Faculty Directory
Ruohan Zhang

Assistant Professor of Computer Science (beginning on September 1, 2026)

Contact

2233 Tech Drive
Mudd Room
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

Website

Ruohan Zhang

Departments

Computer Science

Research Interests

His research focuses on embodied AI, human-robot interaction, brain-computer interfaces, cognitive science, societal impact of AI and automation, and AI for art and design. The goal is to develop human-centered, human-inspired, and human-compatible AI and robotics.

His research is structured around three pillars: human tasks, human data, and human interfaces. He has developed a comprehensive robotic benchmark, BEHAVIOR [1], to simulate the 1,000 most essential household tasks – identified through large-scale survey studies – in virtual, interactive, and ecologically realistic environments. To achieve human-level AI in solving these tasks, he designs systems and learning algorithms that enable AI and robots to learn from large-scale, diverse human data collected through novel interfaces [2-7]. To augment human capabilities and enable seamless interaction, he has developed intelligent brain-robot interfaces to assist older adults, individuals with disabilities, and those receiving hospital care with activities of daily living [8]. In addition to these, for future research, he aims to enhance the generalization capabilities of learning-based robotic systems for everyday tasks by leveraging foundation models [9-12]. At the same time, he is developing robotic systems that surpass human capabilities in high-skill domains such as painting, dancing, cooking, and sports, through the integration of learned world models and advanced planning algorithms.

His research “North Star” is that, one day, we will be able to use our brain signals to control intelligent robots to take care of us when needed, or perform highly dexterous tasks that is beyond the limitations of our physical bodies.

Ruohan Zhang has received several paper awards or nominations from robotics conferences and workshops, including two CoRL best paper nominations (2022, 2023), ICRA best paper (2024), best paper nomination (2025), and multiple best paper awards at CoRL, RSS, ICRA, and AAAI workshops. He has also published articles in cognitive science journals such as Neural Computation and PLoS Computational Biology. He has served as a program committee member,  reviewer, or editor for conferences and journals in machine learning, robotics, and cognitive science, including NeurIPS, ICCV, ECCV, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, CogSci, Frontiers, and the Journal of Vision.

[1] BEHAVIOR: https://behavior.stanford.edu/
[2] BEHAVIOR Robot Suite: https://behavior-robot-suite.github.io/
[3] DexCap: https://dex-cap.github.io/
[4] MimicPlay: https://mimic-play.github.io/
[5] TRANSIC: https://transic-robot.github.io/
[6] SEED: https://seediros23.github.io/
[7] Atari-HEAD: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.06754
[8] NOIR: https://noir-corl.github.io/
[9] VoxPoser: https://voxposer.github.io/
[10] ReKep: https://rekep-robot.github.io/
[11] UAD: https://unsup-affordance.github.io/
[12] Digital Cousins: https://digital-cousins.github.io/