Yanjia Huang

Founder & CEO @ Envora

Los Angeles, CA, USA

I am Yanjia Huang, Founder and CEO of Envora, a company focused on Physical AI. I am also a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UCLA, currently on leave, and a member of the AIVC Lab, advised by Prof. Chenfanfu Jiang.

Previously, I pursued a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University as a member of the TACO Group, advised by Prof. Zhengzhong Tu. I left the doctoral program with a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.

My research explores how world model, policy learning from videos can be woven together to produce robust, long-horizon plans for Embodied Agents, from indoor navigation to dexterous manipulation.

I earned dual B.Eng. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from SBC, USST and LJMU, with a minor in Physics. My previous research experience includes Fudan University (Prof. Yanwei Fu), NYU’s AI4CE and MMVC labs (Profs. Chen Feng and Yi Fang), and an internship at Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Lab with Hang Xu.

Outside of research, I’m fond of Bach, play piano and guitar, read Oscar Wilde’s poetry and the Stoics, and unwind with basketball, cycling, and the occasional daydream.

“Robots shouldn’t just imitate; they could imagine, reason, and plan.”

News

[06/2026] Our paper Learn2Fold: Structured Origami Generation with World Model Planning was accepted to ECCV 2026.
[05/2026] Founded something new in Physical AI. More soon.
[01/2026] 2 papers accepted at ICRA 2026 — thanks to all co-authors! See you in Vienna.
[11/2025] Started a visiting student position at the AIVC Lab at UCLA.
[03/2025] Our paper PANDORA: Diffusion Policy Learning for Dexterous Robotic Piano Playing was accepted to the NeurIPS AI4Music workshop.
[09/2024] Joined the TACO Group at Texas A&M University as a graduate research assistant.
[06/2024] Graduated with a dual B.Eng. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and the Sino-British College (SBC), USST.