Zhi-Qi Cheng | University of Washington

Short Bio

External Profiles

I am a tenure‑track Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Systems, jointly appointed in the Tacoma School of Engineering & Technology, University of Washington (UWT directory, UW directory search) and the Graduate School, University of Washington (Graduate Faculty Search). I direct the Multi‑Foundation Model Lab (MF‑Lab), supervise Ph.D. students in the Computer Science & Systems Ph.D. program, and since June 2025 have served as a Visiting Faculty Researcher with the Meta AI AGI team. My research focuses on Multimodal Generative AI, Embodied and Robotic Intelligence, and Intelligent Transportation—in close collaboration with the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans). My work has appeared in venues including CVPR, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, IJCAI, and ACM MM, and contributed to The Washington Post investigations that earned the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Prior to joining UW, I spent seven years in the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University — specifically at the Language Technologies Institute (LTI). I advanced from Research Associate and Post‑doctoral Researcher to Project Scientist / Instructor, mentored by Prof. Alexander G. Hauptmann and Prof. Teruko Mitamura. I collaborated closely with Prof. David R. Mortensen and Prof. Alan W. Black. During this time, I served as technical lead for the DARPA KAIROS and KAIROS‑Plus projects, and contributed to the IARPA DIVA and NIST PSIAP initiatives. Earlier, I completed research internships at Alibaba DAMO Academy, Google Brain, and Microsoft Research, and was recognized with the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship and IBM Outstanding Student Scholarship.

My research has been covered by The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS News, and other major media outlets, influencing public‑service reporting, safety analytics, and mobility policy.

Interested in joining? I am recruiting Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers whose interests align with my research directions: Multimodal Generative AI, Embodied & Robotic Intelligence, and Intelligent Transportation. If you are excited about these areas, please email me or fill in this form.

News

18 Sep 2025 | Our paper MaxSup: Overcoming Representation Collapse in Label Smoothing is accepted as an Oral at NeurIPS 2025 (acceptance: 77/21,575 ≈ 0.36%). [arXiv]
03 Sep 2025 | Congratulations to Ph.D. student Yifei Dong on receiving the Carwein–Andrews Ph.D. Fellowship.
25 Jun 2025 | One paper accepted at ICCV 2025.
15 Jun 2025 | Dr. Cheng will join the Meta AI AGI team as a Visiting Faculty Researcher.
12 Jun 2025 | Invited keynote at CVPR 2025 Anti‑UAV Workshop; our survey Securing the Skies: A Comprehensive Survey on Anti‑UAV Methods, Benchmarking, and Future Directions wins the workshop’s Best Paper Award.
31 Mar 2025 | Incoming Ph.D. student Yifei Dong receives UW GSFEI Top Scholar Award 2025.
28 Mar 2025 | Dr. Cheng serves as Area Chair for NAACL 2025.
10 Feb 2025 | Four papers accepted at CVPR 2025 (2 main‑conference, 2 workshop papers).
05 Feb 2025 | One paper accepted at ICLR 2025.
20 Jan 2025 | Two papers accepted at AAAI 2025, including one Oral presentation.