Research Projects
Projects
MIMIC-MJX
Live demoNeuromechanical emulation of animal behavior — massively parallel imitation learning in MuJoCo-MJX.
Talmo Lab
VNL-Playground
Fast, biologically realistic virtual environment for simulating animal behavior via deep RL.
Talmo Lab
CanvasGroupy
Automated Canvas LMS group management and signup tool for course instructors.
Fleischer Research Lab
Publications
2025
MIMIC-MJX: Neuromechanical Emulation of Animal Behavior
C.Y. Zhang*, Y. Yang*, A. Sirbu
Under Review at Nature Methods · 2025 Under Review
VNL-Ray: Biomechanically Realistic Virtual Rodent Behavior and Task Learning via Deep Reinforcement Learning
Y. Yang
Master's Thesis, UC San Diego · 2025
Massively Parallel Imitation Learning of Mouse Forelimb Musculoskeletal Reaching Dynamics
E. Leonardis, A. Nagamori, A. Thanawalla, Y. Yang
NeurIPS Workshop · 2025
Talks & Posters
MIMIC-MJX: Neuromechanical imitation of animal behavior enables flexible models of embodied control
Cosyne 2026 · poster
Musculoskeletal Imitation Learning: Physics-Aware Constraints Promote Naturalistic Muscle Activity
Cosyne 2026 · poster
VNL-Playground: Fast and Biologically Realistic Virtual Environment for Simulating Animal Behavior
Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting · poster
Examining the impact of biomechanical actuation on neural representations for embodied control
Cosyne 2025 · poster
The impact of biomechanical actuators on neural embodied control
Cosyne 2024 · poster