Dingning (Dianne) Cao

Artificial Intelligence + Art & Design

I am an undergraduate student at MIT double majoring in Artificial Intelligence and Art & Design. My interests combine coding and creativity! I am exploring LLM creativity, 3D modeling, computer graphics, HCI research, game design, and more.

Resume
photographer

Experience

Summer 2026 Cupertino, CA

Apple · Internship

Machine Learning Engineer

Built an agent for stylized slide generation that transfers arbitrary Keynote templates into style-consistent decks.
Prepared data and trained an on-device flow-matching diffusion model.

Dec 2025 – Jan 2026 Shanghai, China · On-site

miHoYo · Internship

AI Technical Artist

Worked as AI Technical Artist on Genshin Impact.

Lica World
Jan 2026 – Present

Lica World · Internship

AI Research Scientist

Training foundational design models that defines AI for graphic design, pushing the boundaries of how machines understand and create visual content. Focusing on spatial reasoning and composition, and layout/slide deck generation and editing.

Research

Evaluation pipeline for measuring motion type, direction, duration, and text recoverability in generated design videos

Evaluating Design Video Generation: Metrics for Compositional Fidelity

Adrienne Deganutti, Dingning Cao, Jaejung Seol, Elad Hirsch, Purvanshi Mehta

Co-authored a fully automated evaluation framework for design animation across layout fidelity, motion correctness, temporal quality, and content fidelity.

ShiftLens mechanically actuated optical surface applications
2026 UIST Full Paper

ShiftLens: Mechanically Actuated Optical Surfaces for Switchable Appearances on 3D Objects

Yunyi Zhu, Dingning Cao, Jeremy Mrzyglocki, Stefanie Mueller, Narjes Pourjafarian

Co-developed a design and fabrication system for 3D-printed objects with mechanically switchable surface appearances, enabling dynamic visual output without electronics.

Motion Sensing Bending Structure Research

Xspine: Integrating Motion Sensing into 3D-Printed Bending Structures

Mingming Li, Jiaji Li, Haotian Chen, Dingning Cao, Karla Sahin, Stefanie Mueller

Created 4 applications of rigid-soft hybrid bending structures with embedded sensing for tangible interaction

CHI2026 Interactive Demo Jury Honorable Mention Award

Y-zipper Research
2026 CHI Full Paper

Y-zipper: 3D Printing Flexible–Rigid Transition Mechanism for Rapid and Reversible Assembly

Jiaji Li, Xiang Chang, Mingming Li, Dingning Cao, Maxine Perroni-Scharf, Jeremy Mrzyglocki, Takumi Yamamoto, William Freeman, Stefanie Mueller

Contributing author on 3D-printed flexible–rigid transition mechanism for rapid and reversible assembly

Doodle Agent Research

Doodle Agent: Exploring Freeform Visual Generation with Multimodal LLMs

Dingning Cao, Yifan Kang, Antonio Torralba, Yael Vinker

Co-first author exploring freeform visual generation with multimodal LLMs and open ended prompting

Outside of work :)

When I'm not coding or creating art, I'm actively involved in MIT's vibrant community!

Art Director at MITIT

Lead the art team in creating merch, website, and other creative content for the bi-annually MIT Informatics Tournaments.

Designer of Ringcomm 2028

Designing the official brass rat for MIT's Class of 2028 and organizing ring delivery.

HackMIT Marketing + Dev Team

Creating marketing materials and coding front/backend website for of MIT's biggest hackathons.

Member of Infinite Magazine Visual Design Director

Contributing to MIT's student-run magazine with layout design and creative content for the Nature Noir issue.

MITIT Preview
Ringcomm Preview
HackMIT Preview
Infinite Magazine Preview
outside work activities