Pingchuan Ma

Ph.D. Candidate, MIT CSAIL

Email: pcma (at) csail.mit.edu

Office: MIT Stata Center 32-321

Biography

Pingchuan Ma (馬平川) is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at MIT CSAIL advised by Prof. Wojciech Matusik. Previously, he worked with Prof. Bo Ren and Prof. Ming-Ming Cheng at Nankai University. His research goal covers the whole pipeline of physics-based intelligence: (1) reconstructing efficient realistic physics-based environments, (2) generating intelligent agents upon the environments, and (3) realizing the agents in the physical world. [...]

Name

Family name: 馬(Mǎ) means horse.

Given name: 平(Píng)川(chuān) means flat and level ground without geographical barrier.

Quoted from a Chinese idiom 一馬平川, my full name means the flat ground that one can ride straight across and thus implies enjoying a smooth life.

眾峰來自天目山，勢若駿馬奔平川。

宋·蘇軾《東坡全集·卷三·遊徑山》

There are lots of mountains from Tianmu Mountain, which have the might of fine horses galloping across flat ground.

Su Shi of the Song dynasty in Visit Jing Mountain

Research

(* indicates equal contribution, highlight indicates representative papers)

LLM and Simulation as Bilevel Optimizers: A New Paradigm to Advance Physical Scientific Discovery

Pingchuan Ma, Tsun-Hsuan Wang, Minghao Guo, Zhiqing Sun, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Daniela Rus, Chuang Gan, and Wojciech Matusik

ICML 2024 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@inproceedings{ma2024llm,
  title={LLM and Simulation as Bilevel Optimizers: A New Paradigm to Advance Physical Scientific Discovery},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Wang, Tsun-Hsuan and Guo, Minghao and Sun, Zhiqing and Tenenbaum, Joshua B and Rus, Daniela and Gan, Chuang and Matusik, Wojciech},
  booktitle={International Conference on Machine Learning},
  year={2024},
  organization={PMLR}
}

ASAP: Automated Sequence Planning for Complex Robotic Assembly with Physical Feasibility

Yunsheng Tian, Karl D.D. Willis, Bassel Al Omari, Jieliang Luo, Pingchuan Ma, Yichen Li, Farhad Javid, Edward Gu, Joshua Jacob, Shinjiro Sueda, Hui Li, Sachin Chitta, and Wojciech Matusik

ICRA 2024 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@article{tian2023asap,
  title={ASAP: Automated Sequence Planning for Complex Robotic Assembly with Physical Feasibility},
  author={Tian, Yunsheng and Willis, Karl DD and Omari, Bassel Al and Luo, Jieliang and Ma, Pingchuan and Li, Yichen and Javid, Farhad and Gu, Edward and Jacob, Joshua and Sueda, Shinjiro and others},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.16909},
  year={2023}
}

DiffuseBot: Breeding Soft Robots with Physics-Augmented Generative Diffusion Models

Tsun-Hsuan Wang, Juntian Zheng, Pingchuan Ma, Yilun Du, Byungchul Kim, Andrew Spielberg, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Chuang Gan, and Daniela Rus

NeurIPS 2023 / Homepage / Paper / bibtex

Oral Presentation

@article{wang2024diffusebot,
  title={{DiffuseBot}: Breeding Soft Robots With Physics-Augmented Generative Diffusion Models},
  author={Wang, Tsun-Hsuan Johnson and Zheng, Juntian and Ma, Pingchuan and Du, Yilun and Kim, Byungchul and Spielberg, Andrew and Tenenbaum, Josh and Gan, Chuang and Rus, Daniela},
  journal={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
  volume={36},
  year={2024}
}

Learning Neural Constitutive Laws from Motion Observations for Generalizable PDE Dynamics

Pingchuan Ma, Peter Yichen Chen, Bolei Deng, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Tao Du, Chuang Gan, and Wojciech Matusik

ICML 2023 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@inproceedings{ma2023learning,
  title={Learning Neural Constitutive Laws from Motion Observations for Generalizable PDE Dynamics},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Chen, Peter Yichen and Deng, Bolei and Tenenbaum, Joshua B and Du, Tao and Gan, Chuang and Matusik, Wojciech},
  booktitle={International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages={23279--23300},
  year={2023},
  organization={PMLR}
}

SoftZoo: A Soft Robot Co-design Benchmark For Locomotion In Diverse Environments

Tsun-Hsuan Wang, Pingchuan Ma, Andrew Spielberg, Zhou Xian, Hao Zhang, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Daniela Rus, and Chuang Gan

ICLR 2023 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@inproceedings{wang2022softzoo,
  title={{SoftZoo}: A Soft Robot Co-design Benchmark for Locomotion in Diverse Environments},
  author={Wang, Tsun-Hsuan and Ma, Pingchuan and Spielberg, Andrew Everett and Xian, Zhou and Zhang, Hao and Tenenbaum, Joshua B and Rus, Daniela and Gan, Chuang},
  booktitle={The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year={2022}
}

Sim2Real for Soft Robotic Fish via Differentiable Simulation

John Z. Zhang, Yu Zhang, Pingchuan Ma, Elvis Nava, Tao Du, Philip Arm, Wojciech Matusik, and Robert K. Katzschmann

IROS 2022 / Paper / bibtex

@inproceedings{zhang2022sim2real,
  title={Sim2real for soft robotic fish via differentiable simulation},
  author={Zhang, John Z and Zhang, Yu and Ma, Pingchuan and Nava, Elvis and Du, Tao and Arm, Philip and Matusik, Wojciech and Katzschmann, Robert K},
  booktitle={2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages={12598--12605},
  year={2022},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Fast Aquatic Swimmer Optimization with Differentiable Projective Dynamics and Neural Network Hydrodynamic Models

Elvis Nava, John Z. Zhang, Mike Y. Michelis, Tao Du, Pingchuan Ma, Benjamin F. Grewe, Wojciech Matusik, and Robert K. Katzschmann

ICML 2022 / Paper / bibtex

@inproceedings{nava2022fast,
  title={Fast Aquatic Swimmer Optimization with Differentiable Projective Dynamics and Neural Network Hydrodynamic Models},
  author={Nava, Elvis and Zhang, John Z and Michelis, Mike Yan and Du, Tao and Ma, Pingchuan and Grewe, Benjamin F and Matusik, Wojciech and Katzschmann, Robert Kevin},
  booktitle={International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages={16413--16427},
  year={2022},
  organization={PMLR}
}

RISP: Rendering-Invariant State Predictor with Differentiable Simulation and Rendering for Cross-Domain Parameter Estimation

Pingchuan Ma^*, Tao Du^*, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Wojciech Matusik, and Chuang Gan

ICLR 2022 / Homepage / Paper / MIT News / bibtex

Oral Presentation

@inproceedings{ma2021risp,
  title={{RISP}: Rendering-Invariant State Predictor with Differentiable Simulation and Rendering for Cross-Domain Parameter Estimation},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Du, Tao and Tenenbaum, Joshua B and Matusik, Wojciech and Gan, Chuang},
  booktitle={International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year={2021}
}

DiffPD: Differentiable Projective Dynamics

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

SIGGRAPH 2022 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@article{du2021diffpd,
  title={{DiffPD}: Differentiable Projective Dynamics},
  author={Du, Tao and Wu, Kui and Ma, Pingchuan and Wah, Sebastien and Spielberg, Andrew and Rus, Daniela and Matusik, Wojciech},
  journal={ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)},
  volume={41},
  number={2},
  pages={1--21},
  year={2021},
  publisher={ACM New York, NY}
}

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 K. Katzschmann, and Wojciech Matusik

SIGGRAPH 2021 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@article{ma2021diffaqua,
  title={{DiffAqua}: A Differentiable Computational Design Pipeline for Soft Underwater Swimmers with Shape Interpolation},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Du, Tao and Zhang, John Z and Wu, Kui and Spielberg, Andrew and Katzschmann, Robert K and Matusik, Wojciech},
  journal={ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)},
  volume={40},
  number={4},
  pages={1--14},
  year={2021},
  publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}
}

Efficient Continuous Pareto Exploration in Multi-Task Learning

Pingchuan Ma^*, Tao Du^*, and Wojciech Matusik

ICML 2020 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@inproceedings{ma2020efficient,
  title={Efficient Continuous Pareto Exploration in Multi-Task Learning},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Du, Tao and Matusik, Wojciech},
  booktitle={International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages={6522--6531},
  year={2020},
  organization={PMLR}
}

Prediction-Guided Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Robot Control

Jie Xu, Yunsheng Tian, Pingchuan Ma, Daniela Rus, Shinjiro Sueda, and Wojciech Matusik

ICML 2020 / Homepage / Paper / Code / bibtex

@inproceedings{xu2020prediction,
  title={Prediction-guided multi-objective reinforcement learning for continuous robot control},
  author={Xu, Jie and Tian, Yunsheng and Ma, Pingchuan and Rus, Daniela and Sueda, Shinjiro and Matusik, Wojciech},
  booktitle={International conference on machine learning},
  pages={10607--10616},
  year={2020},
  organization={PMLR}
}

Learning Efficient Video Representation with Video Shuffle Networks

Pingchuan Ma^*, Yao Zhou^*, Yu Lu, and Wei Zhang

arXiv 2019 / Paper / bibtex

@article{ma2019learning,
  title={Learning Efficient Video Representation with Video Shuffle Networks},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Zhou, Yao and Lu, Yu and Zhang, Wei},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.11319},
  year={2019}
}

Fluid Directed Rigid Body Control using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Pingchuan Ma^*, Yunsheng Tian^*, Zherong Pan, Bo Ren, and Dinesh Manocha

SIGGRAPH 2018 / Homepage / Paper / bibtex

@article{ma2018fluid,
  title={Fluid Directed Rigid Body Control using Deep Reinforcement Learning},
  author={Ma, Pingchuan and Tian, Yunsheng and Pan, Zherong and Ren, Bo and Manocha, Dinesh},
  journal={ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)},
  volume={37},
  number={4},
  pages={1--11},
  year={2018},
  publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}
}

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Sep. 2019 - Present

S.M. in Computer Science

Sep. 2019 - Jan. 2023

Cambridge, MA

Nankai University

B.Eng. in Software Engineering

Sep. 2015 - Jun. 2019

Tianjin, China

Experience