Faculty and Staff Directory

Zhi-Qi Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Systems in the School of Engineering & Technology at the University of Washington Tacoma. He directs the Multimodal Intelligence Lab (MILab) and is a UW Graduate Faculty member with doctoral endorsement.

Research

Multimodal AI · World Models · Intelligent Transportation

He develops multimodal AI and world models that combine 3D geometry, semantic understanding, and generative modeling for perception, spatial reasoning, prediction, and planning from incomplete observations. Applications include visual navigation in dynamic environments and transportation infrastructure mapping, monitoring, and management.

Two projects funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation through PacTrans support his research in 3D urban scene reconstruction and transportation asset mapping.

Background

Before joining UW, he spent seven years at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science, as a Research Associate (2017–2019), Postdoctoral Research Associate (2019–2022), and Project Scientist (2022–2024). His doctoral and postdoctoral research advisors were Professor Alexander G. Hauptmann and Professor Teruko Mitamura, respectively.

He was a core technical lead for CMU’s DARPA KAIROS and KAIROS Plus projects (2019–2024) and contributed to DARPA AIDA (2018–2023), DARPA GAILA (2019–2022), IARPA DIVA (2017–2021), and NIST PSIAP (2017–2019).

His industry experience includes Visiting Faculty Researcher at Meta AI (2025) and Research Intern at Microsoft Research (2019) and Google Brain (2018). He also contributed technical analysis to The Washington Post’s reporting recognized with the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Student advising & opportunities

He primarily recruits Ph.D. and master’s students through UW’s Computer Science & Systems (CSS) programs. He can also co-advise students in CSE, ECE, and related UW programs and serve on their doctoral supervisory committees.

He welcomes prospective and current students interested in multimodal AI, world models, or intelligent transportation. Undergraduate students across UW are also welcome to inquire about research. Email zhiqics@uw.edu with a CV and brief research interests to discuss opportunities and the appropriate graduate program.

CSS Ph.D. program · CSS M.S. program · Student opportunities & achievements

Teaching

His teaching spans graduate and undergraduate courses in machine learning, multimodal AI, algorithms, robotics, and computer graphics.

• TCSS 590: Special Topics — Vision–Language Models
• TCSS 543: Advanced Algorithms
• TCSS 455: Introduction to Machine Learning
• TCSS 437: Mobile Robotics
• TCSS 458: Computer Graphics

Students across UW are welcome to take his courses. See the UW cross-campus enrollment policy. Research supervision includes undergraduate research, graduate independent study, master’s theses and design projects, and doctoral research. See courses and research credit.

Student achievements & outreach

His Ph.D. students Yifei Dong and Fengyi Wu received Graduate School Top Scholar Awards in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Dong also received the 2025 Carwein–Andrews Ph.D. Fellowship.

Dr. Cheng has served as a judge and advisor for Regeneron ISEF and an advisor for the S.-T. Yau High School Science Award. His high-school mentees include Jasmine Liu, recipient of the ACM Second Award and a Fourth Award in Robotics and Intelligent Machines at ISEF 2023, and Yulun (Alan) Wu, recipient of the 2020 Yau Bronze Prize in Computer Science.

His high-school mentees have been admitted to MIT, UChicago, UIUC, Imperial College London, and Harvey Mudd College.

Recognition & service

Selected recognition includes the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship, CSC–IBM Outstanding Student Scholarship, ICCV Outstanding Reviewer, and a CVPR Anti-UAV Workshop Best Paper Award. At UW, he was selected for the 2025–26 Undergraduate Research Faculty Fellows program supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. His academic service includes Area Chair for CVPR 2027 and NAACL 2025. He also serves on the Program Committee of the RoboWorld Challenge 2026.

Academic service & faculty development · Media collaborations