Brayden Zhang

Research

Papers, preprints and work in progress.

RL on Flow Matching Driving Foundation Models

2026

University of Toronto, NVIDIA Research, and ELLIS Institute Tübingen · in progress

Driving policies trained end to end, combining reinforcement learning with diffusion and flow-matching policy classes.

Endpoint Constrained Trajectory Optimization for Driving Foundation Models

1st place 2025

B. Zhang, M. Golchoubian, I. Gilitschenski, B. Ivanovic, K. Chitta · RealADSim Workshop, ICCV · 1st place in the closed-loop driving challenge

Constraining trajectory optimization at the endpoint to steer a driving foundation model, evaluated closed-loop in a simulator reconstructed from real-world data rather than on logged trajectories.

MATTERIX: toward a digital twin for robotics-assisted chemistry laboratory automation

2025

K. Darvish, A. Sohal, A. Mandal, H. Fakhruldeen, N. Radulov, Z. Zhou, …, B. Zhang, et al. · Nature Computational Science 6(1), 67–82

A multiscale, GPU-accelerated simulation framework for high-fidelity digital twins of chemistry labs — robotic manipulation, powder and liquid dynamics, heat transfer and reaction kinetics, driven by a modular semantics engine.

Clay Foundation Model

2025

Clay and LGND AI

Adapted open geospatial foundation models to downstream Earth-observation tasks for Carbon Mapper and Climate TRACE, and built the evaluation around them.