Faculty and Staff Directory

Dr. Zhi-Qi Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Systems at the University of Washington Tacoma and a UW Graduate Faculty with doctoral endorsement. He directs the Multimodal Intelligence Lab (MILab), where his research focuses on multimodal foundation models, embodied AI, and intelligent systems. His work aims to develop multimodal perception, reasoning, and decision-making systems for open-world, embodied, robotic, and real-world mobility applications.

Before joining University of Washington, Dr. Cheng was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and later Project Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, based in the Language Technologies Institute (LTI). During nearly five years on the DARPA KAIROS program, he served as a core technical lead responsible for the development and system delivery of CMU’s multimodal event understanding and schema-guided reasoning platform. He also contributed to several U.S. government-funded AI programs including IARPA DIVA and NIST PSIAP, focusing on multimodal perception, reasoning, and large-scale intelligent systems.

Dr. Cheng’s research has had both academic and real-world impact. His multimodal AI technologies supported The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service–winning investigations in 2022. His work has been published at leading AI conferences including NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ACL, AAAI and ACM Multimedia.

He previously held research internships at Alibaba DAMO Academy, Google Brain, and Microsoft Research, focusing on multimodal learning, scalable AI systems, and foundation models. His work has been recognized with the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship and the IBM Outstanding Student Scholarship.

Dr. Cheng’s research and public-facing work have been featured in leading media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and CBS News.

Research Areas:

• Multimodal Foundation Models
• Embodied AI & World Models
• Mobility, Public Safety & Secure Deployment

Teaching:

Dr. Cheng teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in machine learning, computer graphics, vision-language models, and multimodal AI systems. His courses emphasize the integration of foundation models, embodied AI, multimodal reasoning, and real-world AI systems, building on his prior graduate teaching experience at Carnegie Mellon University in 11-775: Large-Scale Multimedia Analysis. His courses are available to students across the UW system, including UW Tacoma, UW Seattle, and UW Bothell. Because seats are limited, interested students are encouraged to register early.

• TCSS 455 — Introduction to Machine Learning
• TCSS 458 — Computer Graphics
• TCSS 590 — Vision-Language Models
• TCSS 437 — Mobile Robotics
• Independent Research, Thesis, Design Project, and Dissertation Supervision — TCSS 499 / 600 / 700 / 702 / 800

Research Supervision & Independent Study:

Dr. Cheng advises undergraduate, and M.S. students through lab-based research in MILab, independent study, supervised research credits, capstone projects, and master’s thesis/design project supervision. Students from UW Tacoma, UW Seattle, and UW Bothell interested in working with Dr. Cheng should contact him before registration to discuss research fit, project scope, supervision capacity, and the appropriate registration pathway. The relevant pathways include TCSS 499 for undergraduate research, TCSS 600 for graduate independent study or research, TCSS 700 / 702 for master’s thesis or design project supervision, and TCSS 800 for doctoral dissertation research. Registration for independent research, thesis, design project, or dissertation credits requires prior discussion and instructor approval.

Ph.D. Advising & Recruiting:

As a UW Graduate Faculty member with doctoral endorsement, Dr. Cheng can participate in doctoral supervision, dissertation advising, and doctoral committee service through the University of Washington Graduate School and relevant UW graduate programs. He primarily recruits Ph.D. students through the Computer Science & Systems - School of Engineering & Technology (Tacoma) - PhD program. Prospective Ph.D. students should contact Dr. Cheng before applying to discuss research fit and potential advising. Competitive applicants may be considered for UW Graduate School fellowships and GSFEI Top Scholar Awards.

Information about the Computer Science & Systems - School of Engineering & Technology (Tacoma) - PhD program:
https://apply.grad.uw.edu/portal/prog_detail_find_a_program?progid=2-Z-TCSCI-00-41