Zewen (Anthony) Chen ιζ³½ζ
I am a second-year M.S. student in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University, working as a research student in the ROAM Lab under the supervision of Professor Matei Ciocarlie. My current research focuses on dexterous robot manipulation through model and learning-based control. As a full-stack roboticist, I have a strong background in hardware design, control theory, and machine learning, and I aim to integrate these disciplines to create novel robots with unprecedented functionalities.
Before joining Columbia, I earned a B.E. in Automation with a concentration in Robotics and an M.S. in Design Science (under Computer Science department) with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction from Zhejiang University. There, I worked in the NEXT Lab under the supervision of Professor Kejun Zhang. As part of my M.S. in Design at Zhejiang University, my research focused on improving the design efficiency of Chinese typeface designers through AI-assisted methods, incorporating image generation, semantic segmentation, and human-computer interaction principles. During this period, I also worked as a Research Collaborator at JadeFoci, where I explored the structural composition rule of Chinese characters and contributed to the development of intelligent typeface design tools powered by AI.
I am currently seeking Ph.D. opportunities in robotics and related fields. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in my background or would like to connect.
Updates
- Sep. 2025: Started as a Teaching Assistant for Modeling & Identification of Dynamic Systems at Columbia University.
- Jul. 2025: Presented a poster and live demonstration at MIT NEMS 2025.
- Jan. 2025: Joined the ROAM Lab at Columbia University as a research student.
- Sep. 2024: Began M.S. program in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University.
Publications
Conference Papers
MiniBEE: A New Form Factor for Compact Bimanual Dexterity
Published in Submitted to IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026 (arXiv Preprint), 2025

Automated Chinese Seal Carving Art Creation with AI Assistance
Published in 2020 IEEE Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval (MIPR), 2020

Journal Articles
An intelligent font generation system based on stroke inference, mitigating production labor and enhancing design experience (Cooperated with Apple Inc.)
Published in Expert Systems with Applications, 2025

Research
MiniBEE ππ: Towards a Miniature Bimanual End-Effector for Compact Coordinated Robot Dexterity
Duration: β Present

Transformer-Based Chinese Characters Image Generation
Duration: β

Generation of stylized Chinese characters based on the structure and semantics of Chinese characters (Undergraduate Thesis)
Duration: β

Computer Vision Based Fruit Sorting Robot
Duration: β
AI Seal
Duration: β

Course Projects
Balancing a Unicycle Robot on the Slope
Duration: β

DRMPC Plus
Duration: β

Bipedal Robot
Duration: β
Algorithm Design for Mobile Robot and Robot Arm
Duration: β
Talks
Miniature Bi-Manual End-effector
Poster Talk, NEMS 2025, MIT Stat Center, Cambridge, MA, US
Poster & Live Demonstration for a MiniBEE:

Computing the Shapes: Parametric Fonts and a Hanzi AI
Talk, ATypI Tech Talks 2022, Online
Online talks for auto-generated Chinese Character (Hanzi):
