Shengyu Huang

Shengyu Huang is an HCI researcher, design engineer, and AI entrepreneur exploring new ways for people and AI to think, design, and create together. His research examines human–AI collaboration in design and creative practice, alongside the interactive media and creative systems that support it. He connects the study of collaborative processes with the development of intelligent design systems, drawing on creative AI systems, wearable BCIs, and spatial computing to explore new multimodal interactive media that bridge digital and physical experiences. His current research on Generative Tangibility for Human–AI Co-Creation extends this inquiry by asking how bodies, objects, and spaces might become active participants in the creative process.

Before joining MIT, Huang was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where he led research on AI-enabled brain–computer interfaces and cross-media interaction. He earned his PhD in Design from Tsinghua University, where he studied the mechanisms and systems that support human–AI collaboration in creative design behavior. His academic experience spans Asia, Europe, and North America, bringing together perspectives from design, human–computer interaction, and systems engineering. His research has been published in Systems, npj Heritage Science, Sustainability, and other journals and conference proceedings. He co-authored the book AIGC: A New Future for Design and Creativity and serves on the early-career editorial boards of Interactives and Design and Art Studies (DAS). He is also a council member of Asia Design Week and a member of the Youth Committee of the Industrial Design Division of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society.

The same interest in expanding people’s creative capabilities shapes Huang’s work as a serial AI entrepreneur and technology incubator founder. He puts his research interests into practice through creative AI product development and entrepreneurship, with companies he has co-founded or helped incubate collectively raising more than US$15 million in venture capital. He co-founded Nolibox.AI and Dynal.AI, among the earliest companies worldwide to focus on generative AI for design, and has led teams developing platforms for design and creative productivity. These include Dynal.AI, MolyPix.AI, and NoliHub, which together have attracted millions of registered users across more than 70 countries and regions. For Huang, interdisciplinary research should reach beyond the laboratory and expand what people can do in everyday life. This belief led him to establish ProtoD, a design-driven technology incubator through which he helps founders with design and interdisciplinary backgrounds turn ideas into products and build sustainable businesses. His incubation work extends across wearable brain–computer interfaces for sports, spatial computing and XR engines, and emotional AI agents, with projects including Nuromova, Monstar.XR, and Someone.cool.

Huang’s work has received recognition from the design and entrepreneurial communities. Forbes has named him to its Global Top 100 Most Influential Chinese Elites list and its 30 Under 30 Asia list, and in 2026 he received the “Top 10 Outstanding Chinese American Youth” award. Fortune magazine has selected his work for its list of the year’s 100 best designs, while projects he has led have earned more than 50 design and product awards, including Red Dot, iF, and G-Mark awards. He has shared his work through exhibitions at Milan Design Week, the World Design Cities Conference (WDCC), and the National Museum of China, as well as talks at TEDx and the World Youth Development Forum. His work has also been featured in Forbes Asia, The Los Angeles Post, and other media outlets.

For more about his research and projects, visit shengyuhuang.com.