Linyan Fu
Linyan Fu is a co-founder of Lucen Robotics, an autonomous retail restocking robotics company she is building alongside Apheth D'Almeida. She is completing a Master of Science in Computer Science at Northeastern University in San Jose, California, with an expected graduation in May 2026.1 At Northeastern she works as a researcher in the HCAI (Human-Centred AI) Lab and as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for courses in human-computer interaction, research methods, and foundational programming.1 Her path to robotics is unconventional — she completed an undergraduate degree in International Business at Loughborough University in the UK before pivoting to computer science.
Education
Fu spent her undergraduate years studying International Business at Loughborough University in England, graduating in 2023.1 Loughborough is a UK research university with particular strength in technology and engineering, and the international business programme draws students from across the world. She supplemented her degree with two exchange semesters: one at Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy (spring 2022), one of Europe's top business schools; and one at TBS Education in France (autumn 2021).1 Before Loughborough, she completed a foundation year in Business at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China in 2018–2019.1
The breadth of this educational path — China, UK, Italy, France, then a full graduate pivot to computer science in the US — is unusual and reflects a willingness to move across institutions and disciplines that would later show up in her pivot into deep-tech robotics.
She enrolled in the MS in Computer Science at Northeastern University in September 2023, a programme based at the Silicon Valley campus in San Jose.1
Research and teaching
Since January 2026 Fu has been a researcher in the HCAI Lab at Northeastern University — a group focused on human-centred AI, the subfield that studies how AI systems interact with and affect people.1 The lab's work sits at the intersection of HCI and machine learning, which is directly adjacent to the robotics work at Lucen: training robots from egocentric human video means understanding how people perform tasks, not just how machines can replicate them.
She also serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant across three courses: CS 5340 (Computer/Human Interaction), CS 7980 (Research Capstone), and CS 5001 (Foundations of CS).1 The Computer/Human Interaction course maps onto her HCAI research; the Research Capstone involves supervising graduate students through final projects; and the Foundations course is introductory programming — a full-stack teaching load across levels.
Earlier career
Before the MS, Fu held a series of roles that span supply chain, marketing, and customer service — each international in character:
- JD.COM (May–Aug 2020, Chengdu): International Customer Service, tracking and managing e-commerce orders from US Walmart customers.1
- China Chuanmeiren Food Co (Sep 2020–Aug 2021, China): Supply Chain Intern, communicating with European factories, purchasing goods, and tracking international shipments.1
- AcademiaOne (Mar–Jul 2021, London): Marketing Manager, leading campaigns on Chinese social media platforms including WeChat, Red (Xiaohongshu), and Weibo, and working with a design team on promotional materials.1
- Firstep (May–Sep 2025, United States): Full-stack Developer, building the product during her CS programme.1
The supply chain and logistics experience — communicating with European factories and tracking cross-border shipments — is directly relevant to retail operations, the domain Lucen Robotics is entering.
Lucen Robotics and hackathons
Fu co-founded Lucen Robotics with Apheth D'Almeida, meeting through physical AI and robotics events in early 2026.
At the AMD Robotics and AI Hackathon in Tokyo on January 31, 2026, she participated in a 48-hour challenge to train a robot to pick up a charger and plug it into a charging port. The team used the LeRobot framework with an ACT (Action Chunking with Transformers) policy trained from a three-camera teleoperation dataset. The team won a "World Intelligence Award."4
On February 15, 2026, she and D'Almeida submitted Lucen Robotics to the lablab.ai "Launch and Fund Your Own Startup" hackathon — a simulation-first retail restocking robotics system using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, YOLOv8, and SLAM navigation, achieving 84.25% SKU classification across 207 products.5
On March 20, 2026, Lucen Robotics placed 2nd at Founders Inc's Night Hack. Adrianna Lakatos — the Founders Inc investor — announced the result and awarded a campus pass, describing the company as "egocentric videos → robot training."3
Fu's trajectory — from international business and supply chain logistics to HCI research to robotics startup founder — is a sharp pivot accomplished largely during an MS programme. The common thread is a pattern of operating across cultural and disciplinary borders: the same quality that took her from Chengdu to Loughborough to Milan to France to San Jose is shaping how she builds a robotics company at the intersection of simulation, computer vision, and physical retail operations.1
References
- Linyan Fu | LinkedIn profile(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
- Lucen Robotics team page | Lablab.ai(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
- Adrianna Lakatos on X — Night Hack winners, Lucen Robotics 2nd place | March 20, 2026(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
- Umesh Sankuratri — Physical AI Hackathon Jan 31, 2026 with Linyan Fu and Apheth D'Almeida(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
- Lucen Robotics — hackathon submission | Lablab.ai(accessed Apr 22, 2026)