Current Members:

Kwang-Ting (Tim) Cheng, Professor, HKUST

Prof. Tim Kwang Ting Cheng is the Dean of Engineering at HKUST and Chair Professor jointly in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

He graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1988 with a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Before joining HKUST, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he served since 1993. Prior to teaching at UC Santa Barbara, he spent five years at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Fengbin Tu, Adjunct Assistant Professor & Postdoc Researcher, HKUST

Fengbin Tu is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems (ACCESS), Hong Kong, China. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2019. Dr. Tu was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Scalable Energy-efficient Architecture Lab (SEAL), the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara, CA, USA, from 2019 to 2022. His research interests include AI chip, computer architecture, reconfigurable computing, and computing-in-memory.

Dong Zhang, Postdoc Researcher, HKUST

Dong ZHANG joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2022. He is now a postdoctoral research scientist in Department of Computer Science and Engineering of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Nanjing University of Science and Technology under supervision of Prof. Jinhui Tang. His research interests are in machine learning and computer vision, especially in semantic segmentation, object detection, scene parsing, video object segmentation and cross-scene segmentation.

Benteng MA, Postdoc Researcher, HKUST

Benteng MA joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2022 and is currently a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Northwestern Polytechnical University under the supervision of Prof. Yong Xia. Previously, he was a visiting student at the University of Sydney under the guidance of Prof. Dacheng Tao, and as a researcher at JD Explore Academy under the supervision of Prof. Dacheng Tao and Dr. Jing Zhang. His research interests encompass machine learning and computer vision, with a focus on neural architecture search, federated learning, ophthalmic image analysis, and trustworthy medical image analysis.

Jeffry Wicaksana, PhD Candidate, HKUST

Jeffry started his PhD study in 2019. Prior to that, he worked as a research assistant under the supervision of Prof. Cheng. In addition, he also had a prior startup experience. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2018. Currently, his research interests are in federated learning and medical image analysis. His aim is to build a general platform to perform secure and trusted collaboration between clients on medical analysis applications.

Huimin Wu, PhD Student, HKUST

Huimin joined the lab in 2019, after gaining her Bachelor's and Master's degree from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Huimin is broadly interested in Computer Vision, Maching Leanring and Artificial Intelligence. When studying for a master's degree, she has worked on recommendation system, skeleton-based action recognition and surveillance anomaly detection. During her internship at Baidu, she took responsibility for a face anti-spoofing project. She has also researched into surgical video analysis when working as a research assistant at Chinese University of Hong Kong. When pursuing her doctoral degree, she will take medical imaging as a main focus and look for more insights into the development of automatic medical image analysis.

Shuhan Li, PhD Student, HKUST

Shuhan joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2019, where she is pursuing her PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She recieved her Bechelor degree of Electronical Engineering from the City University of Hong Kong in 2019. Her research interests include computer vision and medical image analysis.

Xijie Huang, PhD Student, HKUST

Xijie joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2020, where he is pursuing his PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He received his B. E. degree in Electronics Information and Electrical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2020. His research interests lie in the general area of deep learning and computer vision, particularly in action recognition. He visited University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a research intern in 2019, working with Prof. Mani Srivastava, on security and interpretability of deep neural network.

Jingyu He, PhD Student, HKUST

Jingyu started his Ph.D. study in 2020. He is supervised by Prof. CY Tsui and Prof. Tim Cheng. Prior to that, he obtained his master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California under supervision by Prof. Paul Bogdan in 2019 and his bachelor's degree at the Guangdong University of Technology in 2017. In addition, he had multiple internship experiences in digital IC design. He is currently interested in neuromorphic computing, memristor, and computer architecture.

Yi Lin, PhD Student, HKUST

Yi joined the lab in 2021. He received his Master's and Bachelor's degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 2020 and 2012 respectively, under the supervision of Prof. Xin Yang. He also worked at Jarvis lab in Tencent in 2020. His research interests include deep learning and medical image analysis.

Fengshi Tian, PhD Student, HKUST

Fengshi joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2021, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D degree supervised by Prof. Tim Cheng and Prof. Chi Ying Tsui. Prior to that, he obtained his B.Eng. in Microelectronics Science and Engineering from Fudan University under the supervision of Prof. Xiaoyong Xue in 2021. Fengshi was also with Cutting-Edge Net of Biomedical Research And INnovation (CENBRAIN, Westlake University) as a visiting student from 2020-2021, supervised by Prof. Mohamad Sawan and Dr. Jie Yang. He visited University of Oxford in 2019, where he studied on motion planning and state estimation for unmanned systems. In addition, he had multiple internship experiences in IC design and investment. His current research interests lie in neuromorphic computing for edge applications, domain-specific architecture design and computing-in-memory systems.

Sean Shih-Yang, LIU, PhD Student, HKUST

Sean joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2022, where he is pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He received his B.B.A degree in Finance and a Minor in Information Technology from HKUST in 2021. Before re-joining HKUST, he worked as a research assistant at Academia Sinica, CFDA Lab, under the supervision of Prof. Wang, Chuang-Ju on Graph Neural Network and Recommendation System. Currently, his research focuses on model compression, computer vision, and recommendation system.

Yu Cai, PhD Student, HKUST

Yu joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2022, where he is pursuing his PhD degree in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He received his B.Eng. degree with honors in Electronic and Information Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2022. His research interests include but not limited to deep learning, computer vision and medical image analysis.

Yongkun Wu, PhD Student, HKUST

Yongkun joined the lab in 2022 as a PhD student in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Previously, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University working on cutting edge topics such as hardware software co-design as well as reconfigurable architectures targeted at AI acceleration.

Pingcheng Dong, PhD Student, HKUST

Pingcheng joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2022. He is currently a PhD student in the Electronic and Computer Engineering department of Hong Kong Universiy of Science and Technology  (HKUST) and a memeber of AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems, under the supervision of Prof. Kwang-Ting CHENG. He obtained his BEng degree of Microelectronic Science and Engineering from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in 2022, advised by Prof. Fengwei An. His reseach realm focuses on computer vision, AI chip design, AIoT accelerator and image signal processor.

Xihao Guan, PhD Student, HKUST

Xihao joined Vision and System Design Lab in 2022, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree supervised by Prof. Chi Ying Tsui and Prof. Tim Cheng. He received his master’s degree in Integrated circuit Design Engineering at HKUST, and bachelor's degree at North University of China (NUC). His current research interests include compute-in-memory, memristor, and AI hardware accelerator.

Xixi Jiang, PhD Student, HKUST

Xixi joined HKUST in 2023 to pursue a PhD. She received her bachelor's degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2019 and her master's degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2022. Currently, she focuses on computer vision and medical image analysis.

Kunming Shao, PhD Student, HKUST

Kunming joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2023. He is currently a PhD student in the Electronic and Computer Engineering department of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), supervised by Prof. Chi Ying Tsui, Prof. Tim Cheng and Prof. Fengbin Tu. He received his BEng degree of Microelectronics from South China University of Technology (SCUT) in 2023, mentored by Prof. Bin Li. He is currently interested in AI accelerator design, compute-in-memory and computer architecture.

Weiwen Zhang, PhD Student, HKUST

Weiwen Zhang joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2023, where he is pursuing his Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), supervised by Prof. Tim Cheng and Prof. Hao CHEN. He received the bachelor's degree in Data Science and Technology at HKUST and the master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Currently, his research focuses on deep learning, computer vision, medical image analysis and computational pathology.

Yonghao Tan, PhD Student, HKUST

Yonghao joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2023. He is currently a PhD student in the Electronic and Computer Engineering department of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and a member of AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems, under the supervision of Prof. Kwang-Ting CHENG. He obtained his BEng degree in Microelectronic Science and Engineering from the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in 2023, advised by Prof. Fengwei An. His research interests are mainly software/hardware co-design AI accelerator, computer vision and natural language processing.

Former Members:

Xiaofeng Hou, Postdoc Researcher, HKUST

Xiaofeng Hou joined the lab as a postdoc researcher in 2021. She is also a post-doctoral fellow at the AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems (ACCESS). Prior to that, she received her Ph.D. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2020. Her research interests include power/energy management, smart architecture/systems, sustainable architectural designs, carbon neutrality, etc.

Michael Weihang Dai, PhD Student, HKUST

Michael joined HKUST as a PhD student in 2019. He completed his bachelors degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and has some experience working in the financial industry in Hong Kong and Shanghai. He is currently working on research in computer vision applications for medical imaging. He occasionally dables in cybersecurity projects and enjoys music in his free time.

Shichao Li, PhD Candidate, HKUST

Shichao joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2017, under the supervision of Prof. Cheng in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). His research interests include computer vision and machine learning. He obtained his B. E. degree in 2017 at Chu Kochen Honors College, Zhejiang University.

Zengqiang Yan, PhD (2016-2020) & Post-doc Fellow, HKUST

Zengqiang is a post-doctoral fellow of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He joined the lab in Sep. 2016 and obtained his PhD degree in Sep. 2020. His current research interests include deep learning and medical image analysis.

Yuyang Wang, PhD (2015-2021), UCSB

Yuyang joined the lab in September 2015, where he obtained his PhD degree in Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the lab, he earned his B. Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include variation-aware modeling and design of silicon photonic interconnects and systems.

Zechun Liu, PhD (2016-2021), HKUST

Zechun joined the Vision and System Design Lab in 2016, where she obtained her PhD degree in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before that, she graduated with Shanghai Excellent Graduate Award from the Electrical Engineering department in Fudan University, where she received National Scholarships in both year 2013 and year 2014. Her research interests are in deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) compression. More specifically, she focuses on binarizing DCNN for performing the computer vision task on mobile devices.

Guang Chen, MPhil (2017-2020) Student, HKUST

Guang joined the lab in 2017 supervised by Prof. Cheng. Her research interests include adversarial machine learning, hardware security, and computer vision in autonomous systems.

Before coming to HKUST, she received her B.Sc. degree in Automation from the College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University with honors. She worked as a research assistant in the Navigation Guidance and Control Group at the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology on computer vision for UAV applications, supervised by Professor Ping Li and Professor Yu Zhang.

Hui Pan, MPhil (2016-2019), HKUST

Hui joined the lab in 2016, under the supervision of Prof. Cheng in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests include medical image analysis and deep learning.

Chong Huang, PhD (2014-2020), UCSB

Chong joined the lab in 2014 and received his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara in March 2020. His research interests include mobile computer vision, image retrieval, and machine learning. Before that, he got M.S. and B.S. degrees at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) in 2014 and 2011 respectively. Now he works as an applied scientist in Amazon.

Nicole Fern, PhD (2011-2016), UCSB; Visiting Researcher (2016-2017), HKUST; Postdoc Researcher (2017-2018), UCSB

Nicole Fern received her PhD degree in the ECE department at UC Santa Barbara under the advisement of Professor Tim Cheng in 2016. Her research interests include hardware verification and security. Her thesis work focused on identifying and verifying unspecified design functionality susceptible to malicious manipulation. After graduation she continued her research in hardware security as a post-doc at UC Santa Barbara and visiting Scholar at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Recently she joined industry and is currently working for Tortuga Logic, a hardware security company.”

Miguel Lastras, PhD (2010-2017), UCSB; Visiting Researcher (2017), HKUST; Postdoc Researcher (2017-2018), UCSB

Miguel obtained his Ph.D degree in 2017 under the advisement of Prof. Cheng in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before that, he received his B.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics and M.Sc. degree in Applied Sciences from the Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in 2008 and 2010, respectively; and a M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. His research interests include the architectural aspects of low-power crossbar-based memristive memories and its 3D monolithic integration with standard CMOS processes. He is additionally interested in the general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) for scientific applications. He is currently a Professor at Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

Zhiwei Wang, Postdoctoral researcher (2019-2020), HKUST

Zhiwei was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). His research interest includes machine learning, computer vision and medical image analysis. Before joining the lab at HKUST, he was pursuing a Ph.D. degree from 2015 to 2019 in the School of Electronic Information and Communications at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) under the supervision of Associate Prof. Xin Yang. He also finished a one-year Master in 2015 at HUST. Before that he received a Bachelor's degree from the School of Physics and Electronics of Central South University (CSU).

Leilai Shao, PhD (2015-2020), UCSB

Leilai joined the lab in 2015 and obtained his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2020. Before that, he received his B.S. degree in Electronics and Information Engineering from Zhejiang University. His research focuses on design automation and robust design for flexible hybrid electronics (FHE). He has interned at HP Labs (summer 2016-2017) and developed the FHE-PDK to enable design innovations of FHE systems.