Yu Yuan

My name is Yu Yuan (袁煜), a third-year PhD student at Purdue ECE, under the supervision of Prof. Stanley H. Chan. Prior to this, I obtained my master and bachelor degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2023 and 2020, respectively.

I aim to build physics-consistent generative worlds. My work sits at the intersection of generative modeling, physical understanding, and computational photography, enforcing space-time-camera consistency in generative systems.

I am seeking a Fall 2026 internship and full-time Research Scientist positions in industry starting in 2027, focusing on Generative AI research and applications, with an emphasis on Video Generation and Physical World Models. Feel free to reach out.

Email / CV / Github / Google Scholar / LinkedIn / Flickr / Blog

(Generated by Nano Banana)

News

01/2026: NewtonGen has been accepted by ICLR 2026!
12/2025: I will start my Summer 2026 internship at Adobe Firefly GenAI video model team. SeeU in San Jose!
11/2025: We released SeeU: a 4D understanding and video generation pipeline that reveals unseen time and space.
10/2025: Our proposal for the 1st Generative AI for Photography (GAIP) Workshop has been accepted by WACV 2026.
09/2025: We released NewtonGen: a physics-consistent and controllable text-to-video framework.

Research

Generative Models

	SeeU: Seeing the Unseen World via 4D Dynamics-aware Generation Yu Yuan, Tharindu Wickremasinghe, Zeeshan Nadir, Xijun Wang, Yiheng Chi, Stanley H. Chan Under Review proj / arXiv / dataset / code
	NewtonGen: Physics-Consistent and Controllable Text-to-Video Generation via Neural Newtonian Dynamics Yu Yuan, Xijun Wang, Tharindu Wickremasinghe, Zeeshan Nadir, Bole Ma, Stanley H. Chan ICLR 2026 proj / arXiv / code
	Generative Photography: Scene-Consistent Camera Control for Realistic Text-to-Image Synthesis Yu Yuan, Xijun Wang, Yichen Sheng, Prateek Chennuri, Xingguang Zhang, Stanley H. Chan CVPR 2025 (highlight) & Demo proj / arxiv / dataset / demo / code
	Learning to Kindle the Starlight Yu Yuan, Jiaqi Wu, Lindong Wang, Zhongliang Jing, Henry Leung, Shuyuan Zhu, Han Pan arXiv 2023 arXiv / dataset / code
	PhysAlign: Physics-Coherent Video Generation through Feature and 3D Representation Alignment Zhexiao Xiong, Yizhi Song, Liu He, Wei Xiong, Yu Yuan, Feng Qiao, Nathan Jacobs Under Review proj (soon) / arXiv (soon) / code (soon)

Computational Photography

	iHDR: Iterative HDR Imaging with Arbitrary Number of Inputs Yu Yuan, Yiheng Chi, Xingguang Zhang, Stanley H. Chan ICIP 2025 arXiv
	Astrophotography Turbulence Mitigation via Generative Models Joonyeoup Kim, Yu Yuan, Xingguang Zhang, Xijun Wang, Stanley H. Chan ICIP 2025 proj / arXiv

Real-world Vision

	Learning Phase Distortion with Selective State Space Models for Video Turbulence Mitigation Xingguang Zhang, Nicholas Chimitt, Xijun Wang, Yu Yuan, Stanley H. Chan CVPR 2025 (highlight) proj / arXiv / code
	Restore What Matters: Lessons from Joint Restoration and Recognition Lanqing Guo¹, Xijun Wang¹, Minchul Kim¹, Yu Yuan, Wes Robbins, Xingguang Zhang, Stanley H. Chan, Zhangyang Wang, Xiaoming Liu Under Review
	Personalized Generative Low-light Image Denoising and Enhancement Xijun Wang, Prateek Chennuri, Yu Yuan, Bole Ma, Xingguang Zhang, Stanley H. Chan Under Review proj / arXiv
	RCMixer: Radar-camera Fusion Based on Vision Transformer for Robust Object Detection Lindong Wang, Hongya Tuo, Yu Yuan, Henry Leung, Zhongliang Jing JVCI 2024 doi
	Multimodal Image Fusion based on Hybrid CNN-Transformer and Non-local Cross-modal Attention Yu Yuan, Jiaqi Wu, Zhongliang Jing, Henry Leung, Han Pan arXiv 2023 arXiv / code

Leading Projects

Physical World Models (2026)
4D World Understanding and Dynamics Modeling (2025)
Physics-driven Video Generation (2025)
Generative Astrophotography Image Restoration (2024)
Video Restoration Classifier (2024)
An Underwater Binocular Multi-exposure Imaging System (2022)
Ultra-wideband-based Cooperative Multi-UAV Positioning Technology (2021)
A Modular Custom Aviation Model Design for Tyros (2020)

Misc.

Angler: Got the prize named Fish of the Year (Since I got the biggest One of Goldeye Fish in Indiana State, 2023)
Landscape Photographer: One Milky Way photo was accepted to Astronomy Picture of the Day in Nightchina (2021)
Mountaineer: Arrived at the 2nd Peak of Zuimi MT. Siguniang (5276m, 2020)
Aviation Enthusiast: Experienced more than 40 types of manned aircraft, with 9 years of drone flying experience. I am a certified remote pilot under FAA Part 107 and plan to begin training for a private pilot license before graduation.

Cool sites from Jon Barron's website. Thanks for Leonid Keselman's Jekyll template