Mengchao Zhang

Mengchao Zhang is a research scientist at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) in Cambridge, having joined TRI as a postdoctoral research fellow in June 2024 before advancing to his current role. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2024 under the advisement of Professor Kris Hauser, with a dissertation focused on optimization for contact-rich robotic manipulation with high-fidelity geometry. His research centers on contact-rich manipulation, combining model-based planning and reinforcement learning for robust robotic control, and he has published work on large behavior models for dexterous manipulation in venues including Science Robotics and RSS.