Xingchen Zhang, PhD, FHEA

Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter

Visiting Researcher, Department of EEE, Imperial College London

[Google Scholar] [Github] [Imperial College website] [Twitter] [LinkedIn]

Bio:

Xingchen Zhang is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter. Before this, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow 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). Prior to this, he was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, and a Research Associate at the Personal Robotics Laboratory, Department of EEE, Imperial College London. Xingchen is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Xingchen's 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 perception and applications (e.g., RGB-T tracking), and ethical AI. Xingchen has secured more than £250K (as PI) in research funds from various sources to support his research.

Xingchen is a member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College, where he reviews the prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships (each fellowship has funding from £300,000 to over £1.5M), EPSRC New Investigator Award, EPSRC Open Fellowship, and EPSRC Standard Research Grant. He is also a reviewer for well-known journals (e.g., IEEE TPAMI, IJCV, IEEE TIP, IEEE TNNLS, IEEE TMM, IEEE TIM, Information Fusion) and conferences (e.g., CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, AAAI, BMVC, ACCV, ICRA, IROS, NeurIPS 2022 AI for Science Workshop).

Xingchen co-authored a book entitled Image Fusion, which won the National Science and Technology Academic Publications Fund of China (2019). He received the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award of the 9th Chinese Conference on Information Fusion. He has won several prizes (as a team leader), including 2nd place in the Mission on Mars Robot Challenge (awarded by Mathworks, Inc.), Champion of Beijing Overseas Talents Entrepreneurship Competition (UK Division), 2nd prize of Beijing Overseas Talents Entrepreneurship Competition, Finalist of the 11th "Chunhui Cup" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition for Overseas Chinese Students. He received the EEE Department Award for Citizenship and Community in 2023. He was selected as the Fellow of the Month by the Postdocs and Fellows Development Centre (PFDC) of Imperial College in November 2023.

In teaching, Xingchen was a lecturer of Deep Learning (Spring 2021-2022, ELEC60009/96033/96039) in the Department of EEE, where he taught representation learning, generative models, reinforcement learning, hyperparameters and meta-learning to more than 100 students. He was also a Teaching Fellow for several courses, including Machine Learning (Autumn 2021-2022, ELEC60019/96037), Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Spring 2021-2022, ELEC97112/97113), Human-Centered Robotics (Spring 2021-2022, ELEC97046/97121).

Regarding student supervision and mentoring, Xingchen was a primary supervisor of MSc students in Applied Machine Learning at EEE from 2022 to 2023 and has been an Assistant Supervisor appointed by the College since December 2020. He is a mentor of Imperial’s Activate Student Mentoring Programme, where he supports PhD students from ethnic minorities to enhance their academic and professional development.

Research area:

Computer vision (e.g., object tracking, human intention and trajectory prediction, human pose estimation)
Deep learning (multimodal learning, self-supervised learning, graph-based learning)
Image fusion (visible-infrared, multi-focus, multi-exposure) and its applications
Multimodal perception and its applications (e.g., RGB-T tracking)
Ethical AI

News:

[04/2024] Our tutorial proposal entitled "DIFA: Deep Learning-based Image Fusion and Its Applications" was accepted by the International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion2024), which will be held in Venice, Italy, on 7th-11th July. I organize the tutorial with Dr. Zhixiang Chen from the University of Sheffield, Dr. Shuyan Li from the University of Cambridge, and Prof. Yiannis Demiris from Imperial College London. The tutorial will be on 8th July. More details will be provided later.

[03/2024] I will give a talk at the BMVA One Day Meeting: Trustworthy Multimodal Learning with Foundation Models: Bridging the Gap between AI Research and Real World Applications.

[03/2024] I was featured as "Imperial People" [Imperial People].

[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 gave an invited talk at the REDWOOD ACADEMY entitled "Beauty of fusion: Deep learning-based image fusion and its applications" on 8th November 2023

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

[11/2023] My MSc student obtained his degree with distinction! Congratulations to Zixian! Zixian also submitted a journal paper together with me and Prof. Demiris based on his MSc project. So far, all the MSc students I supervised or co-supervised have got distinction!

[07/2023] It was a very nice experience to show EEE kids what we are doing at the Personal Robotics Lab at the Faculty of Engineering's "Bring Your Child to Work Day"! In particular, I showcased the Unusual Cameras (thermal camera, event camera) of our lab. [Imperial News]

[07/2023] I was selected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

[07/2023] I was selected as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)!

[06/2023] As an outreach activity of my MSCA fellowship, my demo "The Smart Wheelchair" at the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2023 was very successful! We attracted more than 2000 visitors during the weekend. We successfully introduced our smart wheelchair and our ongoing research to our visitors, including many children. [Imperial News]

[06/2023] I was selected as a mentor of Imperial’s Activate Student Mentoring Programme to support students from ethnic minorities to enhance their academic and professional development.

[06/2023] I started to serve as a reviewer for the EPSRC Standard Research Grant.

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

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

[01/2023] I have been accepted for inclusion in this year’s Great Exhibition Road Festival to showcase the research of our Personal Robotics Lab and my MSCA fellowship.

[01/2023] I started to serve as a reviewer for the EPSRC Open Fellowship (Each fellowship has funding of around £1.5M).

[12/2022] I was invited to give a talk "The beauty of fusion: Deep learning-based image fusion and its applications" at China Agricultural University (online).

[11/2022] I started to supervise MSc students at Imperial College London as the main supervisor.

[11/2022] I started to serve as a reviewer for EPSRC New Investigator Award.

[04/2022] A paper has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[03/2022] I have taught five lectures for the Deep Learning (Spring 2021-2022) course at the Department of EEE, Imperial College London, to more than 100 students. The topics are representation learning, generative models, reinforcement learning, hyperparametrs and meta-learning. It was a really nice experience to teach this course together with Prof. Krystian Mikolajczyk.

[01/2022] I will be a lecturer of ELEC60009/96033/96039 - Deep Learning (Spring 2021-2022) at the Department of EEE, Imperial College London.

[01/2022] A paper has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[10/2021] I have been selected as a participant in the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2022.

[09/2021] I got a Global Talent Visa.

[08/2021] I have been endorsed as 'Global Exceptional Promise' by The Royal Society.

[06/2021] I start to serve as a reviewer for the prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships (each fellowship has funding from £300,000 to over £1.5M).

[05/2021] A paper has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[02/2021] My application for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships has been successful. This is one of the most prestigious fellowships in the world. [EEE Newsletter]

[02/2021] A paper has been accepted by Information Fusion.

[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).