Sheng’s homepage
Who I am
I am Sheng Zhao (赵晟), a Ph.D. student starting in Spring 2026 at the University of Rochester, NY, USA, under the supervision of Prof. Yuhao Zhu (admitted for Fall 2025; start deferred due to visa processing). My research focuses on visual computing and large-scale AI models, including LLM, VLM, and diffusion model.
Previously, I interned on the AI Coding Team at ByteDance (字节跳动) and worked as a research intern at Z.ai (智谱). I received my Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Education
Ph.D. student in Computer Science, from Spring 2026
Advisor: Professor Yuhao Zhu
2021.9 - 2025.6
B.S. in Mathematics and Physics
B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering
2024.6 - 2024.9
Research Assistant in Information Science
Advisor: Professor Michael Nebeling
Experience
2025.10 - 2026.01
Involving in post-training of the agentic model (for internal utilization, using Seed-1.6 and Qwen series).
Additionally, I have conducted research at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Rochester, working with Professor Yukang Yan, as well as at the Department of Computer Science and Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University, under the guidance of Professor Xin Yi and Professor Bowen Zhou, respectively. In addition, I served as a research intern in PI Lab, where I conducted research on persona-aware LLM in the dental domain.
Publications
[1]. Sheng Zhao*, Junrui Zhu*, Shuning Zhang, Xueyang Wang, Hongyi Li, Fang Yi, Xin Yi, and Hewu Li. CoordAuth: Hands-Free Two-Factor Authentication in Virtual Reality Leveraging Head-Eye Coordination.
Accepted as Conference Paper, The 32nd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR’25). (* Equal Contribution)
[ieeevr.org][IEEE Xplore]
[2]. Xueyang Wang, Sheng Zhao, Yihe Wang, Ziyu Han, Xinge Liu, Xin Tong, and Xin Yi. Raise Your Eyebrows Higher: Facilitating Emotional Communication in Social Virtual Reality Through Region-specific Facial Expression Scaling.
Accepted, 2025 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’25).
[sigchi.org][ACM Library]
[3]. Janet Johnson, Macarena Peralta, Mansanjam Kaur, Sophia Huang, Sheng Zhao, Hannah Guan, Shwetha Rajaram, and Michael Nebeling. Exploring Collaborative GenAI Agents in Synchronous Group Settings: Eliciting Team Perceptions and Design Considerations for the Future of Work.
Accepted, The 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW’25).
[Arxiv][ACM Library]
Service
Reviewer: IMWUT 2024; OzCHI 2025; CHI LBW 2025; ICWSM 2025; DIS 2025; ISMAR 2025; VR 2025, 2026; CHI 2025, 2026
Student Volunteer: CHI 2025
Hobbies
- 🎵 Favorite musicians: Stefanie Sun (孙燕姿) and Jay Chou (周杰伦).
- 📚 Favorite book: Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦).
- 🚴♂️ Passionate about outdoor activities and proud member of the Tsinghua Cycling Team. Strava account here.