Xingchen Zhang (张星辰)
Bio
I am a Senior Lecturer in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter. I founded and currently lead the Fusion Intelligence Laboratory (FIL). I also serve as the Deputy Director of Business Engagement & Innovation in the Department of Computer Science.
Since joining the University of Exeter in April 2024, I have been establishing the Fusion Intelligence Laboratory. The lab aims to develop machine intelligence and information fusion technologies for human benefit, with applications in computer vision, embodied intelligence, trustworthy AI, and AI for healthcare. Our research has been supported by research funding and support from various sources, including the Royal Society, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, NVIDIA, UKRI AIRR, the Exeter-Fudan Fellowship, and the Exeter-Université Paris-Saclay Seed Fund Grant.
Before joining Exeter, I spent several years at Imperial College London, where I worked across research, teaching, supervision, and fellowship roles in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Personal Robotics Laboratory, working with Prof. Yiannis Demiris. I also served as a Teaching Fellow, teaching the Deep Learning module together with Prof. Krystian Mikolajczyk, and as a Research Associate, working on robotics, computer vision, and intelligent transportation projects with Prof. Yiannis Demiris and collaborators including Prof. Panagiotis Angeloudis. I also contributed to student supervision as an Assistant Supervisor and a mentor of Activate Student Mentoring Programme at Imperial. These experiences have strongly shaped my research vision in human-centered computer vision, multimodal perception, robotics, and AI for real-world applications.
I have published over 40 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals and conferences. I co-authored the book Image Fusion 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 and 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 2021, I was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission.
I am a Global Talent endorsed by the Royal Society and a member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College, where I review major funding schemes, including the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships, EPSRC Open Fellowship, EPSRC New Investigator Award, EPSRC Standard Research Grant, and EPSRC Working with Overseas Scientists. I am also a core member of the DSIT/UKRI AIRR User Advisory Group and regularly serve as a reviewer for leading journals and conferences, including IEEE TPAMI, IJCV, IEEE TIP, IEEE TMM, Information Fusion, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICRA, and 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.
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.
Pattern Recognition Special Issue: Multimodal Representation Learning Based on Vision Foundation Models. Open for Submission: from 15-Apr-2026 to 31-Mar-2027. More details can be found here.
Virtual Reality & Intelligent Hardware Special Issue on Embodied Intelligence: Bringing Disciplines Through System Integration. Submission deadline: 31 December 2026
Remote Sensing Special Issue: “Advances in Detection-Oriented Multi-Sensor Fusion Beyond the Visible Spectrum”. Deadline: 30 Aug 2026. [Remote Sensing Submission]
News
[07/2026] A candidate has been awarded an University of Exeter - Paris-Saclay PhD scholarship and will join my group in October this year.
[06/2026] Our paper “MultiTaskVIF: Segmentation-oriented visible and infrared image fusion via multi-task learning” has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. Congratulations to Zixian!
[06/2026] I was awarded an UKRI AIRR Gateway project as PI.
[05/2026] A candidate has been awarded an Exeter-CSC PhD scholarship and will join my group in September this year.
[05/2026] Our paper “SSVIF: Self-Supervised Segmentation-Oriented Visible and Infrared Image Fusion” has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. Congratulations to Zixian!
[05/2026] Invited to give a talk at Université Paris-Saclay.
[05/2026] I have joined the DSIT/UKRI AIRR User Advisory Group (UAG) as a core member.
[03/2026] I was awarded an NVIDIA Academic Grant as PI.
[02/2026] A Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship application (Horizon Europe) hosted by me has been awarded.
[01/2026] Welcome Yanlong to join my lab as a PhD student! Yanlong is fully funded by a QUEX (UQ-Exeter) joint PhD studentship.
[12/2025] I was awarded an UKRI AIRR Gateway project as PI.
[12/2025] I was awared an Exeter–Université Paris-Saclay Seed Fund Grant as PI.
[10/2025] My new book, Intelligence of Fusion: Deep Learning-based Image Fusion, is now freely available for download.
[09/2025] Our paper “More effort is needed to protect pedestrian privacy in the era of AI” has been accepted by 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.
More news about me can be found here.
Selected funders
My research has received funding and support from several funders, including the Royal Society, the European Commission, UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), NVIDIA, and the QUEX Institute.
Contact
- Email: x (dot) zhang12 (at) exeter (dot) ac (dot) uk
- Address: Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RN