Zhi-Qi Cheng, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Systems

Multimodal Generative AI · Embodied Intelligence · Intelligent Transportation

Ex‑CMU, Google, Microsoft · Intel Ph.D. Fellowship · IBM Outstanding Student Scholarship

  • 📧 Email: zhiqics@uw.edu
  • ☎︎ Phone:  412‑623‑9121
  • 📍 Office: Milgard Hall 221.6

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor (UW, Dec 2024–present); Project Scientist (CMU, 2022–24); Research Associate (CMU, 2017–19); Visiting Faculty Researcher (Meta AI, 2025–present)

  • Assistant Professor, University of Washington (2024 – present)

    • Teach AI/ML and Computer Graphics courses; supervise research-driven student projects.
    • Lead MF-Lab research on large-scale multimodal AI, with a focus on robotics and transportation-scale mobility analytics.
    • Graduate Faculty; collaborate closely with UW Traffic Center & the Paul G. Allen School.

  • Carnegie Mellon University — School of Computer Science, LTI (2017 – 2024)

  • Research Assistant, City University of Hong Kong (2016 – 2017)

  • Industry Experience

    • Meta AI — Visiting Faculty Researcher (2025 – present): accelerating multimodal foundation models and generative agents.
    • Microsoft Research — Human-Action AI Intern (2019).
    • Google Brain — AutoML Intern (2018), mentored by Dr. Quoc V. Le.
    • Alibaba DAMO Academy — Research Scientist (2015–2016), mentored by Prof. Xian-Sheng Hua; contributed to development of multimodal recommendation and retrieval systems including Pailitao and click-and-buy platforms.