C. Karen Liu
About
C. Karen Liu is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford, Liu was a faculty member at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. She received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Liu's research interests are in computer graphics and robotics, including physics-based animation, character animation, optimal control, reinforcement learning, and computational biomechanics. She developed computational approaches to modeling realistic and natural human movements, learning complex control policies for humanoids and assistive robots, and advancing fundamental numerical simulation and optimal control algorithms. The algorithms and software developed in her lab have fostered interdisciplinary collaboration with researchers in robotics, computer graphics, mechanical engineering, biomechanics, neuroscience, and biology. Liu received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and was named Young Innovators Under 35 by Technology Review. In 2012, Liu received the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award for her contribution in the field of computer graphics.
Research Performance Summary
First Recorded Paper
Synthesis of complex dynamic character motion from simple animations
Year: 2002
Citations: 358
Venue: ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 21 (3)
Latest Recorded Paper
Flow Policy Gradients for Robot Control
Year: 2026
Citations: 0
Venue: arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.02481
Last 10 Years Publication Activity
This timeline shows the professor's yearly publication activity.