CV

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Graphics, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, 2019–2025
  Physics-based simulation and material-distribution design. Advisor: Prof. Jianmin Zheng.
• M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS), 2017–2018
• B.Eng. in Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), 2013–2017

Work experience

• Sep 2025 – present: Simulation Team Lead, RoboScience, Shenzhen, China
  • Lead a seven-person team building the core rigid-body, deformable-body and cloth simulation engine and its integration with Isaac Lab.
  • Designed a fully GPU-based rigid–soft coupled simulation architecture, implemented the engine’s USD parsing layer and migrated the simulation pipeline to the USD framework.
  • Generated high-quality synthetic data for complex rigid–soft coupled scenes (parcel grasping, hanging garments) and validated advanced grasping algorithms on elasto-plastic objects.
  • Integrated the GPU-accelerated engine into Isaac Lab: penetration-free simulation of robot arms grasping cloth and elastic bodies, Manager-Based Env support for PPO training, and gripper demos on soft cubes and cloth.
  • Since July 2026: large-scale generation of soft-body, cloth and articulated-object interaction data for world-model training, and an integrated perception / world model / action-control pipeline for fine-grained dexterous-hand control in everyday scenes.
• Oct 2023 – Aug 2025: Research Associate, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Built an elastic-body simulation engine from scratch: PBD/XPBD, then an FEM core based on continuum mechanics with IPC-style contact handling for large deformation, complex topology and contact.
  • Applied preconditioned conjugate gradients, Hessian-corrected quasi-Newton methods, Chebyshev iteration and Nesterov acceleration to large-scale inverse problems in structural analysis.
  • Deployed a C++/CUDA large-scale matrix computation system (Cholesky/QR, multigrid preconditioning, parallel linear solvers) on NTU’s multi-GPU cluster for high-fidelity 3D simulation.
• May 2019 – Aug 2023: Research Assistant, HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab, Singapore
  • Deep-learning-based multi-scale structural design: an end-to-end macroscopic topology-optimization framework combining CNNs and physics-informed neural networks (about 3x faster than conventional numerical optimization), and a PointNet-based generative model for microstructure design with multi-scale feature alignment.
  • Large-scale discrete optimization of material distributions on general shapes for 3D printing: an L0 formulation with differentiable interpolation relaxation solving 300k+-dimensional non-convex problems within half an hour, applied to customized insoles, seats and precision tweezers.
  • Parallel multi-objective constrained optimization workflow fusing multiple force–displacement scenarios and resolving mesh-resolution consistency.

Skills

• Simulation: FEM (continuum mechanics), PBD/XPBD, IPC, MPM, projective dynamics, VBD; contact, friction and large-deformation handling; differentiable simulation.
• Optimization and ML: nonlinear and constrained optimization (PCG, quasi-Newton, ADMM, graph cuts, L0 regularization), topology optimization, PINNs, PointNet, generative design, reinforcement learning (PPO).
• Systems: C++/CUDA, GPU-parallel solvers, multi-GPU clusters, USD pipelines, Isaac Sim / Isaac Lab, Abaqus, ANSYS.

Publications

Optimizing heterogeneous elastic material distributions on 3D models

Haoxiang Li, Wenjing Zhang, Jianmin Zheng, Edward D. Davis, Jun Zeng. (2024). "Optimizing heterogeneous elastic material distributions on 3D models." Computer-Aided Design, 175, 103748.

Designing Multi-Material Distributions in 3D Parts for Desired Deformation Behaviour

Jianmin Zheng, Haoxiang Li. (2024). "Designing Multi-Material Distributions in 3D Parts for Desired Deformation Behaviour." In Geometric Modeling: Challenges for Additive Manufacturing, Design and Analysis (Dagstuhl Seminar 24241), Dagstuhl Reports, 14(6).

L0-Regularization based Material Design for Hexahedral Mesh Models

Haoxiang Li, Jianmin Zheng. (2022). "L0-Regularization based Material Design for Hexahedral Mesh Models." Computer-Aided Design and Applications, 19(6), 1171–1183.

L0-Regularization based Material Design for Hexahedral Mesh Models (CAD’21)

Haoxiang Li, Jianmin Zheng. (2021). "L0-Regularization based Material Design for Hexahedral Mesh Models." CAD'21 Proceedings, 314–318.

Talks

Optimizing Heterogeneous Elastic Material Distributions on 3D Models

July 08, 2024

Conference talk at Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling (SPM 2024), Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Designing Multi-Material Distributions in 3D Parts for Desired Deformation Behaviour

June 10, 2024

Invited seminar talk at Dagstuhl Seminar 24241 – Geometric Modeling: Challenges for Additive Manufacturing, Design and Analysis, Schloss Dagstuhl, Wadern, Germany

Awards

• HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab internal presentation / poster competition, runner-up, 2021
• NTU Research Scholarship, 2019
• People’s Scholarship (2nd class, 2014; 3rd class, 2015), UESTC

Service

• Reviewer for IEEE TVCG, ISMAR, CVPR, Computer-Aided Design, and Computers & Graphics