Zilin Huang
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Office: Engineering Hall 1217
Email: zilin.huang@wisc.edu
CV: Hey, thanks for stopping by! 
I am currently a final-year Ph.D. Candidate at the 
University of Wisconsin-Madison, working under the guidance of Prof. Sikai (Sky) Chen and serving as the Co-Founder of 
Sky-Lab. I am also affiliated with the 
Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) and the 
Smart Highway Research Center (SHRC). Before joining UW-Madison, I worked with Prof. Samuel Labi at the 
Purdue University. Also, I have a strong passion for bridging technical findings with practical applications. Prior to my Ph.D. journey, I founded two technology companies in China.
I envision that future transportation systems will evolve into a complex human-robot-society ecosystem, where humans coexist, interact, and collaborate with diverse autonomous agents (e.g., autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, drones, and flying vehicles) in mobility environments. These agents must not only operate safely, but also understand human behaviors, preferences, and social norms to enable seamless integration into human society. Building on this vision, my research aims to develop human-centered and trustworthy autonomous systems that can operate seamlessly with, alongside, and around humans. This leads to several key research questions that drive my work: 1) How to develop an open-world simulation platform that supports unified simulation of diverse human and agents with realistic physical and social interactions; 2) How to design algorithms that enable agents to achieve human-level intelligence while ensuring their decisions are socially compliant and reliable; 3) How to effectively transfer these capabilities from simulation to real deployment and continuously improve through real-world feedback. Through this research, we can achieve broader societal goals—enhanced safety, mobility, and efficiency, along with improved user trust and satisfaction—ultimately enabling a future where humans and robots coexist harmoniously.
Technologically, I am interested in the following areas:
- Human-in-the-loop Learning
- Reinforcement Learning
- Foundation Models (e.g., LLMs/VLMs)
- Human-AI Collaboration
- World Models
Upcoming Events
Recent News View All
| Mar 20, 2025 |
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🎉 Received Two NVIDIA Academic Grant Program Awards ($43,800 USD).
We received two NVIDIA grants for AI research in transportation - 20,000 A100 GPU hours for SafetyGPT and two RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs for EdgeTwin Project. Read more →
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| Jan 12, 2025 |
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👏 I attended the TRB 2025 Annual Meeting.
I participated in the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 104th Annual Meeting (January 7-11) at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center. We presented our work in multiple poster and lectern sessions, engaging... Read more →
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| Jan 10, 2025 |
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👏 I was invited to visit Google
I was invited to visit Google’s office in Washington DC on January 10, 2025. During the visit, I had the opportunity to meet with Google’s research team and discuss potential... Read more →
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| Oct 18, 2024 |
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🎉 Paper Traffic expertise meets residual RL: Knowledge-informed model-based residual reinforcement learning for CAV trajectory control is published on Communications in Transportation Research. |
| Sep 1, 2024 |
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📢 We currently released one paper: Trustworthy Human-AI Collaboration: Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback and Physics Knowledge for Safe Autonomous Driving. |
