I’m Kaiya (Ivy) Zhao and currently I am a first-year PhD student at MIT CSAIL, where I am fortunate to be co-advised by Phillip Isola and Josh Tenenbaum. Previously, I had a wonderful experience working with Guangyu Robert Yang at MIT on autonomous agents with real-time interaction.

My research interest lies in the intersection of AI and human intelligence, with a focus on AI systems that can understand and interact with humans in a natural manner. I am passionate about generalist agents and their learning capabilities within multi-agent setting and complex environment.

Specifically, I am curious about the following topics:

• Embodied Intelligence: What is the intuitive physical engine within human brain that enables us to understand the physical world? How do humans emerge the world model that simulates the environment? How can we endow AI agents with the human-level ability to perceive, reason and act in the physical world?
• Cogntive Science: What are the underlying mechanisms that enable humans to infer other’s intention? How does human emerge Theory-of-Mind? How can we leverage insights from human cognition to design more human-like AI agents and improve collaboration efficiency in multi-agent setting?
• Neuro-symbolic System: How can we combine the advantages of neural networks and symbolic reasoning to build modularized, interpretable and generalizable AI systems with strong learning ability and generalization capability?

I publish under the name “Zhao Kaiya”, where “Zhao” is my surname and “Kaiya” is the forename. “Ivy”(ai·vee) is the name I usually go by.

Outside the research, my world is filled with the vibrancy of musicals, the companionship of cats and the thrill of travel. Each of these hobbies offers me a unique perspective on life and creativity.

Feel free to reach out to me via email or coffee chat. I am always open to new ideas and collaborations!