AI + Robotics researcher, amateur artist, traveller

Shuijing Liu (刘水竞)

How to pronounce my name: Shway-Jeeng Leo

Welcome to my personal website! I’m a postdoc at UT Austin, advised by Yuke Zhu, Peter Stone, and Joydeep Biswas. In 2024, I obtained my PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, advised by Katherine Driggs-Campbell.

Previously, I earned my Bachelor’s Degree from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in May 2018. Before that, I was born and raised in Zhengzhou, China.

[CV] [Research statement] [Teaching statement] [Service/DEI statement]

I’m on academic job market for 2025-26 cycle. If you are aware of any opportunities, please contact me at shuijing.liu@utexas.edu!

Research Interests:

My goal is to enable robots to move beyond tool-like roles and instead collaborate with us as partners. To achieve trustworthy human-robot partnership, my research puts humans at the center of robot learning. My work is centered around in-the-wild learning and deployment of human-centered robotics that communicates with humans, collaborates alongside humans, and continually adapts to changes in human environments.

My long term vision is to establish a foundamental human-centered robot learning paradigm that empowers capable and socially aware robot partners in everyday life. Advancing human-centered robot learning requires expanding robot capabilities in human-centric tasks, training robots with data that reflect human values, and improving the explainability of robot behaviors.

I advocate for robot learning from the people, with the people, and for the people.

I’m open to research discussion and collaboration, please feel free to get in touch!

Outreach

For junior PhD/Master/undergraduate students and potential collaborators: I dedicate 30 minutes every two weeks to offer mentorship/advising/help, especially for students from underrepresented groups or whoever is in need. Topics include but are not limited to AI/robotics/HRI research, graduate school application, career development, life, etc. If you would like to chat with me, please fill this form to schedule.

News

Miscellaneous

Navigating through an academic career is hard. Here’re the quotes that empowers me from time to time:

  • “The scary news is, you’re on your own now. But the cool news is, you’re on your own now.” – Taylor Swift
  • “As you rise, many people will disapprove. Rise anyway.” – Prof. Heng Ji
  • “People are asking, and I’m asking, what is my legacy? And I tell you, my legacy is my students. They worked hard, but they felt they were appreciated, and there was a sense of camaraderie and support for each other. I didn’t do it consciously, but I guess it came from my motherly instincts. And I’m still in contact with many of them—I worry about their children, the usual grandma!” – Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy (who’s also my academic grandma!)