Chenfanfu Jiang

Professor
Department of Mathematics
University of California, Los Angeles

Lab: Slichter Hall 3860
Office: MS 7619E
chenfanfu.jiang-at-gmail.com

UCLA Artificial intelligence & Visual Computing Laboratory
Research interest: visual computing, physical AI, 3D generative AI, embodied AI, robotics.

Publications | CV | Google Scholar | Physics-Based Simulation (Book)

My current research centers on the intersection of physical AI and visual computing.

My group builds the algorithms, simulators, and learning systems that let intelligent agents perceive, reason, and act in the physical world. We extend generative AI with spatial, temporal, and physical understanding, so models handle contact and deformation, obey physical constraints, and transfer to real embodied systems.

Goal: close the loop between pixels, physics, and policy.

Bio: Chenfanfu Jiang is a Professor of Mathematics and director of the Artificial Intelligence and Visual Computing (AIVC) Lab at UCLA. His research leads advances in 3D visual computing, physical AI, and 3D generative AI, with a focus on physics-based modeling, simulation, and intelligent interaction with the physical world. He pioneered influential methods related to Particle-In-Cell (PIC), the Material Point Method (MPM), and Incremental Potential Contact (IPC), and helped drive their adoption across computer graphics, vision, robotics, and computational mechanics. His research has been widely supported by federal agencies and industry partners, including NSF, DOE, Toyota, Amazon, Style3D, SideFX, Sony, Adobe, Snap, Meshy, and NVIDIA. He has received a UCLA Ph.D. dissertation award, an NSF CAREER Award, faculty awards from Amazon, Style3D, and Sony, and best paper awards or honorable mentions at SIGGRAPH, SCA, MIG, ICRA, and IROS. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 2015, co-advised by Demetri Terzopoulos and Joseph Teran, and was an Assistant Professor of CIS at the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2021.