Bio

I am a Senior Lecturer (~Associate Professor) in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, where I lead the Fusion Intelligence Laboratory and serve as the Deputy Director of Business Engagement & Innovation. I am also a core member of the Exeter Computer Vision Group.

Previously, I was a Visiting Researcher and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (Horizon 2020) at the Personal Robotics Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, working with Prof. Yiannis Demiris. Before that, I was a Teaching Fellow (where I taught the Deep Learning module together with Prof. Krystian Mikolajczyk) and a Research Associate (where I worked with Prof. Yiannis Demiris) in the same department at Imperial College London.

I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) since July 2023. I have been listed among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University’s list, 2023 and 2024)!

In March 2024, I was featured as “Imperial People” by Imperial College London. In December 2023, I received the Imperial’s EEE Department Award for Citizenship and Community. In November 2023, I was selected as the “Fellow of the Month” by the Postdocs and Fellows Development Centre (PFDC) of Imperial College London. In 2021, I was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission. Additionally, I have co-authored a book entitled Image Fusion, which won the National Science and Technology Academic Publications Fund of China (2019). I also received the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award of the 9th Chinese Conference on Information Fusion (2019).

I am a member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College, where I review prestigious funding schemes, including the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships, EPSRC Open Fellowship, EPSRC New Investigator Award, and EPSRC Standard Research Grant. Additionally, I serve as a reviewer for more than 20 well-known journals (e.g., IEEE TPAMI, IJCV, IEEE TIP, IEEE TNNLS, IEEE TMM, IEEE TIM, IEEE RAL, Information Fusion) and more than 10 top-tier conferences (e.g., CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, AAAI, ICRA, IROS).

Research interests

My research areas include

• Computer vision (e.g., object tracking, human pose estimation, human behavior prediction)
• Deep learning (e.g., multi-modal learning, self-supervised learning, graph-based learning)
• Image fusion (visible-infrared, multi-focus, multi-exposure, multi-modal medical image)
• Multimodal applications (e.g., RGB-T tracking, RGB-T segmentation, RGB-T crowd counting)
• Robotics and AI (e.g., Robot perception)
• Ethical AI (pedestrian privacy protection)

To know more about my research, please go to the ‘Research’ section.

Joining my Fusion Intelligence Laboratory

I am always looking for self-motivated PhD students. If you’re interested in joining my Fusion Intelligence Laboratory as a PhD student or a visiting student, or if you wish to join by applying for postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Newton International Fellowships, EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowships), please email me your CV (Please DO NOT send me a very long email!). For more details and funding opportunities, please see the ‘Vacancies’ section.

Call for papers

Welcome to submit your manuscript to the following journals and special issues for which I am an editorial board member. Please feel free to contact me before submission if you have any questions.

• Chinese Journal of Information Fusion. [Details and Submission]. We always welcome submissions.

• Remote Sensing and Electronics Special Issue: “Advances in Detection-Oriented Multi-Sensor Fusion Beyond the Visible Spectrum”. Deadline: 31 August 2025. [Remote Sensing Submission] [Electronics Submission]

News

[02/2025] The abstract of my MSc student, Qinqing Li, was accepted to the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, which will be held in the University of Glasgow in April. Qinqing will present her work on multimodal medical image processing.

[02/2025] I was awarded a Research Grant from the Royal Society as the PI.

[02/2025] I gave a talk at the Personal Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College London.

[02/2025] I gave a talk at the Intelligent Systems and Network Group, Imperial College London.

[01/2025] Welcome Ning to join my lab as a PhD student!

[12/2025] Invited to join the Executive Committee of the UK Huazhong University of Science and Technology Alumni Association.

[12/2024] I organised the first Exeter Computer Vision Workshop at the University of Exeter. This is the first formal activity of the Exeter Computer Vision Group. Exeter CS News (internal only)

[12/2024] I gave a talk titled “Human-Centered Computer Vision: From Unimodality to Multimodality” at the 1st Exeter Computer Vision Workshop, Exeter, UK.

[12/2024] I gave a talk titled “How AI is changing my job” at the Around The World Webinar of the MCAA AI GIG (Marie Curie Alumni Association Artificial Intelligence General Interest Group).

[12/2024] I gave a talk titled “Rethinking performance evaluation in image fusion” at the BMVA Symposium on Image & Video Quality in the British Computer Society (BCS), London.

[11/2024] Invited to attend the AI roundtable discussion at the Outstanding Young Scholars Society UK Annual Meeting in London.

[11/2024] I organized a BMVC2024 workshop titled “DIFA: Deep Learning-based Image Fusion and Its Applications” as the lead organizer in Glasgow, UK, on 27th November 2024. More details can be found on our workshop website.

[11/2024] I gave a talk titled “An introduction to Prompt Engineering” at Wuhan Union Hospital of China (online).

[11/2024] I gave a talk titled “A brief introduction to AI” at Wuhan Union Hospital of China (online).

[09/2024] I have been listed among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University’s list, 2024)!

[09/2024] Welcome Zixian to join my lab as a PhD student! Before joining my lab, Zixian obtained his MSc degree in Applied Machine Learning (with distinction) from Imperial College London.

[09/2024] I started to serve as the Deputy Director of Business Engagement & Innovation at the Department of Computer Science.

[08/2024] I gave a talk at the Outstanding Young Scholars Society UK about faculty positions and fellowship applications.

[08/2024] I started serving as an Associate Editor for the Chinese Journal of Information Fusion.

[07/2024] Our paper “Predicting Spatio-temporal Traffic Flow: A Comprehensive End-to-end Approach from Surveillance Cameras “ has been accepted by Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics. This is a collaborative paper with the Transport Systems & Logistics Lab and Personal Robotics Lab at Imperial College London.

[07/2024] Two of my IEEE T-PAMI papers were selected as ESI Highly Cited Papers.

[06/2024] Our paper “3PFS: Protecting pedestrian privacy through face swapping” has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Congratulations to Zixian! The paper is based on Zixian’s MSc project at Imperial College London, where I was his primary supervisor and Prof. Yiannis Demiris was his co-supervisor. The video demo can be found in the ‘Research’ section.

[06/2024] I gave a talk on 6th June at “Future of AI Awards 2024: Collaborate, Debate, Invent”. I introduced my research and shared my fellowship experience.

[04/2024] I gave a talk at the BMVA One Day Meeting - Trustworthy Multimodal Learning with Foundation Models: Bridging the Gap between AI Research and Real World Applications in the British Computer Society (BCS), London.

[04/2024] I established the Fusion Intelligence Laboratory at the Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter. The lab aims to use machine intelligence and multi-source information fusion to benefit humanity.

[04/2024] I joined the University of Exeter as a Senior Lecturer (~Associate Professor in the UK system).

[03/2024] I was featured as “Imperial People” [Details].

More news about me can be found here.

Selected funders

My research has received funding from several funders, including the Royal Society, and the European Commission (Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants).

Selected collaborators

Contact

• Email: x (dot) zhang12 (at) exeter (dot) ac (dot) uk
• Address: Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RN