Joyce Yang

👋 Hi, I’m Joyce. I’m a third-year Computer Science undergrad @ Cornell University.

I’m working at EmPRISE Lab under Prof. Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, focusing on human-robot interaction and multi-agent robotic systems for bed-to-wheelchair human transfers.

Previously, I worked on reinforcement learning for in-hand manipulation of bioinspired robots through the Science Internship Program at UC Santa Cruz, under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Wehner. I also interned at Stanford University’s Robinson Lab, where I studied gene expression in equine RNA-seq data to better understand cartilage degradation.

Email / Google Scholar / LinkedIn

news

Jan 12, 2026	Our paper Brick by Brick: Using Collaborative Robotics to Combat Social Isolation in Public Spaces was accepted to HRI 2026’s Student Design Challenge! See you in Edinburgh ✈️
Nov 02, 2025	We released CodeClash: Benchmarking Goal-Oriented Software Engineering! Check out the paper on arXiv.
May 27, 2025	I started my summer internship at SIA Lab under Prof. Somil Bansal!
Dec 02, 2024	Our paper CART-MPC: Coordinating Assistive Devices for Robot-Assisted Transferring with Multi-Agent Model Predictive Control was accepted to HRI 2025! Check out the project website here
Aug 14, 2024	I was featured on Cornell Chronicle’s article Summer program gives undergraduates a taste of research life and Cornell Bowers CIS Spotlight

selected publications

HRI 2026

Brick by Brick: Using Collaborative Robotics to Combat Social Isolation in Public Spaces

Joyce Yang, Phillip Johnson, Nyra Graham, and Karen Shamir

In Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2026

Abs DOI

Social isolation in shared spaces threatens community cohesion and well-being. This paper presents a social robot designed to spark human-to-human interactions. Inspired by public art projects, the robot invites individuals to collaborate on a shared LEGO structure by using expressive eye tracking, autonomous turning, and servo-actuated drawer movement. Field deployments in Cornell University spaces showed the robot effectively acted as a social catalyst: diverse participants contributed to a shared structure, and strangers initiated conversations about the robot. This work offers a functional prototype and insights on robots as mediators of human connection and promotes ideas of empowering collaboration.
HRI 2025

CART-MPC: Coordinating Assistive Devices for Robot-Assisted Transferring with Multi-Agent Model Predictive Control

Ruolin Ye, Shuaixing Chen, Yunting Yan, Joyce Yang, Christina Ge, Jose Barreiros, Kate Tsui, Tom Silver, and Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee

In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2025

HTML Video Website