Willa Yunqi Yang - Portfolio

I'm a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago, advised by Dr. Ken Nakagaki. My research aims to empower people to easily augment and enrich their everyday environments through embodied intelligence, robotic actuation, and interactive technologies. Outside of research I like reading and bouldering.

Email: yunqiy at uchicago dot edu

CV Google Scholar

News

Got Sony Research Award!
Stones was exhibited at Ars Electronica!
TorqueCapsules demo won Honorable Mention at UIST'24!

Publications

PopTuber: Discretely Reshaping High Resolution 3D Curves with "Serial Multistable" Tubes

Willa Yunqi Yang, Yifan Zou, Anup Sathya, Ken Nakagaki

TEI 2026 (to appear)

Video

TorqueCapsules: Fully-Encapsulated Flywheel Actuation Modules for Prototyping Movement-Based and Kinesthetic Interaction

Willa Yunqi Yang, Yifan Zou, Jingle Huang, Raouf Abujaber, Ken Nakagaki

UIST 2024 Best Demo Honorable Mention

Paper Video 30s Video Talk

Robotic Metamaterials: A Modular System for Hands-On Configuration of Ad-Hoc Dynamic Applications

Zhitong Cui, Shuhong Wang, Violet Yinuo Han, Tucker Rae-Grant, Willa Yunqi Yang, Alan Zhu, Scott E. Hudson, Alexandra Ion

CHI 2024

Paper Video 30s Video Talk

ThrowIO: Actuated TUIs that Facilitate "Throwing and Catching" Spatial Interaction with Overhanging Mobile Wheeled Robots

Ting-Han Lin, Willa Yunqi Yang, Ken Nakagaki

CHI 2023

Paper Video 30s Video Talk

Reconfigurable Elastic Metamaterials

Willa Yunqi Yang, Yumeng Zhuang, Luke Darcy, Grace Liu, Alexandra Ion

UIST 2022

Paper Video 30s Video Talk

Other Publications

Public Technologies Transforming Work of the Public and the Public Sector

Seyun Kim, Bonnie Fan, Willa Yunqi Yang, Jessie Ramey, Sarah E Fox, Haiyi Zhu, John Zimmerman, Motahhare Eslami

CHIWORK 2024 Best Paper Award

Paper

Integrating Equity in Public Sector Data-Driven Decision Making: Exploring the Desired Futures of Underserved Stakeholders

Seyun Kim, Jonathan Ho, Yinan Li, Bonnie Fan, Willa Yunqi Yang, Jessie Ramey, Sarah E Fox, Haiyi Zhu, John Zimmerman, Motahhare Eslami

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.

Paper