Sherry Li

I am a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), under the advisorship of Prof. Nancy Amato. My research focuses on reasoning models, foundation models, and their applications to task and motion planning in robotics.

I joined the Parasol lab in June 2023 as part of the iCAN program, where I researched and built a vision pipeline for the UR5e robot that automatically detected obstacles in the environment and measured their distances to the robot’s end effector using 2D images with depth information. I am an alumna of the iCAN Class of 2023.

After iCAN, I entered the Master of Computer Science (MCS) program at UIUC, where I continued my research on deep learning models and their applications to motion planning, particularly in challenging environments such as narrow passages. I graduated with an MCS degree in 2024.

Previously, I graduated from Peking University with a Bachelor in Medicine (M.B.B.S) and an M.Sc. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. I also hold an M.Sc. in Management from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.