Chen Zhao

Chen Zhao

Research Scientist

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

About Me

I am an incoming Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen (HITSZ), starting in Spring 2026. I am currently a Research Scientist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and Lead of the Video Group in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL), working with Prof. Bernard Ghanum. I received my Ph.D. from Peking University (PKU), advised by Prof. Wen Gao and Prof. Siwei Ma.

Centered on video, my research interests include representation, understanding, compression, and generation. I have published over 50 papers in leading journals and conferences across these areas, including TPAMI, CVPR, ICCV, and ECCV in video understanding, as well as TCSVT, TIP, and DCC in video compression. My work has received multiple honors, including Best Paper Nomination in CVPR 2022, the Best Paper Award in CVPR workshop 2023, and the Best Paper Award in NCMT 2015. I am also a recipient of the First Prize of Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Contest (QInF) (only 2 in China), and Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Award (only 26 in China mainland and 150 worldwide).

I am actively seeking highly motivated postdocs and Ph.D. students. Postdoctoral positions are available at both KAUST and HITSZ. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me with your CV and a brief research statement.

Interests

  • Video understanding
  • Video compression
  • Video generation
  • Large multimodal models
  • Efficient neural networks

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science (2010–2016)
    Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China
  • Joint Ph.D. student (2011–2012)
    University of Washington (UW), Seattle, USA
  • B.Eng. in Software Engineering (2006–2010)
    Sichuan University (SCU), Chengdu, China
News

2026

  • 2026-01-01 I will join Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen (HITSZ) as a Professor in Spring 2026.

2025

  • 2025-11-22 I gave a talk on “Invertible Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems” during my visit at Stanford Computational Imaging lab, Stanford. Thanks to Prof. Gordon Wetzstein for the invitation.
  • 2025-10-19 We organized the SaFeMM-AI workshop at ICCV 2025, where we invited Prof. Yoshua Bengio as a speaker!
  • 2025-04-27 I co-taught the master-level course “Machine Learning” (CS229) for the Ministry of Interior, Saudi Arabia, together with Prof. Marco Canini.
  • 2025-04-10 We released SEVERE++, a comprehensive benchmark for studying generalization capabilities in video self-supervised learning.
  • 2025-03-12 Ego4D got 1000+ citations!
  • 2025-02-27 All 3 papers submitted to CVPR 2025 were accepted: BOLT, SMILE, OSMamba!
  • 2025-02-05 IDM is published in TPAMI!
  • 2025-01-26 I co-taught the master-level course “Deep Learning for Visual Computing” (CS323) for the Ministry of Interior, Saudi Arabia, together with Prof. Bernard Ghanem.
  • 2025-01-14 I gave a talk on “Video Understanding for Embodied AI” virtually at Sun Yat-sen University. Thanks to Prof. Liang Lin for the invitation.
  • 2025-01-08 I gave a talk on “Long-form Video Understanding in the 2020s” at Artifical Intelligence Research Institute, Shenzhen MSU-BIT. Thanks to Prof. Runhao Zeng for the invitation.

2024

  • 2024-12-05 I gave a talk on “Long-form Video Understanding in the 2020s” at Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center, HITSZ. Thanks to Prof. Jingyong Su for the invitation.
  • 2024-10-07 I gave a lecture on “Reversifying Neural Networks: Efficient Memory Optimization Strategies for Finetuning Large Models” in KAUST CS Seminar. Thanks Prof. Di Wang for the invitation.
  • 2024-06-18 I gave a talk on “Towards More Realistic Continual Learning at Scale” as an invited speaker in the CLVision Workshop in CVPR 2024, Seattle.
  • 2024-06-17 We have won the first place in 4 challenges in CVPR 2024: Epic-kitchens audio-based interaction detection, Epic-kitchens action detection, Epic-kitchens action recognition, Ego4D Visual Queries 3D!
  • 2024-06-11 I gave a talk on “Optimizing Memory Efficiency in Pretrained Model Finetuning” in the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR), UC Berkeley. Thanks to Prof. Jitendra Malik for the invitation.
  • 2024-05-05 I gave a lecture in KAUST CEMSE graduate seminar on “Toward Long-form Video Understanding” as part of KAUST Research Open Week!
  • 2024-03-28 We released OpenTAD, an open-source toolbox for temporal action detection (TAD), comprising 14 methods with 8 datasets.
  • 2024-02-27 4 papers are accepted to CVPR 2024: Dr2Net, AdaTAD, TGT, and Ego-Exo4D!
  • 2024-02-19 I gave a spotlight talk in the Rising Star in AI Symposium 2024 !

2023

  • 2023-12-15 I gave a talk in HIT Webinar on “Challenges and innovation for long-form video understanding: compute, algorithm, and data”. Thanks to Prof. Jiancheng Yang for the invitation.
  • 2023-08-24 I served as a judge in the finals of the AI for All Hackathon, organized by KAUST, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and the Saudi Data & AI Authority.
  • 2023-08-08 EgoLoc is selected as an ORAL in ICCV'23!
  • 2023-08-07 Ego4D was accepted to TPAMI (recommended submission as an CVPR'22 award winner)!
  • 2023-07-14 All three papers (LAE, FreeDoM, EgoLoc) submitted to ICCV'23 were accepted!
  • 2023-06-22 SMILE won the Best Paper Award in CVPRW'23 CLVision!
  • 2023-06-22 We won the first place in CVPR'23 Ego4D VQ3D Challenge!
  • 2023-05-04 I was awarded the SDAIA-KAUST AI Fund!
  • 2023-04-07 ETAD was accepted to CVPRW'23 ECV!
  • 2023-04-04 OWL was accepted to CVPRW'23 L3D-IVU !
  • 2023-03-29 SMILE was accepted to CVPRW'23 CLVision!
  • 2023-02-27 Re2TAL and LF-VSN were accepted to CVPR'23!
  • 2023-02-20 I gave a spotlight talk in the Rising Star in AI Symposium 2023 !

2022

  • 2022-12-02 I was the lecturer in the Artificial Intelligence Bootcamp on behalf of KAUST to Saudi Arabia’s smartest undergraduate students!
  • 2022-07-04 R-DFCIL and EASEE were accepted into ECCV'22!
  • 2022-06-21 Ego4D got into CVPR'22 Best Paper Finalist!
  • 2022-04-18 All Ego4D challenges are live now!
  • 2022-03-29 Ego4D was accepted to CVPR'22 as ORAL presentation!
  • 2022-03-29 MAD was accepted to CVPR'22!

2021

  • 2021-11-30 I gave a talk on “Detecting Actions in Videos via Graph Convolutional Networks” virtually at the computer vision group, University of Bristol. Thanks to Prof. Dima Damen for the invitation.
  • 2021-10-15 Ego4D was released and paper on arxiv!
  • 2021-07-23 VSGN was accepted to ICCV'21!
  • 2021-05-20 I was recognized by CVPR’21 as Outstanding Reviewer!

2020

  • 2020-07-29 ThumbNet was accepted to ACM MM'20!
  • 2020-06-07 We won the 2‑nd place in the HACS’20 Weakly‑supervised action detection Challenge!
  • 2020-02-27 G-TAD was accepted to CVPR'20!

2019

  • 2019-10-23 Our paper for YouTube-8M challenge got accepted as Oral presentation in ICCV'19 Workshop!
  • 2019-10-12 We missed the gold medal by only 0.0004 in Kaggle’s 3rd YouTube‑8M Video Understanding Challenge; rank 9/11 out of 283 teams in the public/private leaderboards!
Publications
See more publications →
Talks
  • 2025 Invertible Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems
    Talk, Stanford Computational Imaging lab, Stanford University, US
  • 2025 Video Understanding for Embodied AI
    Online talk, Sun Yat-sen University, China
  • 2025 Long-form Video Understanding in the 2020s
    Talk, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Shenzhen MSU-BIT, China
  • 2024 神经网络可逆化：大模型微调的高效显存优化策略
    Online Talk, 走进顶尖AI科学家VOL.14, 创业黑马
  • 2024 Long-form Video Understanding in the 2020s
    Talk, Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China
  • 2024 Reversifying Neural Networks: Efficient Memory Optimization Strategies for Finetuning Large Models
    Lecture, Computer Science Seminar, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
  • 2024 Towards More Realistic Continual Learning at Scale
    Invited speaker, CLVision Workshop at CVPR 2024, Seattle, US
  • 2024 Optimizing Memory Efficiency in Pretrained Model Finetuning
    Talk, OPPO, Seattle, US
  • 2024 Optimizing Memory Efficiency in Pretrained Model Finetuning
    Talk, Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR), UC Berkeley, US
  • 2024 Toward Long-form Video Understanding
    Lecture, CEMSE Graduate Seminar | KAUST Research Open Week, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
  • 2024 Challenges and Advances in Long-form Video Understanding
    Online talk, International Excellent Young Scholars Forum, School of ECE, Peking University, China
  • 2024 Towards Long-form Video Understanding
    Talk, SUSTech Global Computer Scientist Forum, Shenzhen, China
  • 2023 Challenges and Innovation for Long-form Video Understanding: Compute, Algorithm, and Data
    Online talk, Healthcare Intelligence and Technology Webinar
  • 2023 Research Highlights at IVUL with a Focus on Video Understanding
    Talk, Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data, Shenzhen, China
  • 2023 Towards Long-form Video Understanding
    Talk, Global Young Scholars' Forum, CUHK Shenzhen, China
  • 2023 A Simple and Effective Approach for Long-form Video Understanding
    Spotlight presentation, Rising Star in AI Symposium, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
  • 2021 Detecting Actions in Videos via Graph Convolutional Networks
    Online talk, the Computer Vision Group, University of Bristol, UK
  • 2021 Let the Computer See the World as Humans
    Online talk, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, China
  • 2016 Image/Video Cloud Coding
    Talk, School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, China
  • 2016 Making a Lighter Encoder: Image/Video Compressive Sensing
    Talk, Microsoft Research Asia Ph.D. Forum, Beijing, China
  • 2016 Compressive Sensing-based Image/Video Coding
    Talk, Sony Company, San Jose, US
Awards
  • 2024 First place, Ego4D Visual Queries 3D - CVPR 2024
  • 2024 First place, Epic-Kitchens action detection - CVPR 2024
  • 2024 First place, Epic-Kitchens action recognition - CVPR 2024
  • 2024 First place, Epic-Kitchens audio-based interaction detection - CVPR 2024
  • 2023 Recipient of Grant - the SDAIA-KAUST AI Fund
  • 2023 Best Paper Award - CVPR Workshop CLVision
  • 2023 First place, Visual Queries 3D Localization Challenge in Ego4D Workshop - CVPR 2023
  • 2022 First place, Visual Queries 3D Localization Challenge in Ego4D Workshop - ECCV 2022
  • 2021 Outstanding Reviewer - CVPR 2021
  • 2020 Finalist - MIT Enterprise Forum Saudi Startup Competition
  • 2020 Second place, HACS Temporal Action Localization Challenge - Second place, HACS Temporal Action Localization Challenge
  • 2019 Finalist - Taqadam Startup Accelerator, Saudi Arabia
  • 2016 Outstanding Graduate - Peking University
  • 2016 Scholarship of Outstanding Talent - Peking University
  • 2015 Best Paper Award - National Conference on Multimedia Technology (NCMT)
  • 2012 First Prize, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Contest (QInF) - Only 2 awardees in China
  • 2012 Outstanding Individual in the Summer Social Practice - Peking University
  • 2010 Outstanding Graduate Leader - Sichuan University
  • 2008 Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Award - Only 26 in China mainland and 150 worldwide
  • 2007 First-Class Scholarship - Top 1 out of 329 students, Sichuan University
  • 2007 National Scholarship - Top 1 out of 329 students, Sichuan University
Contact

Please fill in the following form to leave me a message.

chen[dot]zhao[at]kaust[dot]edu[dot]sa
Office No. 3124, Building 13, KAUST
Thuwal, Makkah Province
23955-6900
Saudi Arabia