Yichen (James) Zhao

Yichen (James) Zhao

Yichen (James) Zhao is a third year PhD student studying Robotics and Mathematics in the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include perception and motion planning, dynamical systems, distributed optimization, non-convex optimization, Riemannian optimization, Morse theory, sheaf theory, and algebraic topology.

Morse Theory for Optimization

This research focuses on establishing theoretical guarantees and developing algorithms that identify gradient-like vector fields, and studying the behavior of gradient-based algorithms on general manifolds and Morse functions.