Qian (Peter) Wang
Curriculum Vitae
Research interests
Long-horizon Planning, Deep Learning, Motion Planning
Education
Aug 2024 - May 2029
Yale University, New Haven, CT
- Ph.D. Computer Science
Aug 2020 - May 2024
University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA
- B.S. Computer Engineering and Computer Science
- B.S. Applied and Computational Mathematics
- GPA: 3.94 / 4.0
Experience
Jan 2024 - Present
Research Assistant, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
- Advisor: Daniel Seita @ SLURM Lab
- Developing contact-aware and collision-acceptable robotic manipulation applications with the integration of foundation AI model.
Jun 2023 - Jan 2024
Research Assistant, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
- Advisor: Maxim Likhachev @ Search-Based Planning Lab
- Developed learning-based methods to tackle the 2D MAPF problem that could also guarantee completeness. Accepted to ICAPS 2024.
- Benchmarked and evaluated 3D MAPF problems using EECBS and MAPF-LNS2 methods. Accepted to ICAPS 2024.
Jan 2023 - Jun 2023
Research Assistant, USC, Los Angeles, CA
- Advisor: Viktor Prasanna @ Parallel Computing Lab
- Devised a novel approach to optimize the existing parallel DNN-MCTS algorithm by systematically choosing the best batch size for parallelization on GPU, resulting in a co-first author paper to IA^3 2023.
Aug 2022 - Jun 2023
Research Assistant, USC, Los Angeles, CA
- Advisor: Stefanos Nikolaidis @ ICAROS Lab
- Developed simulation software and real-life robotics demo using PyBullet and Aikido.
- Jointly developed CNN and heuristic-based methods and optimized placement accuracy to improve sampling efficiency in the geometric Task and Motion Planning (gTAMP) problem.
May 2022 - Aug 2022
Software Engineer Intern, Honeybee Robotics, Altadena, CA
- Built a YAMCS Studio operator console to interface with the ground station, displaying telemetry data and controlling a space mining drill.
- Crafted a simulator for the drill that’s able to emulate responses after receiving telecommand.
Aug 2021 - May 2022
Undergraduate Research Fellow, USC, Los Angeles, CA
- Advisor: Quan Nguyen @ Dynamic Robotics and Control Lab
- Worked on the design and control of a lightweight low-cost quadruped robot.
- Co-lead the software control sub-team and develop impedance control on the robot legs.
Publications
2024
Improving Learnt Local MAPF Policies with Heuristic Search [Link]
- Rishi Veerapaneni*, Qian Wang*, Kevin Ren*, Arthur Jakobsson*, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev. ICAPS 2024.
2024
MAPF in 3D Warehouses: Dataset and Analysis
- Qian Wang*, Rishi Veerapaneni*, Yu Wu, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev. ICAPS 2024.
2023
Accelerating Deep Neural Network guided MCTS using Adaptive Parallelism [Link]
- Yuan Meng*, Qian Wang*, Tianxin Zu, Viktor Prasanna. 13th Workshop on Irregular Applications: Architectures and Algorithms (IA^3 2023).
2023
Enhancing the Performance of DeepReach on High-Dimensional Systems through Optimizing Activation Functions [Link]
- Qian Wang*, Tianhao Wu*. arXiv, 2023.
Awards
2023
Provost’s Research Fellowship
2023
Engineering Honors Program
2021-2022
CURVE Research Fellowship
2021-2022
Academic Achievement Award
- Received about $30000 in tuition reduction
2019
1st Place in Shanghai UM-SJTU Hackathon
- Developed and patented a CNN-based auto-sorting trash can. Received a $1500 award
Teaching
Course Producer
Jan 2023 - Present
Intro to Artificial Intelligence (CSCI 360)
- Led weekly office hours and graded midterms and final examinations
Aug 2022 - Dec 2022
Intro to Embedded Systems (EE 109)
- Provided hands-on help to a 30-student class during office hours and lab sections
Grader
Aug 2023 - Present
Parallel and Distribution Computation (EE 451)
Lab Mentor
Jan 2023 - May 2023
Intro to Digital Circuits (EE 354)
- Delivered lecture-style instructions and assisted 30+ students in a weekly lab section
Tutoring
Jan 2019 - May 2021
AP Computer Science A and AP Physics 1&2
- One-on-one teaching to four high school students on various subjects
- Demonstrated significant improvement in class grades and high AP scores
Volunteer Experience
Jun 2020 - Present
Robotics Mentor, Bishop Alemany High School, Mission Hills, CA
- 400+ hours dedicated to mentoring high school students FRC robotics team (2659 RoboWarriors) focusing on design, integration, and iteration for electrical, software, and control system equipment for autonomous robot
- Designed a course titled “Robotics: from Theory to Applications”, and delivered a lecture for 2 hrs/week to students [link]
Skills
- Languages: Python, C++. Java, JavaScript, HTML, Git
- Python Libraries: Pytorch, Tensorflow, Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, OpenCV
- Research Tools: PyBullet, ROS, Linux, LATEX, SSH, WandB