Tianjiao (Joey) Yu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UIUC, advised by Ismini Lourentzou. I began my doctoral studies at Virginia Tech, where I also worked under Kurt Luther.

My research focuses on 3D intelligence, generative modeling, and multimodal reasoning. I study how models connect language, geometry, and structured representations to understand, create, and reason about 3D worlds.

My work spans generating detailed and controllable 3D objects, connecting semantic reasoning with geometric representations, and building generative environments that support learning through interaction. My background in Theoretical Linguistics informs how I approach compositional structure, grounding, and reasoning across modalities.

Beyond academia I co-founded Eternl.AI, where I architect AI infrastructure for embodied intelligence in interactive gaming — spanning agentic AI, long-horizon personalization, and 3D-world generation. We raised $400K at a $40M valuation.

I am currently at Amazon Robotics, where I work on world and action models for long-horizon manipulation tasks.