Feiyang Zhou

Tokyo, Japan · IIS Lab, The University of Tokyo

Feiyang Zhou

I want to create — and create things that help people, or make them happy.

  • Computer Science Ph.D. student at The University of Tokyo
  • Research Assistant at Sony CSL, Cybernetic Humanity Studio
Read the research Get in touch

Nanomachines that swarm, flock and settle into a slab of terrain you can turn, then a control console and a viewport. Drag to orbit, tap to scatter. The original, and how it was built

Now

AI symbionts for science communicators

with Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) · Sony CSL

What can an AI agent be for an expert? At Miraikan, AI science communicators modeled on real ones talk with visitors, and what they hear goes back to the person they are modeled on, so that both learn. I work on this as a member of the Cybernetic Humanity Studio, Shunichi Kasahara's group at Sony CSL and OIST, within Society with AI Symbionts, and on a follow-up project there.

Blossom, the low-cost robot platform, with and without its knitted skin.

CHI ’25Yokohama, Japan

Promoting Cognitive Health in Elder Care with Large Language Model-Powered Socially Assistive Robots

Maria R. Lima, Amy O'Connell, Feiyang Zhou, Alethea Nagahara, Avni Hulyalkar, Anura Deshpande, Jesse Thomason, Ravi Vaidyanathan, Maja J. Matarić

My part Designed and built the robot's full LLM dialogue system, supervised every field session in the retirement homes, and developed new methods for assessing task outcomes and analysing the data.

Abstract, figures, BibTeX DOI 10.1145/3706598.3713582

Art, games and research, braided

Each stop pulled one thread to the front. At Tokyo they tie together.

Three strands, art, games and research, braid through 5 stations and tie together at the end. 1 2 3 4 5
  1. UC Davis Research · 2021 Built an NSF-funded network visualization tool (Vue, WebGL, SQLite) for social scientists working with their own data, with a WebGL rendering package and undo/redo history.
  2. USC Games · 2023 M.S., Computer Science; art lead & technical artist on USC Games advanced game project and indie teams
  3. Gnomon Art · 2022 Concept art, sculpture, 3D modeling and rendering
  4. USC Interaction Lab Research · 2024 – 2025 Designed and built the robot's full LLM dialogue system, supervised every field session in the retirement homes, and developed new methods for assessing task outcomes and analysing the data (CHI '25).
  5. The University of Tokyo All three, tied · Apr 2026 – present Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies · IIS Lab

From the gallery

All 12 pieces
Grayscale digital painting of a classical bust with flowing hair and beard, studied for value and form.
Art Process 2021

Head studies

Two master copies in grayscale: a classical bust and a portrait, painted to study value and form.
UI panels assembling out of GPU particles.
Hybrid Clips 2024

Canvas UI drawn in particles

Panels and even a pannable map, rendered entirely as GPU particles.
Unity scene of a construction-site room rendered in a teal and rust dithered palette.
Games Process

Stylized dithering shaders

A screen-space dithering post-process in Unity with swappable palettes and dither textures, RGB or HSL quantization, and contrast control.
Clay-shaded 3D bust of a cat-eared character under pink and blue studio light.
Art Process 2022

Character bust

A character modeled and rendered in Blender, based on my own Final Fantasy XIV Miqo'te.
Studio render of the robot with a geodesic glass dome holding a tree, cat ears, and orange legs ending in wheels.
Games Process 2022

FAE-01 delivery robot

A little product design: a robot that delivers fresh air from Earth-born trees to your home on Mars.
Overview of a modular synthesizer built as physical nodes in VR.
Hybrid Clips

VR physical-UI node editor

A modular synthesizer you patch with your hands: the UI is made of physical modules in VR.
Gaea terrain in warm sandstone colors with canyon walls and crater-pocked flats.
Games Process

Sketch to terrain: four workflows

One sketched layout built four ways, in Stable Diffusion, Gaea, Houdini and World Creator 3, to compare control against realism.
Ink line drawing of a finned sea creature with a mechanical, plated skin.
Art Two skins 2022

One creature, two skins

Creature design: the same body, drawn once mechanical and once organic.

Say hello

The quickest ways to reach me, in Tokyo, Japan.

feiyangzhou@protonmail.com

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