Zhihao Zhang 张志浩
Ph.D. Student · UNC-Chapel Hill
I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), advised by Prof. Xiaoming Liu. My research focuses on 3D vision, spatial intelligence, and world models.
I spent the first two years of my Ph.D. at Michigan State University (MSU). Before that, I received my B.Eng. and M.S. in Computer Science from Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU), advised by Prof. Weizhan Zhang. I was also a research intern at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), hosted by Prof. Yu-Xiong Wang, and at TikTok in summer 2026.
I am looking for research internships for summer 2027. Feel free to reach out!
Research
My long-term goal is to build computational models that perceive, reason about, and predict the physical 3D world. Concretely, I work on:
- 3D Vision. Monocular 3D object detection, 3D shape understanding, and multi-modal 3D perception for autonomous driving and beyond.
- Spatial Intelligence. Spatial reasoning, 3D grounding, and geometry-aware representations in vision-language models.
- World Models. Self-supervised video pre-training via latent prediction, and predictive, action-conditioned modeling of 3D scenes toward embodied perception and interaction.
News
Two first-author papers accepted by NeurIPS 2026. New
Our MonoCoP has been selected as a CVPR 2026 Highlight.
Two first-author papers accepted by CVPR 2026.
I will join TikTok as a Research Intern in summer 2026 — see you in San Jose!
One paper accepted by ICCV 2025.
Joined MSU as a PhD student.
Honored with the Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award at XJTU.
One first-author paper accepted by CVPR 2024.
Honored with the National Scholarship.
Selected Publications
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RefineAny3D: Depth Refinement as Semantic Alignment for Monocular 3D Detection
NeurIPS 2026
Project · Coming soon
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Rethinking Geometric Depth in Monocular 3D Object Detection: A Projection-Consistent Reformulation
NeurIPS 2026
Project · Coming soon
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* denotes equal contribution.
Education
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Ph.D. in Computer Science
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Ph.D. in Computer Science
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M.S. in Computer Science and Technology
Xi'an Jiaotong University · China
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B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology
Xi'an Jiaotong University · China
Qian Xuesen Honors College
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Berkeley International Study Program
UC Berkeley · USA
Experience
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Research Intern
TikTok · San Jose, CA, USA
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Research Assistant
Michigan State University · East Lansing, MI, USA
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Research Intern
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Urbana, IL, USA
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Research Assistant
Xi'an Jiaotong University · Xi'an, China
Awards & Honors
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Engineering Co-op Scholarship
Michigan State University
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Top 1% of graduates
Outstanding Graduate Thesis
Xi'an Jiaotong University
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Top 0.1%
National Scholarship
Ministry of Education, China
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Top 0.1%
Tencent Scholarship
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Top 10%
First Prize Scholarship
Xi'an Jiaotong University
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Top 10%
Outstanding Freshman Scholarship
Xi'an Jiaotong University