Computer Science

Dr Xingchen Zhang

Office hours

Please send me an email for appointment. 

Dr Xingchen Zhang

Senior Lecturer
Computer Science

I am a Senior Lecturer 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)!

 

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)
  • Multimodal applications (e.g., RGB-T tracking, RGB-T segmentation, RGB-T crowd counting)
  • Robotics and AI (Multimodal robot perception)
  • Ethical AI (pedestrian privacy protection)

 

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).

 

For more details about me and my research group, please refer to my personal website at https://xingchenzhang.github.io/.

 

[PhD Opportunities]

 

  • University of Exeter - Paris-Saclay studentships (Double PhD Degrees): I am looking for candidates for this studentship (international students are eligible). The project is Efficient Multimodal Robot Perception for Pedestrian-Centric Applications with Human Decision Models. Prof. Andrew Howes, our Head of Department, will be the co-supervisor at Exeter. Prof. Nicolas Sabouret will be the supervisor at the Université Paris-Saclay. The successful candidate will spend at least one year at the Université Paris-Saclay. More details can be found here. Application Deadline: 31 March 2025.

 

[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!

[12/2024] 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.

[12/2024] Invited to give a talk “Techniques for Using Large Language Models” at Wuhan Union Hospital of China (online)

[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 for 2024!

[09/2024] Welcome Zixian to join my lab as a PhD student!

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

[08/2024] Invited by the Outstanding Young Scholars Society UK to give a talk about faculty positions and fellowship applications.

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

[07/2024] One paper titled "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] One paper enitled "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.

[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.

[09/2023] I have been listed among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University’s list, 2023)!

[04/2023] One paper has been accepted by Pattern Recognition.

[03/2023] One paper has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

View full profile