Chen Cao

Chen Cao (曹晨)

Cofounder of a Physical AI Startup (Stealth Mode)

Contact: zju.caochen at gmail.com

About me

With over 10 years of experience dedicated to the research and development of digital humans, I am passionate about pushing the boundaries of computer graphics and artificial intelligence. Currently, I am the Cofounder of a Physical AI startup in Stealth Mode, exploring the next generation of AI-embodied technology and spatial computing.

Previously, I was a Senior Staff Research Scientist and Tech Lead for the Codec Avatar Decoder team at Meta (Reality Labs), and prior to that, a Senior Research Scientist at Snap. During my tenure at Meta, I led the development of Codec Avatars using mobile phone scans. We successfully created the world's first photorealistic avatar generated from a smartphone, bridging the critical gap to cross the "uncanny valley."

My academic and professional journey is deeply rooted in high-fidelity 3D facial tracking and real-time animation. The accurate 3D face tracking system I developed was honored with the prestigious 2024 SIGGRAPH Test-of-Time Award, a testament to its lasting impact on the industry.

Holding a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, I remain committed to blending cutting-edge computer vision and rendering technologies to redefine how we interact in both the digital and physical worlds.

[News] I am looking for PhD students as intern in my team, please shoot me an email if you are interested.

Research

My research interest is computer graphics, especially for facial animation:

Photorealistic 3D face expression database for virtual computing
Real-time facial animation with single camera
Facial image/video editing

Education

2/2012 ~ 6/2016: Ph.D candidate, College of Computer Science & Technology, Zhejiang University
9/2010 ~ 2/2012: M.Sc candidate (Transferred to PhD), College of Computer Science & Technology, Zhejiang University
9/2006 ~ 6/2010: B.Eng., Chu Kochen Hornors Program, College of Computer Science & Technology, Zhejiang University

Honor & Awards

2024 SIGGRAPH Test-of-Time Award [Website]
2016 Excellent Graduate Student of Zhejiang Province
2015 Chu Kochen Scholarship (The highest scholarship of ZJU, 12/5000+ graduate students)
2010 Chiang Chen Scholarship [Website]
2013 Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship (10 awardees in Asia) [Website]
2013 National Ph.D. Scholarships of P.R.China [Website](Chinese)

Publications [Google Scholar]

Vid2Avatar-Pro: Authentic Avatar from Videos in the Wild via Universal Prior

Chen Guo, Junxuan Li, Yash Kant, Yaser Sheikh, Shunsuke Saito, Chen Cao

CVPR 2025 [Project]

LUCAS: Layered Universal Codec Avatars

Di Liu, Teng Deng, Giljoo Nam, Yu Rong, Stanislav Pidhorskyi, Junxuan Li, Jason Saragih, Dimitris N. Metaxas, Chen Cao

CVPR 2025 [Project]

Bridging the Gap: Studio-like Avatar Creation from a Monocular Phone Capture

ShahRukh Athar, Shunsuke Saito, Zhengyu Yang, Stanislav Pidhorskyi, Chen Cao

ECCV 2024 (Oral) [Project]

Universal Facial Encoding of Codec Avatars from VR Headsets

Shaojie Bai, Te-Li Wang, Chenghui Li, Akshay Venkatesh, Tomas Simon, Chen Cao, Gabriel Schwartz, Jason Saragih, Yaser Sheikh, and Shih-En Wei

SIGGRAPH 2024

URHand: Universal Relightable Hands

Zhaoxi Chen, Gyeongsik Moon, Kaiwen Guo, Chen Cao, Stanislav Pidhorskyi, Tomas Simon, Rohan Joshi, Yuan Dong, Yichen Xu, Bernardo Pires, He Wen, Lucas Evans, Bo Peng, Julia Buffalini, Autumn Trimble, Kevyn McPhail, Melissa Schoeller, Shoou-I Yu, Javier Romero, Michael Zollhöfer, Yaser Sheikh, Ziwei Liu*, Shunsuke Saito*

CVPR 2024 (Oral) [Project]

Authentic Volumetric Avatars From a Phone Scan

Chen Cao, Tomas Simon, Jin Kyu Kim, Gabe Schwartz, Michael Zollhoefer, Shunsuke Saito, Stephen Lombardi, Shih-en Wei, Danielle Belko, Shoou-i Yu, Yaser Sheikh, Jason Saragih

ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2022) [Pdf][Video]