Vicky Zeng

Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Vicky Zeng is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, and social justice, whose work critically examines how embodied AI systems inherit and amplify human biases. Her landmark 2022 paper, “Robots Enact Malignant Stereotypes” (50+ citations), is a seminal contribution that empirically demonstrates how robotic systems—trained on biased datasets like OpenAI’s CLIP—physically enact harmful gender and racial stereotypes during object manipulation and navigation tasks. This work has become a cornerstone in the emerging field of fair robotics, sparking urgent conversations about ethical AI deployment. Zeng also advances technical frontiers in robotic perception, as shown in her 2021 work on “Visual Identification of Articulated Object Parts,” which develops vision-based methods for robots to interact with doors and cabinets without physical manipulation—a key step toward practical home robotics. Her research uniquely bridges critical algorithm auditing with hands-on robotic experimentation, earning her recognition as a rising voice in responsible AI. With a growing citation impact and a reputation for fearless, interdisciplinary scholarship, Zeng is shaping how the next generation of autonomous systems are designed, tested, and held accountable.