Westlake University launched the Westlake World Model Research Center on 31 October at its Yungu Campus in Hangzhou.
Yu Kaicheng will lead the center as its director. The university described the center as a university-level interdisciplinary research platform dedicated to physical intelligence. According to the university, the facility is built around a shift in artificial intelligence from understanding language to interacting with the physical world.
Yu Kaicheng currently serves as an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor within the university's School of Engineering. Jin Yaochu will serve as the chief scientist for the new center. Yu joined Westlake in 2023 and established the Autonomous Intelligence Lab, which is known as AutoLab.
The director is also the co-founder and chief scientist of the artificial intelligence company KMind. Yu earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Hong Kong in 2016 before obtaining a PhD from EPFL in 2021. His professional background includes roles at Intel, Abacus.AI, and Alibaba's DAMO Academy.
In late 2024, Yu's team moved away from generative, pixel-level world models to focus on a concept world model. Yu spun out research from his work into a Hangzhou startup called Awomo in January 2026. The university has not yet announced the first projects for the center or named the other principal investigators.
