Bio

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

Previously, I was a Visiting Researcher and 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 (Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies). 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 and collaborated with Prof. Panagiotis Angeloudis in an Innovate UK-funded project) in the same department at Imperial College London.

I have published over 30 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals and conferences, including IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TITS, Information Fusion, Pattern Recognition, NeurIPS, and IJCAI. I co-authored the book Image Fusion, which received the National Science and Technology Academic Publications Fund of China (2019), and authored the recent book Intelligence of Fusion: Deep Learning-Based Image Fusion. I hold three invention patents and two software copyrights.

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, 2024, 2025). In June 2025, I received the Dean of PGR’s Commendation for Excellence in Supervision at the University of Exeter. In March 2024, I was featured as “Imperial People” by Imperial College London. In December 2023, I received the Imperial 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 a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (Horizon 2020) by the European Commission. Additionally, I 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, NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, ICRA, IROS).

Research interests

My Fusion Intelligence Laboratory aims to use machine intelligence and multi-source information fusion to benefit humanity. I am very interested in applying fusion intelligence in robot perception, medical data processing, and computer vision. Specifically, my research areas include

• Multimodal Learning and Image Fusion
• Human-Centered Computer Vision
• Embodied Intelligence
• Trustworthy and Ethical AI
• AI for Healthcare

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 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 ‘Opportunities’ section.

• [Exeter-CSC PhD studentship (Chinese students only)]: The application for Exeter-CSC PhD studentship (2026 September entry) is open. The application deadline is midday Monday 1 December 2025. More details can be found here. If you are interested in one of the following topics, please contact me and send your CV.

  • Ethical AI in Computer Vision: Balancing Pedestrian Privacy and Data Utility
  • Efficient Multimodal Robot Perception for Pedestrian-Centric Applications
  • Robust and adaptive multimodal fusion for autonomous systems
  • Multi-modal information fusion for human-centered computer vision
  • Application-Driven Multi-Modal Medical Information Fusion Using Deep Learning

Call for papers

You’re welcome to submit your manuscript to the following journals and special issues where I serve on the editorial board, or to the workshop I am organizing. 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 Special Issue: “Advances in Detection-Oriented Multi-Sensor Fusion Beyond the Visible Spectrum”. Deadline: 28 February 2026. [Remote Sensing Submission]

News

[11/2025] Our BMVC2025 workshop “DIFA: Deep Learning-based Information Fusion and Its Applications” will be held on 27th November 2025 in the Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield, UK. More details can be found on our workshop website.

[10/2025] My new book, Intelligence of Fusion: Deep Learning-based Image Fusion, is now freely available for download. Written in Chinese, it provides a systematic overview of deep learning-based image fusion methods and applications.

[09/2025] Our paper “More effort is needed to protect pedestrian privacy in the era of AI” has been accepted to NeurIPS2025 as an Oral paper (Position Paper Track, acceptance rate is less than 6%). [PDF]

[09/2025] Honored to be listed once again among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University’s list, 2025) — my third time receiving this recognition!

[09/2025] Welcome Quangao to join my lab as a PhD student! Quangao received his Master degree from Chinese Academy of Science before joining my lab.

[09/2025] My TPAMI paper Visible and Infrared Image Fusion Using Deep Learning was selected as ESI Hot Paper. This is also an ESI Highly Cited paper.

[08/2025] A candidate has been awarded an QUEX joint PhD studentship and will be joining my lab shortly. I will co-supervise this student with Dr. Shelley Keating from the University of Queensland.

[07/2025] I gave a talk titled “Protecting pedestrian privacy through face swapping” at the BMVC One Day Meeting: BMVA Symposium on AI Security in London. Video link

[06/2025] I’m very pleased to have received the Dean of PGR’s Commendation for Excellence in Supervision. Exeter News (internal only)

[06/2025] A candidate has been awarded an Exeter-CSC PhD scholarship and will be joining my lab in September.

[05/2025] I was awarded an Exeter-Fudan Fellowship to strengthen the collaboration between my Fusion Intelligence Laboratory and Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University. Only three academics at the University of Exeter recieved this fellowship this year.

[05/2025] Our paper ‘‘SelectMOT: Improving Data Association in Multiple Object Tracking via Quality-Aware Bounding Box Selection’’ has been accepted by IEEE Sensors Journal. This is a collaborative paper with Yanshan University. Congratulations to all co-authors! The video demo can be found in the ‘Research’ section.

[04/2025] Our paper “BGM: Demand Prediction for Expanding Bike-Sharing Systems with Dynamic Graph Modeling” has been accepted by IJCAI2025. This is a collaborative paper with colleagues at the University of Exeter and the University of Warwick. Congratulations to all co-authors!

[02/2025] I was awarded a Royal Society Research Grant from 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!

[12/2024] 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)

[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.

[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 received his MSc degree in Applied Machine Learning (with distinction) from Imperial College London. Zixian is fully funded by an Exeter PhD studentship.

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

[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.

[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 started my position as a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London.

[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].

[12/2023] I was awarded the Department Award for Citizenship and Community by the Department of EEE, Imperial College London. [Imperial News].

[11/2023] I was selected as “Fellow of the Month” by the Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre (PFDC), Imperial College London. [PFDC Newsletter].

[08/2020] The book Image Fusion that I co-authored has been published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press & Springer Nature Singapore. This book has won the National Science and Technology Academic Publications Fund of China (2019).

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), the Exeter-Fudan Fellowship, and the QUEX Institute.

Selected collaborators

I have been fortunate to collaborate with a range of internal and external partners. Some of my external collaborators are shown in the figure below.

Contact

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