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 in Aerospace Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2023 and 2020, respectively, and a bachelor degree in Public Administration in 2020.

My research lies at the intersection of generative models, physical understanding and computational photography. My long-term passion is to perceive and understand visual signals, and to leverage it to build physically consistent generative worlds.

I am currently seeking a Summer 2026 internship focused on Generative AI research and applications, particularly in Video Generation, 4D Understanding, and World Models.

I’m always happy to collaborate and make new friends. Feel free to reach out!

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

(Generated by Nano Banana)

News

10/2025: Our proposal for the Workshop on Generative AI for Photography has been accepted as a workshop at WACV 2026 !
09/2025: We released NewtonGen: a physics-consistent and controllable T2V framework.

Research

Generative Models

	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 Under Review 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 / code / dataset / demo
	Learning to Kindle the Starlight Yu Yuan, Jiaqi Wu, Lindong Wang, Zhongliang Jing, Henry Leung, Shuyuan Zhu, Han Pan arXiv 2023 arXiv / code / dataset

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
	Beyond Clean Pixels: Interdisciplinary Lessons from Turbulent Long-Range Face Recognition Lanqing Guo¹, Xijun Wang¹, Minchul Kim¹, Yu Yuan, Wes Robbins, Xingguang Zhang, Stanley H. Chan, Zhangyang Wang, Xiaoming Liu Under Review arXiv
	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

Projects

Physics-driven Video Generation (on-going)
4D Understanding and Dynamics Modeling (on-going)
Generative Astronomical Image Restoration Through Atmospheric Turbulence (2025)
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 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 Aircrafts, also 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