Willa Yunqi Yang
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I'm a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago, advised by Dr. Ken Nakagaki. My interests lie in tangible interaction and actuation technology. I develop actuators to augment everyday objects and environments, enabling users to transform passive items into dynamic, interactive, and adaptive entities with minimal effort. Outside of research I like reading and bouldering.

Email: yunqiy at uchicago dot edu

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News

Publications

TorqueCapsules

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 (People's Choice)

RoboticMM

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

ThrowIO

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

Reconfigurable Elastic Metamaterials

Reconfigurable Elastic Metamaterials

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

UIST 2022

Other Publications

publicsector

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 icon_bestpaper