Cheng Zhang
Cheng Zhang (Rylan Zhang)
Undergraduate Researcher
Jilin University (JLU), China

I am an incoming MPhil student at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou .

Currently, I am a senior undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science & Technology at Jilin University (JLU). I am fortunate to be a Research Assistant at the Affective Vision Computing (AVC) Lab, advised by Assoc. Prof. Hongxia Xie. I am honored to closely collaborate with Prof. Wen-Huang Cheng (IEEE Fellow) from National Taiwan University.


Research Interests

My primary research focus lies in Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence, with a particular emphasis on bridging the gap between advanced generative models and human emotional intelligence. I am passionate about exploring the frontiers of Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to create more intuitive and empathetic AI systems.

Currently, I am investigating the integration of Diffusion Models with Affective Computing to enable emotion-aware content generation. I am driven by the potential of cross-modal fusion techniques to enhance how machines perceive, understand, and interact with human nuances in real-world scenarios.

Human-Centric MLLM Vision-Language Models Diffusion Models Affective Computing Multi-modal Fusion
News
2026
We are hosting the AffectiveArt Challenge at ACM Multimedia 2026! I serve as the leading organizer. 🎨🏆
Mar
2025
I gave an Oral Presentation at ACM Multimedia 2025. 🎤
Oct
Paper "EmoArt" was accepted to ACM Multimedia 2025! 🎉
Aug
Participated in the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Project.
Jan
2024
Joined Affective Vision Computing (AVC) Lab as a Research Assistant.
Sept
Publications
EmoArt: A Multidimensional Dataset for Emotion-Aware Artistic Generation
Cheng Zhang, HongXia Xie, Bin Wen, Songhan Zuo, Ruoxuan Zhang, Wen-Huang Cheng
ACM Multimedia (ACM MM) 2025
EmoDiscover: Vocabulary-free Emotion Discovery via Multi-modal Large Language Model
Hung-Jen Chen, Hongxia Xie, Cheng Zhang, Songhan Zuo, Chu-Jun Peng, Hong-Han Shuai, Yong Man Ro, Wen-Huang Cheng
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (Under Review)
AmorisBench: A Comprehensive Multi-modal Dataset for Love-centric Question Answering
Chu-Jun Peng, Hongxia Xie, Cheng Zhang, Wen-Huang Cheng
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2026 (Under Review)
Single Document Image Highlight Removal via A Large-Scale Real-World Dataset and A Location-Aware Network
Lu Pan, Yu-Hsuan Huang, Hongxia Xie, Cheng Zhang, Hongwei Zhao, Hong-Han Shuai, Wen-Huang Cheng
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (Under Review)
HeLa-Mem: Hebbian Learning and Associative Memory for LLM Agents
Jinchang Zhu*, Jindong Li*, Cheng Zhang*, Jiahong Liu, Menglin Yang
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) (Under Review)
* Equal contribution (Co-first Author)
Education
  • HKUST(GZ) Logo
    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
    Sept. 2027 (Expected)
    MPhil in Artificial Intelligence
    Incoming Graduate Student
  • JLU Logo
    Jilin University (JLU)
    Sept. 2022 - Jun. 2026 (Expected)
    B.Sc. in Computer Science & Technology
    Average Score: 88/100 • Rank: 7/102
Experience
  • Research Assistant
    2024 - Present
    Affective Vision Computing (AVC) Lab, Jilin University
  • Youth Project Participant
    2025 - Present
    National Natural Science Foundation of China
    Research: Emotion Hallucination Elimination in VLM Pre-training.
Honors & Awards
  • Undergraduate Scholarship, Jilin University
    2022-2025