Ph.D. in Control Systems#

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

2021.09 – 2025.08

• Thesis: Enhancing Surgical Task Autonomy Through Simulations and Robot Learning

• Supervisor: Prof. Mahdi Tavakoli

• China Scholarship Council (CSC) Scholarship (PhD) recipient

• Alberta Innovates Graduate Student Scholarship (AI GSS) recipient

B.Eng. in Mechanical Design, Manufacturing and Automation#

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China

2017.09 – 2021.06

• GPA: 3.98/4.00

• China National Scholarship recipient

Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Alberta — Edmonton, Canada#

2025.10 – present

• Leading development of GPU-accelerated surgical simulators supporting real-time deformable object interaction and ultrasound simulation for robot learning

• Designing and training reinforcement learning (RL) and vision-language-action (VLA) agents for autonomous surgical tasks

• Contributing to open-source surgical simulation frameworks used by multiple research projects

GPU-Accelerated Parallel Robot Learning Simulation Environment for Surgical Suturing Using Position-Based Dynamics (PBD) and Material Point Method (MPM)#

2025.10 – present

• Designing and implementing a parallel PBD-MPM suturing simulator enabling GPU-accelerated parallel RL training

• Training autonomous suturing policies in simulation and transferring them to real surgical robotic systems (sim2real)

CRESSim-Ultrasound: Simulating Ultrasound Images in Real-Time with Tissue Deformation for Robot Learning#

2025.04 – present

• Developing a CUDA-based library for real-time ultrasound image synthesis (60+ FPS) coupled with MPM-based soft tissue deformation

• Training end-to-end ultrasound scanning policies directly from image observations in simulation and transferring them to real robotic ultrasound systems

CRESSim-MPM: An Open-Source Library for GPU-Accelerated MPM Simulation with Soft Tissue Cutting and Suturing#

2024.09 – 2025.03

• Developed a real-time, GPU-accelerated Material Point Method (MPM) library for deformable soft tissue simulation with high performance and extensibility

• Implemented robust surgical cutting and suturing algorithms supporting topological changes in soft bodies

Learning Autonomous Surgical Irrigation and Suction from High-Fidelity Simulators#

2023.06 – 2024.09

• Developed CRESSim, an open-source surgical robot learning simulator based on Unity and PhysX 5 for the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK)

• Implemented screen-space fluid rendering for simulating irrigation and suction with fluid mixing

• Trained RGB image-based end-to-end RL policies for autonomous surgical irrigation and suction in simulation and transferred them to real surgical robot hardware

Real-World Surgical Robot Reinforcement Learning with Human Intervention#

2022.10 – 2023.06

• Applied human-in-the-loop RL methods to real-world surgical robot tasks on the dVRK to reduce failures during training

• Achieved autonomous endoscopic camera control through direct real-world robot learning

Learning from imperfect demonstrations in a surgical training task#

2026.02

Y. Hu, Y. Ou, A. Sieben, Z. Samadikhoshkho, B. Zheng, J. Jin, M. Tavakoli

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control [link]

Learning autonomous surgical irrigation and suction with the da Vinci Research Kit using reinforcement learning#

2025.06

Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering [link]

Virtual attention points: Bridging human movement characteristics and dexterous robot motion generation#

2025.06

A. Soleymani, Y. Ou, X. Li, M. Tavakoli

Robotics and Autonomous Systems [link]

CRESSim-MPM: A material point method library for surgical soft body simulation with cutting and suturing#

2025.10

Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) [link]

From decision to action in surgical autonomy: Multi-modal large language models for robot-assisted blood suction#

2025.01

S. Zargarzadeh, M. Mirzaei, Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters [link]

Autonomous soft-tissue needle steering using reinforcement learning guided by human input#

2024.12

Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

Journal of Medical Robotics Research [link]

Hands collaboration evaluation for surgical skills assessment: An information theoretical approach#

2024.09

A. Soleymani, M. Tavakoli, F. Aghazadeh, Y. Ou, H. Rouhani, B. Zheng, X. Li

IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics [link]

Autonomous blood suction for robot-assisted surgery: A sim-to-real reinforcement learning approach#

2024.07

Y. Ou, A. Soleymani, X. Li, M. Tavakoli

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters [link]

A realistic surgical simulator for non-rigid and contact-rich manipulation in surgeries with the da Vinci Research Kit#

2024.04

Y. Ou, S. Zargarzadeh, P. Sedighi, M. Tavakoli

2024 21st International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR) [link]

Iterative learning for gravity compensation in impedance control#

2024.04

T. Li, A. Zakerimanesh, Y. Ou, B. Armin, M. Tavakoli

IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics [link]

Robot learning incorporating human interventions in the real world for autonomous surgical endoscopic camera control#

2023.12

Y. Ou, S. Zargarzadeh, M. Tavakoli

Journal of Medical Robotics Research [link]

Towards safe and efficient reinforcement learning for surgical robots using real-time human supervision and demonstration#

2023.04

Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

2023 International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR) [link]

Sim-to-real surgical robot learning and autonomous planning for internal tissue points manipulation using reinforcement learning#

2023.03

Y. Ou, M. Tavakoli

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters [link]

Stephen and Olga Anhill Graduate Scholarship in Electrical and Computer Engineering#

2024.09 – 2025.08

University of Alberta. CAD $12,000

Alberta Innovates Graduate Student Scholarship (AI GSS)#

2023.09 – 2025.08

Alberta Innovates. CAD $31,000/year for 2 years (received CAD$12,000/year as a supplementary top-up due to holding another major award)

China Scholarship Council (CSC) Ph.D. Scholarship#

2021.09 – 2025.08

China Scholarship Council (CSC). CAD $26,400/year for 4 years

Floyd Derkat Graduate Award in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning#

2024

University of Alberta. CAD $5,000

China National Scholarship#

2018

Ministry of Education (China). CNY ￥8,000