Duan Jiafei’s Homepage

I aspire to reverse-engineer human cognition, to build embodied machines that can see, learn, and interact with human-level cognition and social intelligence.

Area of research interests:

Embodied AI / Computer Vision / Computational Cognitive Science/

Achievements & Awards

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Jiafei Duan

Hi, I am currently an AI research engineer at the Institute of Infocomm Research, Agency of Science, Technology and Research. I earned my B.Eng (Electrical and Electronics Engineering) with honors (Highest Distinction) from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore working with Dr Cheston Tan (A*STAR) and Professor Wen Bihan (NTU EEE). I am interested in the field of AI, specifically in the area of Embodied AI, Computational Cognitive Science, and Computer Vision. I was previously an A*STAR undergraduate scholar and currently a recipient of the National Science (PhD) scholarship. I will be starting my PhD at the University of Washington, Allen School of Computer Science Engineering under the advisory of Professor Dieter Fox.

Latest News

2022

• [Publication] 1 paper accepted at the IJCAI-ECAI 2022 Survey Track (18% Acceptance Rate)
• [Conference Service] I am an invited reviewer for NeurIPS 2022
• [News] I will be joining the University of Washington, Allen School of Computer Science Engineering and under the advisory of Professor Dieter Fox!
• [News] I have received PhD offers from UC Berkeley, CMU, UCLA, UW, and Johns Hopkins
• [Conference Service] I am an invited reviewer for ECCV 2022
• [Conference Service] I am an invited reviewer for IEEE T-CSVT Journal
• [Publication] Invited Commentary article for the National Research Foundation Magazine
• [Talks] Invited Speaker for Brown Bag Session on Embodied AI to A*STAR
• [Publication] 1 paper accepted for IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (Journal) 

2021

• [Non-Academic Achievement] Awarded the Nanyang Award for Teamwork ( Highest honor given to a student club)
• [Conference Service] I am an invited reviewer for CVPR 2022
• [Publication] 1 paper accepted for Neurips 2021 PRIBRW (Spotlight Paper)
• [News] Interviewed and featured in Straits Times and Channel 8 News
• [Publication] 1 paper accepted for ICCV21 SEAI Workshop (Spotlight Paper)
• [Academic Achievement] Awarded Koh Boon Hwee Scholars Award (Gold Medal)
• [Academic Achievement] Awarded NTU Class of 1985 Book Prize
• [Academic Achievement] Awarded NTU EEE Excellence Award
• [Research] Won 3rd Prize at NTU Final Year Project Challenge
• [Academic Achievement] Awarded the National Science Scholarship (PhD) Overseas by A*STAR
• [Talk] Invited Opening Speaker for AI Research Undergraduate Conference 2021
• [Talk] Invited Guest Speaker for the NTU EEE Research Apprenticeship Program

2020

• [Competition] Won the Superlative Award, SIA App Challenge 2020
• [Publication] 1 paper accepted for IEEE ICIP 2020
• [Research] Awarded the Best Poster Award at AI Summer School 2020, AI Singapore
• [Academic Achievement] Completed my undergraduate exchange program at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• [Research] Completed the undergraduate research ECE 2699 under Dr Ayanna Howard, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
• [Competition] Won the “Most Innovative 5G/IoT/Sensors Design Award at MAKEMIT Hackathon, MIT
• [Talk] Invited Guest Speaker at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Alumni Sharing
• [Voluntary Service] Invited Judge for the MLDAxSGInnovate AI Hackathon

2019

• [Competition] Won the 1st Runner up for Singapore-India Hackathon 2019, Chennai India
• [Academic Achievement] Dean’s List for Academic Year 2018/19
• [Research] Awarded the Excellent Research Presentation Award, 6th ASPIRE Undergraduate Research Conference at KAIST Korea.
• [Academic Achievement] Awarded the NTU Silicon Valley Technological Study Trip Award

Publications

*Here are all the published work. For preprints under review, please refer to my google scholars.

“A Survey on Machine Learning Approaches for Modelling Intuitive Physics

[IJCAI-ECCAI 2022 ] (Survey Track 18% Acceptance Rate)

Authors: Jiafei Duan*, Arijit Dasgupta*, Jason Fischer, Cheston Tan

[Paper]

“PIP: Physical Interaction Prediction via Mental Simulation with Span Selection”

ArXiv Preprint

Authors: Jiafei Duan*, Samson Yu*, Soujanya Poria, Bihan Wen, Cheston Tan

[Paper]

“A Benchmark for Modeling Violation-of-Expectation in Physical Reasoning Across Event Categories ”

ArXiv Preprint

Authors: Arijit Dasgupta, Jiafei Duan, Marcelo H Ang Jr, Yi Lin, Su-hua Wang, Renée Baillargeon, Cheston Tan

[Paper]

“AVoE: A Synthetic 3D Dataset on Understanding Violation of Expectation for Artificial Cognition ”

[NeurIPS 2021 Physical Reasoning and Inductive Bias Workshop]

Authors: Arijit Dasgupta, Jiafei Duan, Marcelo H.Ang Jr, Cheston Tan

[Paper] [Code] [Video]

“SPACE: A Simulator for Physical Interactions and Causal Learning in 3D Environments ”

[ICCV2021, Simulation Technology for Embodied AI Workshop]

Authors: Jiafei Duan, Samson Yu, Cheston Tan

[Paper] [Code] [Video] [Website]

“A Survey of Embodied AI: From Simulators to Research Tasks.”

[IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence]

Authors: Jiafei Duan, Samson Yu, Tan Hui Li, Hongyuan Zhu, Cheston Tan

[Paper]

“ActioNet: An Interactive End-to-End Platform for Tasked-Based Data Collection and Augmentation in 3D Environment.”

[ICIP 2020, Oral Presentation]

Authors: Jiafei Duan, Samson Yu, Tan Hui Li, Cheston Tan

[Paper] [Code] [Video][Website]

Professional Service

General Chair ARSC 2021

Invited reviewer for IEEE T-CSVT, CVPR 2022, ECCV 2022, NeurIPS 2022

Alumni

*Here are some students/interns that I have helped with co-advising

Arijit Dasgupta (2021-2022), Incoming MIT EECS PhD

Ye Jieyi (2021-2022), Incoming at SWE Shopee

Hobbies and Interests

Cycling / 3D modeling & Animating / Magic / VR Gaming / Traveling

Media