Kui Wu 武奎

Principal Researcher

LIGHTSPEED, Tencent America

Ph.D., University of Utah

Email: walker dot kui dot wu at gmail dot com

About me

I'm a principal research scientist in LIGHTSPEED, Tencent America. Previously, I was a postdoctoral associate in the Computational Design & Fabrication Group under the guidance of Prof. Wojciech Matusik at MIT CSAIL. I received my PhD degree in Computer Science from University of Utah in 2019, advised by Prof. Cem Yuksel. My research interests are computer graphics, including modeling, rendering, simulation, and fabrication.

* If you are interested in doing a research internship at Tencent Games
in US and China, please drop me an e-mail with your CV
and a short summary of your research interests.

Publications

(* indicates equal contributions)

2026

Plane-based Potential Contact Model for Robot Control on GPU

Chun Yuan, Dewen Guo, Xiaohan Ye, Xifeng Gao, Taku Komura, Zherong Pan, Yin Yang, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2026)

Type-Free Global Intersection Analysis with Linear Displacement Fields

Chengzhu He, Xudong Feng, Anjun Chen, Dan Song, Shihui Guo, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2026)

Vibrational Affine Body Dynamics

Haoyang Shi, Yumeng He, Sheldon Andrews, Chenfanfu Jiang, Kui Wu, Yin Yang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2026)

Multi-level Quadrature for Projective Dynamics

Dewen Guo, Yuqi Meng, Zixuan Lu, Zhiyong He, Huamin Wang, Lei Lan, Weiwei Xu, Kui Wu, Chenfanfu Jiang, Yin Yang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2026)

BubbleGym: A Practical Shape-to-Frequency Model for Acoustic Bubbles

Zhehao Li, Kui Wu, Wei Li, Doug James

SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 (Conference Track)

Unified World Simulation of Lagrangian Particle Dynamics via Transformer

Caoliwen Wang*, Minghao Guo*, Siyuan Chen*, Heng Zhang, Mengdi Wang, Xingyu Ni, Hanson Sun, Kunyi Wang, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Lingjie Liu, Yin Yang, Chenfanfu Jiang, Taku Komura, Wojciech Matusik, Peter Yichen Chen

SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 (Conference Track)

Real-Time Neural Hair G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing

Chenghao Wu, Yuefan Shen, Tao Huang, Kai Yan, Zahra Montazeri, Kui Wu

SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 (Conference Track)

Interactive Yarn-level Knitwear with Nested Douglas-Rachford Splitting

Chun Yuan, Zixuan Lu, Haoyang Shi, Dewen Guo, Huamin Wang, Chenfanfu Jiang, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Yin Yang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2026)

[Paper]

Global Discrete Optimization for Quad-Dominant Mesh Reduction

Yuzhe Luo*, Jingchen Gao*, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Xuebo Ji, Xiaogang Jin, Xifeng Gao

SIGGRAPH North America 2026 (Conference Track)
[Paper]

HairLRM: Strand-based Hair Modeling via Large Reconstruction Models

Yuefan Shen*, Yican Dong*, Xiufeng Huang, Zhongtian Zheng, Youyi Zheng, Kui Wu

SIGGRAPH North America 2026 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

LightOpt: Lights Optimization for Real-time Rendering

Tuo Chen, Luyan Cao, Kui Wu, Shimin Hu

SIGGRAPH North America 2026 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

PoseShield: Neural Collision Fields for Human Self-Collision Resolution

Zhengyuan Li, Zeyun Deng, Yifan Shen, Liangyan Gui, Miaolan Xie, Joseph Campbell, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan, Aniket Bera

European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV, 2026)
[Project Website]

Language-Guided Generation for Personalized Inspection Planning

Xingpeng Sun, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Aniket Bera

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2026)
[Paper]

Spatial Eigenanalysis of 2D Deformation Energies

Haomiao Wu, Kui Wu, Theodore Kim

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of SGP 2026), 2026
[Paper]

BC-ADMM: A Parallel Decoupled Non-convex Constrained Optimizer for Robot Applications

Zherong Pan, Kui Wu

International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2026
[Paper]

Handle-based Mesh Deformation Guided By Vision Language Model

Xingpeng Sun, Shiyang jia, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Aniket Bera

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2026
[Paper]

Practical Occluder Generation for Mobile Games

Hongyi Cao, Zhenghai Chen, Yongxin Wang, Xingyi Du, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Gang Xu, Xifeng Gao

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2026
[Paper]

Efficient Differentiable Contact Model with Long-Range Influence

Xiaohan Ye, Kui Wu, Taku Komura, Zherong Pan

International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026
[Paper]

2025

SDRS: Shape-Differentiable Robot Simulator

Xiaohan Ye, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan, Taku Komura

IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2025
[Paper]

Auto Hair Card Extraction for Smooth Hair with Differentiable Rendering

Zhongtian Zheng, Tao Huang, Haozhe Su, Xueqi Ma, Yuefan Shen, Tongtong Wang, Yin Yang, Xifeng Gao, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2025)
[Project Website]

RL-ACD: Reinforcement Learning-based Approximate Convex Decomposition

Yuzhe Luo, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Xingyi Du, Yun Zeng, Xiangjun Tang, Yiqian Wu, Xiaogang Jin, Xifeng Gao

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2025)
[Paper]

Kinetic Free-Surface Flows and Foams with Sharp Interfaces

Haoxiang Wang, Kui Wu, Hui Qiao, Mathieu Desbrun, Wei Li

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2025)
[Project Website]

Learning to Control Free-Form Soft Swimmers

Changyu Hu, Yanke Qu, Qiuan Yang, Xiaoyu Xiong, Kui Wu, Wei Li, Tao Du

NeurIPS 2025
[Project Website]

Fast Multi-Body Coupling for Underwater Interactions

Tianhong Gao, Xuwen Chen, Xingqiao Li, Wei Li, Baoquan Chen, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Mengyu Chu

Pacific Graphics 2025
[Paper][Video][Code]

Real-time Level-of-detail Strand-based Rendering

Tao Huang, Yang Zhou, Daqi Lin, Junqiu Zhu, Ling-Qi Yan, Kui Wu

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2025)
[Project Website]

Real-Time Knit Deformation and Rendering

Tao Huang*, Haoyang Shi*, Mengdi Wang*, Yuxing Qiu, Yin Yang, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2025)
[Project Website]

High-performance CPU Cloth Simulation Using Domain-decomposed Projective Dynamics

Zixuan Lu*, Ziheng Liu*, Lei Lan, Huamin Wang, Yuko Ishiwaka, Chenfanfu Jiang, Kui Wu, Yin Yang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2025)

Best Siggraph Technical Paper Award, Honorable Mention
[Project Website]

Stable Cosserat Rods

Jerry Hsu, Tongtong Wang, Kui Wu, Cem Yuksel

SIGGRAPH North America 2025 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

Curl Quantization for Automatic Placement of Knit Singularities

Rahul Mitra, Mattéo Couplet, Tongtong Wang, Megan Hoffmann, Kui Wu, Edward Chien

SIGGRAPH North America 2025 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

2024

Volumetric Homogenization for Knitwear Simulation

Chun Yuan*, Haoyang Shi*, Lei Lan, Yuxing Qiu, Cem Yuksel, Huamin Wang, Chenfanfu Jiang, Kui Wu, Yin Yang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2024)
[Paper][Video]

Real-time Physically Guided Hair Interpolation

Jerry Hsu, Tongtong Wang, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Cem Yuksel, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2024)
[Project Website]

Proxy Asset Generation for Cloth Simulation in Games

Zhongtian Zheng, Tongtong Wang, Qijia Feng, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2024)
[Project Website]

Kinetic Simulation of Turbulent Multifluid Flows

Wei Li, Kui Wu, Mathieu Desbrun

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2024)
[Project Website]

Adaptive Tactile Interaction Transfer via Digitally Embroidered Smart Gloves

Yiyue Luo, Chao Liu, Young Joong Lee, Joseph DelPreto, Kui Wu, Michael Foshey, Daniela Rus, Tomas Palacios, Yunzhu Li, Antonio Torralba, Wojciech Matusik

Nature Communications, 2024
[Paper]

Visual-Preserving Mesh Repair

Zhongtian Zheng, Xifeng Gao, Zherong Pan, Wei Li, Peng-Shuai Wang, Guoping Wang, Kui Wu

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2024
[Project Website]

Learning Reduced Fluid Dynamics

Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-24)
[Paper]

Provably Feasible Semi-Infinite Program Under Collision Constraints via Subdivision

Duo Zhang, Chen Liang, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan

IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2024
[Paper]

Second-Order Convergent Collision-Constrained Optimization-Based Planner

Chen Liang, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024
[Paper]

Learning Neural Traffic Rules

Xuan Zhang, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024
[Paper]

2023

Real-time Height-field Simulation of Sand and Water Mixtures

Haozhe Su, Siyu Zhang, Zherong Pan, Mridul Aanjaneya, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu

SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

High-Order Moment-Encoded Kinetic Simulation of Turbulent Flows

Wei Li, Tongtong Wang, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Mathieu Desbrun

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2023)
[Project Website]

Texture Atlas Compression Based on Repeated Content Removal

Yuzhe Luo, Xiaogang Jin, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Qilong Kou, Xiajun Yang, Xifeng Gao

SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

Learning based 2D Irregular Shape Packing

Zeshi Yang, Zherong Pan, Manyi Li, Kui Wu, Xifeng Gao

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2023)
[Paper]

Joint UV Optimization and Texture Baking

Julian Knodt, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Xifeng Gao

ACM Transactions on Graphics (To be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2023)
[Paper]

Learning Reduced-Order Soft Robot Controller

Chen Liang, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023)
[Paper]

MagKnitic: Machine-knitted Passive and Interactive Haptics Textiles with Integrated Binary Sensing

Yiyue Luo, Junyi Zhu, Kui Wu, Cedric Honnet, Stefanie Mueller, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2023)
[Project Website]

Sag-Free Initialization for Strand-Based Hybrid Hair Simulation

Jerry Hsu, Tongtong Wang, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Cem Yuksel, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2023)

Best Siggraph Technical Paper Award, Honorable Mention
[Project Website]

Robust Low-Poly Meshing for General 3D Models,

Zhen Chen, Zherong Pan, Kui Wu, Etienne Vouga, Xifeng Gao,

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2023)
[Project Website]

Differentiable Learning of Scalable Multi-Agent Navigation Policies

Xiaohan Ye, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Bo Ren

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2023
[Paper]

First-Order Topology Optimization via Inexact Finite Element Analysis

Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu

Computer-Aided Design (CAD), 2023
[Link]

2022

Environment Warped Gait Trajectory Optimization for Complex Terrains

Zherong Pan, Tan Chen, Xianzhong Fang, Timothy Bretl, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022
[Paper]

Fluidic Topology Optimization with an Anisotropic Mixture Model

Yifei Li, Tao Du, Sangeetha Grama Srinivasan, Kui Wu, Bo Zhu, Eftychios Sifakis, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2022)
[Project Website]

Occluder Generation for Buildings in Digital Games

Kui Wu, Xu He, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2022)
[Paper] [Video]

Low-poly Mesh Generation for Building Models

Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu, Zherong Pan

SIGGRAPH North America 2022 (Conference Track)
[Project Website]

A General Two-Stage Initialization for Sag-Free Deformable Simulations

Jerry Hsu, Nghia Truong, Cem Yuksel, Kui Wu

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2022)
[Project Website]

DiffCloth: Differentiable Cloth Simulation with Dry Frictional Contact

Yifei Li, Tao Du, Kui Wu, Jie Xu, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Presented at SIGGRAPH North America 2022)
[Project Website]

DiffPD: Differentiable Projective Dynamics

Tao Du, Kui Wu, Pingchuan Ma, Sebastien Wah, Andrew Spielberg, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Presented at SIGGRAPH North America 2022)
[Project Website]

Digital Fabrication of Pneumatic Actuators with Integrated Sensing by Machine Knitting

Yiyue Luo, Kui Wu, Andrew Spielberg, Michael Foshey, Tomas Palacios, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik

SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), 2022
[Project Website]

An Integrated Design Pipeline for Tactile Sensing Robotic Manipulators

Lara Zlokapa, Yiyue Luo, Jie Xu, Michael Foshey, Kui Wu, Pulkit Agrawal, Wojciech Matusik

IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2022)
[Project Website]

2021

Knit Sketching: from Cut & Sew Patterns to Machine-Knit Garments

Alexandre Kaspar, Kui Wu, Yiyue Luo, Liane Makatura, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2021)
[Project Website]

DiffAqua: A Differentiable Computational Design Pipeline for Soft Underwater Swimmers with Shape Interpolation

Pingchuan Ma, Tao Du, John Z. Zhang, Kui Wu, Andrew Spielberg, Robert Katzschmann, Wojciech Matusik

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2021)
[Project Website]

KnitUI: Fabricating Interactive and Sensing Textiles with Machine Knitting

Yiyue Luo*, Kui Wu*, Tomas Palacios, Wojciech Matusik

SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021)

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award
[Project Website]

Learning Human-environment Interactions using 3D Conformal Functional Textiles

Yiyue Luo, Yunzhu Li, Pratyusha Sharma, Wan Shou, Kui Wu, Mike Foshey, Beichen Li, Tomas Palacios, Antonio Torralba, Wojciech Matusik

Nature Electronics, 2021

Selected as Nature Electronics, Volume 4 Issue 3 (March 2021) Cover Image [Link]
[Project Website] [Paper (external link)]

Wearable 3D Machine Knitting

Kui Wu, Marco Tarini, Cem Yuksel, Jim McCann, Xifeng Gao

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2021
Presented at SGP 2021
[Project Website]

2020

Functional Optimization of Fluidic Devices with Differentiable Stokes Flow

Tao Du, Kui Wu, Andrew Spielberg, Wojciech Matusik, Bo Zhu, Eftychios Sifakis

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH ASIA 2020)
[Project Website]

Earlier

Visual Knitting Machine Programming

Vidya Narayanan*, Kui Wu*, Cem Yuksel, Jim McCann

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2019)
[Paper][Video][Project Website]

Knittable Stitch Meshes

Kui Wu, Hannah Swan, Cem Yuksel

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2019
(Presented at SIGGRAPH North America 2019)
[Project Website]

GPU Optimization of Material Point Methods

Ming Gao*, Xinlei Wang*, Kui Wu*, Andre Pradhana, Eftychios Sifakis, Cem Yuksel, Chenfanfu Jiang

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018)
[Paper] [Tech doc] [Video] [Code] [CUDA 3x3 SVD Code]

Stitch Meshing

Kui Wu, Xifeng Gao, Zachary Ferguson, Daniele Panozzo, Cem Yuksel

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH North America 2018)
[Project Website]

Fast Fluid Simulations with Sparse Volumes on the GPU

Kui Wu, Nghia Truong, Cem Yuksel, Rama Hoetzlein

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EUROGRAPHICS 2018)
[Project Website]

Real-time Cloth Rendering with Fiber-level Detail

Kui Wu, Cem Yuksel

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2017
[Project Website]

Real-time Fiber-level Cloth Rendering

Kui Wu, Cem Yuksel

ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D 2017)

The 3rd Best Paper Award

The 2nd Best Presentation Award
[Project Website]

Direct Multifield Volume Ray Casting of Fiber Surfaces

Kui Wu, Aaron Knoll, Benjamin Isaac, Hamish Carr, Valerio Pascucci

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VIS 2016)
Also presented in TVCG Session on Advances in Data Visualization in SIGGRAPH North America 2017
[Project Website]

Real-time Hair Simulation

Kui Wu, Cem Yuksel

ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D 2016)
[Project Website]

Dissertation

Modeling, Rendering, and Simulating Knits

Kui Wu

Ph.D. Thesis, University of Utah, August 2019

University of Utah SoC Outstanding Dissertation Award
[PDF(106.7Mb)]

Book chapters

Animating Water Using Profile Buffer

Haozhe Su, Wei Li, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Zhenyu Mao, Kui Wu

GPU Zen 3: Chapter 21
[Paper]

Flowmap Baking with LBM-SWE

Wei Li, Haozhe Su, Zherong Pan, Xifeng Gao, Zhenyu Mao, Kui Wu

GPU Zen 3: Chapter 20
[Paper]

Course

Fluid Simulation with the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Wei Li, Chaoyang Lyu, Mengyun Liu, Yixin Chen, Mathieu Desbrun, Kui Wu, Xiaopei Liu

SIGGRAPH North America 2026 course
[Website]

Talks

Open-World Water Rendering and Real-Time Simulation

Zhenyu Mao, Kui Wu

Game Developers Conference (GDC), 2023

Efficient Hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian Simulation on the GPU

Kui Wu

GPU Technology Conference (GTC), 2019

Selected awards

2025 Best Technical Paper Award, Honorable Mention, at SIGGRAPH North America 2025
High-performance CPU Cloth Simulation Using Domain-decomposed Projective Dynamics
2023 SCA Early Career Researcher Award, at SCA 2023
2023 Best Technical Paper Award, Honorable Mention, at SIGGRAPH North America 2023
Sag-Free Initialization for Strand-Based Hybrid Hair Simulation
2021 Best Paper Award, Honorable Mention, at CHI 2021
KnitUI: Fabricating Interactive and Sensing Textiles with Machine Knitting
2020 SoC Outstanding Dissertation Award, University of Utah
2018 Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Utah
2017 Best Paper Award (3rd place) and Best Presentation Award (2nd place), at I3D 2017
Real-time Fiber-level Cloth Rendering

Professional service

Program committee:

SIGGRAPH North America, 2026
SIGGRAPH Asia, 2024 - 2025
Eurographics (EG), 2025 - 2026
Pacific Graphics (PG), 2023 - 2025
Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), 2023 - 2026
Symposium on Geometry Processing (SGP), 2024 - 2026
Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR), 2025 - 2026
Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D), 2024