotor Tasks

Generalization with Lossy Affordances: Leveraging Broad Offline Data for Learning Visuomotor Tasks
Kuan Fang, Patrick Yin, Ashvin Nair, Homer Walke, Gengchen Yan, Sergey Levine
CoRL 2022 (Oral Presentation)

Teaser figure for Planning to Practice: Efficient Online Fine-Tuning by Composing Goals in Latent Space

Planning to Practice: Efficient Online Fine-Tuning by Composing Goals in Latent Space
Kuan Fang*Equal contribution, Patrick Yin*Equal contribution, Ashvin Nair, Sergey Levine
IROS 2022

Teaser figure for Discovering Generalizable Skills via Automated Generation of Diverse Tasks

Discovering Generalizable Skills via Automated Generation of Diverse Tasks
Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu, Silvio Savarese, Li Fei-Fei
RSS 2021

Teaser figure for Synergies Between Affordance and Geometry: 6-DoF Grasp Detection via Implicit Representations

Synergies Between Affordance and Geometry: 6-DoF Grasp Detection via Implicit Representations
Zhenyu Jiang, Yifeng Zhu, Maxwell Svetlik, Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu
RSS 2021

Teaser figure for Adaptive Procedural Task Generation for Hard-Exploration Problems

Adaptive Procedural Task Generation for Hard-Exploration Problems
Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu, Silvio Savarese, Li Fei-Fei
ICLR 2021

Teaser figure for KETO: Learning Keypoint Representations for Tool Manipulation

KETO: Learning Keypoint Representations for Tool Manipulation
Zengyi Qin, Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu, Li Fei-Fei, Silvio Savarese
ICRA 2020

Teaser figure for Dynamics Learning with Cascaded Variational Inference for Multi-Step Manipulation

Dynamics Learning with Cascaded Variational Inference for Multi-Step Manipulation
Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu, Animesh Garg, Silvio Savarese, Li Fei-Fei
CoRL 2019 (Oral Presentation)

Teaser figure for Scene Memory Transformer for Embodied Agents in Long-Horizon Tasks

Scene Memory Transformer for Embodied Agents in Long-Horizon Tasks
Kuan Fang, Alexander Toshev, Li Fei-Fei, Silvio Savarese
CVPR 2019

Teaser figure for Learning Task-Oriented Grasping for Tool Manipulation from Simulated Self-Supervision

Learning Task-Oriented Grasping for Tool Manipulation from Simulated Self-Supervision
Kuan Fang, Yuke Zhu, Animesh Garg, Andrey Kurenkov, Viraj Mehta, Li Fei-Fei, Silvio Savarese
RSS 2018
IJRR 2019

Teaser figure for Multi-Task Domain Adaptation for Deep Learning of Instance Grasping from Simulation

Multi-Task Domain Adaptation for Deep Learning of Instance Grasping from Simulation
Kuan Fang, Yunfei Bai, Stefan Hinterstoisser, Silvio Savarese, Mrinal Kalakrishnan
ICRA 2018

Teaser figure for Demo2Vec: Reasoning Object Affordances from Online Videos

Demo2Vec: Reasoning Object Affordances from Online Videos
Kuan Fang*Equal contribution, Te-Lin Wu*Equal contribution, Daniel Yang, Silvio Savarese, Joseph J. Lim
CVPR 2018

Teaser figure for Recurrent Autoregressive Networks for Online Multi-Object Tracking

Recurrent Autoregressive Networks for Online Multi-Object Tracking
Kuan Fang, Yu Xiang, Xiaocheng Li, Silvio Savarese
WACV 2018

Teaser figure for DeLay: Robust Spatial Layout Estimation for Cluttered Indoor Scenes

DeLay: Robust Spatial Layout Estimation for Cluttered Indoor Scenes
Saumitro Dasgupta, Kuan Fang*Equal contribution, Kevin Chen*Equal contribution, Silvio Savarese
CVPR 2016