Anton Arapin
PhD Student, Computer Science and Engineering
University of Michigan · Mapping and Motion Lab
About
I'm a second-year PhD student at the University of Michigan, advised by Bernadette Bucher in the Mapping and Motion Lab. My research sits at the intersection of geometric generative models, computer vision, and robotics. Specifically, I am interested in World Models that preserve geometric structure as scenes evolve, generative models that learn and traverse the action-conditioned data manifold, and their applications in Robotics.
Before Michigan, I was a software engineer at Google, working on a large-scale machine learning system for modeling and predicting user behavior, with a focus on the accuracy, quality, and efficiency of training and inference. Previously, I also collaborated with Junchen Jiang at the University of Chicago on neural video codecs, and with Kostas Daniilidis at the GRASP Lab on robot exploration and navigation.
News
- Sep 2026D3WM posted in open access — project page, paper.
- Summer 2026Became a CSE PhD Candidate.
- Fall 2025Joined the Mapping and Motion Lab at the University of Michigan.
- 2024GRACE appeared at NSDI 2024.
- 2023The University of Chicago featured the GRACE project.
- 2022AccMPEG appeared at MLSys 2022.
- 2022Uncertainty-Driven Planner appeared at ICRA 2022.
Select Publications
Full list on Google Scholar.
Other Interests
- Languages
- English, Ukrainian, Russian, and Japanese — and recently started learning Spanish.
- Art History
- Ainu material culture, Japanese woodblock prints (a regular at the Art Institute of Chicago), and ancient Chinese bronze — especially the Jinsha culture.
- Martial Arts
- Boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.