Chenying Liu BEng DPhil

Dr Chenying Liu is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church and an Associate Member of Faculty in the Department of Engineering Science. She leads an independent research programme in robotics focused on embodied physical intelligence, which explores how geometry, mechanics, materials, and control can be co-designed so that physical bodies actively contribute to autonomy, robustness, and adaptability.

Prior to her current position, Dr Liu completed her D.Phil. in Engineering Science at Oxford, followed by a postdoctoral appointment with the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology. She received an undergraduate degree in Automation (Mechatronics) from Beihang University (China), where she undertook comprehensive training across mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering.

Chenying’s research explores how robots can become more intelligent by design, not only through control algorithms, but also through their physical bodies. Instead of treating the body as a passive component controlled by a central “brain”, she studies how the physical form of a robot body can actively contribute to sensing, information processing, decision-making, and movement. By embedding intelligence directly into bodies, robots can generate useful behaviours with reduced control complexity and improved robustness, accelerating their deployment in real-world environments ranging from healthcare to sustainable energy systems. By uncovering design principles for embodied intelligence, Chenying’s work aims to build robotic systems that are more efficient, resilient, and naturally integrated into the physical world.

Chenying is particularly interested in robotic systems built from diverse material platforms, from conventional metals and polymers to biologically active substrates such as cells. She seeks to understand how physical embodiment shapes function across length scales and environments.

Her ongoing research directions include:

• Geometry-driven robot design
• Adaptive and morphable structures
• Soft and origami-inspired robotics
• Scaling laws of robotic systems
• Environment-interactive robotics
• Bio-hybrid robotic systems