MENS Lab

具身心智与进化智能实验室

Embodied Intelligence · World Models · Autonomous Driving · LLM Agents

MENS = Mind, Embodiment, NeuroAI, and Self-evolution

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About Us

MENS Lab is led by Hongliang Lu, an Assistant Professor (Associate Researcher) and Ph.D. Supervisor at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). MENS stands for Mind, Embodiment, NeuroAI, and Self-evolution, reflecting our vision of intelligence as something that emerges through perception, physical interaction, memory, adaptation, and continuous growth.

The lab explores embodied intelligence, robotic manipulation, autonomous driving, world models, brain-inspired AI, and LLM agents, with the goal of building intelligent systems that do not merely compute, but sense the world, understand action, learn from experience, and evolve within complex real-world environments.

We warmly welcome motivated students and researchers to join us in exploring the future of embodied intelligence.

MENS Lab

Directions

Embodied Manipulation

Embodied Manipulation

LLM Agent

LLM Agent

World Model

World Model

Autonomous Driving

Autonomous Driving

News

2026

Aug 14

🎉🎉🎉 Our paper “Reframing Urban Transportation As Complex Systems: A Three-Dimensional Evolutionary Perspective” has been formally accepted by Engineering.

People

Supervisor
Hongliang Lu

Hongliang Lu 鲁洪良

Hongliang Lu is an Assistant Professor (Associate Researcher) and Ph.D. Supervisor in the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He received his Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, with a research focus on embodied intelligence, autonomous driving, world models, brain-inspired AI, robotic manipulation, and LLM agents. His work explores how intelligent systems can perceive the physical world, reason about complex interactions, make adaptive decisions, and continuously evolve through experience.

As a first author, he has published in leading journals and conferences, including PNAS, Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering, Engineering, Transportation Research Part C, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, and other venues. His long-term research vision is to develop intelligent machines that can understand, act, and grow within real-world environments.

Contact: luhl3@sustech.edu.cn Google Scholar ↗

Ph.D. Students
Junjie Yang

Junjie Yang (co-supervised) 杨俊杰

Ph.D. student, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sep 2026 -
MPhil, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Sep 2024 - July 2026
B.Eng., University of Science and Technology Beijing, Sep 2020 - July 2024

Research: Autonomous Driving, Embodied Intelligence

Contact: jyang512@connect.hkust-gz.edu.cn

Ziyi Shi

Ziyi Shi (co-supervised) 施子逸

Ph.D. student, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 -
M.Eng., Zhejiang University, Sep 2022 - Jun 2025
B.Eng., Beijing Jiaotong University, Sep 2018 - Jun 2022

Research: AI Agents, RAG, LLM Memory

Contact: zshiay@connect.ust.hk

Yuyan Li

Yuyan Li (co-supervised) 李雨嫣

Ph.D. student, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Sep 2025 -
M.Eng., Xidian University, Sep 2022 - Jun 2025
B.Sc., China University of Petroleum (East China), Sep 2018 - Jun 2022

Research: Embodied Intelligence, World Models, Robot Learning, Perception and Decision-Making

Contact: yli382@connect.hkust-gz.edu.cn

Yusong Huang

Yusong Huang (co-supervised) 黄钰淞

Ph.D. student, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Sep 2025 -
B.Eng., Beijing Jiaotong University, Sep 2021 - Jun 2025

Research: Embodied Intelligence, World Models, Robot Manipulation

Contact: yhuang411@connect.hkust-gz.edu.cn

Master Students

Coming soon.

Research Assistants
Shuo Yang

Shuo Yang 杨朔

MSc, The University of Hong Kong, Sep 2025 – Nov 2026
B.Eng., Dalian University of Technology, Sep 2021 – Jun 2025

Research: Computer Vision, Embodied Intelligence

Contact: northtzzz@163.com

Jia Huang

Jia Huang 黄驾

M.S., Columbia University, Jul 2025 – Oct 2026
B.Sc., Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University & University of Liverpool, Sep 2021 – Jul 2025

Research: Video Generation and Editing, Multimodal Learning, World Models

Contact: jh5117@columbia.edu

Jianghangfan Zhang

Jianghangfan Zhang 张蒋航帆

MSc, National University of Singapore, Sep 2023 – Jan 2025
B.Eng., Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sep 2019 – Jun 2023

Research: Embodied Intelligence, World Models

Contact: zhangjhf25@gmail.com

Undergraduates

Wentao Yin 殷文韬

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2023 – Jul 2027
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12312901@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Qingwei Zeng 曾庆伟

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2023 – Jul 2027
Interests: Autonomous Driving

Contact: 12310323@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Yifan Guo 郭一凡

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2023 – Jul 2027
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12313411@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Hongyi Liao 廖鸿毅

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2023 – Jul 2027
Interests: Physics×AI

Contact: 12313109@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Zicheng Ding 丁子乘

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2024 – Jul 2028
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12410607@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Yixiao Zhang 张益潇

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2024 – Jul 2028
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12410327@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Wenxi Xu 徐文熙

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2024 – Jul 2028
Interests: World Model & VLA

Contact: 12411711@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Sicheng Liu 刘思诚

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 – Jul 2029
Interests: LLM Agents

Contact: 12511232@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Yanchi Chen 陈彦驰

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 – Jul 2029
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12512118@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Kejing Hu 胡可菁

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 – Jul 2029
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12510246@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Yubo Hao 郝禹博

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 – Jul 2029
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: 12510810@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Youyou Li 李悠游

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2025 – Jul 2029
Interests: Autonomous Driving

Contact: 12512845@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Rui Sun 孙睿

Southern University of Science and Technology, Sep 2026 – Jul 2030
Interests: Embodied Intelligence

Contact: sunrui26nanke@163.com

Alumni

Coming soon.

Selected Publications

* Corresponding Author    Project Lead

2026

From Likelihood to Utility: Quality-Axis Diffusion for End-to-End Autonomous Driving

J. Yang, Z. Shi, S. Shen, Y. Li, Y. Huang, Z. Kuang, H. Wang, H. Liao, Z. Li, X. Zheng, H. Lu*, H. Yang

AAAI 2027, Under Review

When RAG Needs Structure? Enhancing Evidence Retrieval via Selective Structural Calibration

Z. Shi, J. Yang, C. Wang, X. Zheng, H. Lu*, H. Yang

AAAI 2027, Under Review

Grounding Worlds in Actions: Action-Grounded Dynamics Learning for Robot Video World Models

Y. Li, Y. Huang, Y. Wang, J. Yang, Z. Shi, Y. Sheng, W. Xu, X. Zhou, H. Lu*, X. Zheng

AAAI 2027, Under Review

Commit While Futures Agree: Consequence-Aware Adaptive Action Chunking for Robot Manipulation

Y. Li, Y. Wang, Y. Huang, J. Yang, Y. Sheng, Z. Shi, W. Xu, X. Zhou, H. Li, H. Lu*, X. Zheng

AAAI 2027, Under Review

Co-World: Collaborative Occupancy World Modeling with Prior Evidence for Future Prediction

Y. Chen, Z. Kuang, J. Gao, G. Zhao, Y. Cai, Y. Ji, X. Qiu, H. Lu, B. Liu, X. Zheng

AAAI 2027, Under Review

LIRA: Local Cross-Layer Information Routing for Vision-Language-Action Decoding

Z. Zhang, P. Wang, G. Qiao, Y. Weng, J. Hu, G. Li, L. Wang, J. Wang, T. Gu, H. Lu, G. Liu, H. Jia, X. Zheng

AAAI 2027, Under Review Paper

AsyCo: Harnessing Asymmetrically Decaying Information for Cooperative Motion Forecasting in V2X Autonomous Driving

Y. Xie, H. Liao, Y. Li, J. Zhang, S. Gao, Q. Xu, S. Lai, H. Lu, Y. Liu, Z. Cui, W. Ma, Z. Li

AAAI 2027, Under Review

Human-inspired Data-light Cultural Alignment for Cross-regional Deployment of Autonomous Vehicles

H. Lu*, J. Yang, S. Shen, Z. Zang, Y. Li, J. Cao, C. Lu, X. Zheng, H. Yang

Nature Communications, Under Review

Reframing Urban Transportation As Complex Systems: A Three-Dimensional Evolutionary Perspective

H. Lu*, Z. Shi, H. Zhong, J. Yang, S. Shen, Y. Liang, X. Zheng, C. Lu, Q. Li, M. Xu, W. Liu, J. Ke, S. Feng, Z. Zhu, Y. Zheng, C. Xu, H. Yang

Engineering, Accepted in Principle

Coordinated Pandemic Control with Large Language Model Agents as Policymaking Assistants

Z. Shi, X. Guo, H. Lu*, M. Peng, H. Wang, Z. Zhu, Z. Li, Y. Liang, X. Zheng, H. Yang

iScience, Under Review Paper

UniT: Unified Geometry Learning with Group Autoregressive Transformer

H. Wang, Y. Huang, Z. Kuang, H. Lu, X. Zheng, M. Yang, G. Hua

IEEE TPAMI, Under Review Paper

Dual-chirality Flexagon Linkages with Infinite Eversion and Surface Reconfigurability

J. Lin, Z. Miao, H. Zhang, K. Dong, H. Lu, H. Feng, J. S. Dai

PNAS, Accepted Paper

Diffusion-based 4D Trajectory Prediction and Distributed Control for UAV Swarms

T. Li, H. Lu, H. Li, X. Zheng

IROS 2026, Accepted Paper

Partners

Content coming soon.

Opportunities

We are recruiting Master’s and Ph.D. students for the 2027 cohort. We welcome highly motivated applicants interested in embodied AI, robot learning, world models, and LLM agents. Applicants with relevant research experience will be given priority consideration.

We are also continuously recruiting Research Assistants. Outstanding Research Assistants may receive priority recommendation for future Ph.D. applications.

Join MENS Lab and work with us on meaningful, exciting, and impactful research.