I am Zixin Zhang (张子昕), a second-year Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, advised by Dr. Todd Murphey. I got my Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2023, advised by Dr. Zachary Manchester at the Robotics Institute. I graduated from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Robotics Engineering in 2021, and my advisor was Dr, Chaoyang Song.

My current research focuses on data-driven motion planning and control of nonlinear and hybrid systems, especially Koopman-based methods. In addition, I am very interested in numerical optimization, GPU programming, parallel computing, etc. I am passionate about any method that can make robots "FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER"!

Outside of school, I am a lover of piano, travel, and photography. I've been playing the piano since around 2004. The piano is my most faithful friend. I recently started teaching myself bass. I've been to a lot of places (check out my footprint map below), but I haven't been to Europe, Oceania, South America, or Antarctica. Someday I will be there!

Zixin Zhang, John Z. Zhang, Shuo Yang, Zachary Manchester, Robots with Attitude: Singularity-Free Quaternion-Based Model-Predictive Control for Agile Legged Robots (ICRA 2025) pdf, code

Shuo Yang, Zixin Zhang, Benjamin Bokser, Zachary Manchester, Multi-IMU Proprioceptive Odometry for Legged Robots, (IROS 2023, Best Paper Award Finalist) pdf, code

Shuo Yang, Zixin Zhang, Zhengyu Fu, Zachary Manchester, Cerberus: Low-Drift Visual-Inertial-Leg Odometry For Agile Locomotion. (ICRA 2023) pdf, code