Yuxiang Ma
PhD Candidate, MIT Mechanical Engineering
I am a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, advised by Professor Edward Adelson. My research focuses on the intersection of visuo-tactile perception and embodied AI, spanning the full robotics pipeline — from tactile sensor design and hardware engineering to foundation model learning and policy deployment for complex real-world manipulation.
I am particularly interested in overcoming the robotic "data bottleneck" by building scalable, interactive data-collection frameworks with richer sensing modalities. In Summer 2025, I interned at the Robotics and AI Institute, where I worked with Team Capture to design a handheld UMI-style device integrating force-torque and tactile sensors for portable, multimodal manipulation data collection.
I received my B.Eng. from the Tsien Excellence in Engineering Program (TEEP) at Tsinghua University in 2020. I also spent time as an undergraduate researcher in the Xu Group at UC San Diego, working on wearable ultrasound imaging and elastography.
In my spare time, I enjoy weightlifting and playing basketball.
Email / Google Scholar / LinkedIn / GitHub
