Zheng Lian

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Zheng Lian

Zheng Lian (连政)

Associate Professor (IEEE/CCF Senior Member)
State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems
Tongji University

E-mail: zheng.lian.zeroqiaoba [at] gmail.com
[Email] [Google Scholar] [Github] [CV(Eng)] [CV(Chi)]

I am an Associate Professor (IEEE/CCF Senior Member) at the State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Tongji University. My research interests primarily center on human-centric AI and affective computing. In this field, I co-organize a series of challenges and workshops (MER@IJCAI, MRAC@ACM Multimedia, MEIJU@ICASSP), establish benchmark (MERBench) and toolbox (MERTools), and propose new tasks to enhance accuracy and reliability (EMER, OV-MER, AffectGPT, AffectGPT-RL, EmoPrefer). I (co-)author more than 100 publications in journals, patents, and conference proceedings, including IEEE TPAMI, NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR, leading to >5,700 citations. I also serve as Associate Editor of IEEE TAFFC, IEEE TASLP and Pattern Recognition, Area Editor of Information Fusion, Area Chair of ACM Multimedia and ACL ARR, ACM Multimedia 2026 Dataset Co-Chair. My short-term goal is to establish a new pathway toward more reliable and accurate emotion recognition techniques. My long-term goal is to enhance real-world human-AI interaction, ensuring robustness, trust, privacy, efficiency, and responsible deployment in areas such as healthcare, education, finance, etc.

I am recruiting visiting students, undergraduate, masters, and PhD. [Link]

Education

  • Ph.D. in Affective Computing, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sep 2016 – Jul 2021

  • B.S. in Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Sep 2012 – Jul 2016

Work Experience

  • Associate Professor, State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Tongji University, Jan 2026 – Present

  • Associate Professor, State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sep 2024 – Dec 2025

  • Assistant Professor, State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sep 2021 – Sep 2024

News

  • [Jul, 2026] Two papers are accepted by ACM Multimedia 2026, congratulations to He Hu and Yang Wu

  • [Jul, 2026] One paper is accepted by COLM, congratulations to Fan Zhang

  • [May, 2026] One paper is accepted by Pattern Recognition, congratulations to Zisen

  • [May, 2026] One paper is accepted by ACL, congratulations to Jinyang

  • [Apr, 2026] I will co-organize MER'26 Challenge and MRAC'26 Workshop@ACM Multimedia [link]

  • [Mar, 2026] I will serve as Associate Editor at Pattern Recognition

  • [Feb, 2026] We are co-organizing the MFM-FE'26 Workshop@FG and welcome paper submissions. [link]

  • [Jan, 2026] Two papers are accepted by ICLR 2026.

  • [Jan, 2026] MERBench is accepted by IEEE TPAMI.

  • [Dec, 2025] I am happy to serve as ACM Multimedia 2026 Dataset Co-Chair.

  • [Dec, 2025] One paper is accepted by IEEE JSTSP, congratulations to Qifei.

  • [Dec, 2025] AffectGPT receives the Best Poster in the 3rd CSIG Conference on Emotional Intelligence.

  • [Nov, 2025] Three papers are accepted by AAAI 2026 (including 2 Oral papers), congratulations to Liyun and Jinyang.

  • [Oct, 2025] I will co-organize MER'25 Challenge and MRAC'25 Workshop@ACM Multimedia [link]

  • [Oct, 2025] One paper receives Best Paper Mention Award in PRCV, congratulations to Yazhou.

  • [Oct, 2025] IRNet is accepted by IEEE TPAMI.

  • [Oct, 2025] I will serve as Area Chair at ACL ARR 2025.

  • [Sep, 2025] I am selected to Stanford University's Top 2% Scientists list.

  • [Sep, 2025] Two papers are accepted by NeurIPS 2025, congratulations to Ziyang and Ziyu.

  • [Sep, 2025] Congratulations on successful promotion to CCF Senior Member.

  • [Sep, 2025] One paper is accepted by IEEE TAFFC, congratulations to Yazhou.

  • [Aug, 2025] Congratulations on successful promotion to IEEE Senior Member.

  • [Jul, 2025] Three papers are accepted by ACM Multimedia 2025.

  • [Jun, 2025] I will serve as Associate Editor at IEEE TASLP.

  • [May, 2025] One paper is accepted by ACL25(Finding), congratulations to Zhuofan.

  • [May, 2025] OV-MER and AffectGPT are accepted by ICML25, including one Oral (Top 1%) paper.

  • [Mar, 2025] I will serve as Area Chair at ACM Multimedia 2025.

  • [Mar, 2025] Two papers are accepted by ICASSP2025.

  • [Feb, 2025] I will serve as Area Editor at Information Fusion.

  • [Jan, 2025] I will serve as Associate Editor at IEEE TAFFC.

  • [Sep, 2024] Emotion-LLaMA is accepted by NeurIPS24, congratulations to Zebang.

  • [Aug, 2024] We organize MEIJU'25 Challenge@ICASSP [link].

  • [Jul, 2024] SVFAP is accepted by TAFFC, congratulations to Licai.

  • [Apr, 2024] We organize MER'24 Challenge@IJCAI and MRAC'24 Workshop@ACM Multimedia [link].

  • [Mar, 2024] HiCMAE is accepted by Information Fusion, congratulations to Licai.

  • [Mar, 2024] GPT-4V with Emotion is accepted by Information Fusion.

  • [Nov, 2023] Two papers are accepted by NeurIPS23.

  • [Oct, 2023] MAE-DFER is accepted by ACM MM, congratulations to Licai.

  • [Apr, 2023] We organize MER'23 Challenge and MRAC'23 Workshop@ACM Multimedia [link].

  • [May, 2023] EMT-DLFR is accepted by IEEE TAFFC, congratulations to Licai.

  • [Jan, 2023] GCNet is accepted by IEEE TPAMI.

  • [Jul, 2022] PIRNet is accepted by IEEE TNNLS.

  • [Jan, 2022] SMIN is accepted by IEEE TAFFC.

  • [Jan, 2021] CTNet is accepted by IEEE TASLP.