Professor Hong Zhang received his B.S. from Northeastern University (Boston) in 1982, and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1986, both in Electrical Engineering. Subsequently he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the University of Alberta, Canada, where he worked for over 30 years.  Since October 2020, he has been a Chair Professor in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, where he directs the Shenzhen Key Laboratory on Robotics and Computer Vision.

Professor Zhang’s research interests include robotics, computer vision, and image processing, with over 300 publications in these areas. While in Canada, Professor Zhang held a prestigious NSERC Industrial Research Chair from 2003 to 2017. He was the General Chair of 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), in Vancouver, Canada, and served a three-term as the Editor-in-Chief of IROS Conference Editorial Board (2020-2022).  Currently, he is a member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2023-2025). In recognition of his research accomplishments, he is elected Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.