Zhicheng Zhang

Zhicheng Zhang

PhD Student, UNSW

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at The University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, where my research focuses on computer vision, generative models, and multimodal learning. Prior to joining UNSW, I received my Master’s degree in Computer Science from The University of Queensland (UQ), where I was awarded the Dean’s Commendation for Academic Excellence.

My research centers on developing intelligent and generalizable multimodal AI systems, with particular interests in diffusion models, neural decoding, audio-driven visual generation, and multimodal representation learning. I am especially interested in bridging human perception and artificial intelligence by exploring how visual, auditory, and neural signals can be jointly modeled to enable more perceptually aligned and human-centered generative systems.

My research has resulted in publications at multiple international academic conferences, and I have been granted several patents and software copyrights.

🎓 Education

  • Apr. 2024 – Present The University of New South Wales · Australia’s #1 university (QS 19)
    PhD in Economics and Management.
    Awarded a Full Scholarship.
  • Aug. 2022 – Dec. 2024 University of Queensland (QS 40)
    Master of Engineering in Computer Science.
    Awarded the Dean’s Commendation for Academic Excellence.

🔥 News

  • 2026.08 One paper has been accepted to the CIKM 2026 PhD Symposium. Congratulations to the collaborators!
  • 2026.04 One paper has been accepted to WWW TIME 2026, selected as an Oral paper, and awarded the Best Paper Award. Congratulations to the collaborators!
  • 2025.10 I began a remote research collaboration with Prof. Yongsheng Gao and Dr. Lei Wang.
  • 2024.04 I began my Ph.D. studies at UNSW, under the supervision of Dr. Yu Zhang and Prof. Daoyi Dong.
  • 2022.08 I began my Master’s studies at UQ, under the supervision of Prof. Xue Li.

📚 Publications

Preprints

Preprint Temporally-Aligned Evaluation for Audio-Driven Talking Head Generation.
Zhicheng Zhang, Lei Wang, Yu Zhang, Yongsheng Gao.
arXiv:2606.01031, 2026.

Preprint Test-Time Self-Adaptive Conditioning for Stable Audio-Driven Talking-Head Generation.
Zhicheng Zhang, Lei Wang, Yu Zhang, Yongsheng Gao.
arXiv:2605.25488, 2026.

Preprint Hierarchical and Step-Layer-Wise Tuning of Attention Specialty for Multi-Instance Synthesis in Diffusion Transformers.
Chunyang Zhang, Zhenhong Sun, Zhicheng Zhang, Junyan Wang, Yu Zhang, Dong Gong, Huadong Mo, Daoyi Dong.
arXiv:2504.10148, 2025.

Conference Papers

WWW Oral Talking-Head Generation in Practice.
Zhicheng Zhang, Lei Wang, Yongsheng Gao, Yu Zhang.
Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2026 (WWW), pp. 1316–1325, 2026. Selected as an Oral paper.
Best Paper Award

ADMA Multimodal Learning for Automatic Summarization: A Survey.
Zhicheng Zhang, Yibo Sun, Shiyan Su.
International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, pp. 362–376, 2023.

ADMA Window-Controlled Sepsis Prediction Using a Model Selection Approach.
Shiyan Su, Su Lan, Zhicheng Zhang, Anjie Zhu.
International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, pp. 451–465, 2023.

Patents

A Fixing Fixture for Flaky Specimen of Grinding Robot. Chinese Patent No. CN112476238B · December 10, 2021.
Z. Zhang, B. Chen, Y. Hu.

GAS Emission Assembly of a Switch Cabinet. Chinese Patent No. CN213341245U · June 1, 2021.
B. Chen, Z. Zhang, Y. Hu, et al.

A Kind of Cabinet Door Fixing Device for Switch Gear Maintenance. Chinese Patent No. CN112282535A · January 29, 2021.
B. Chen, Z. Zhang, Y. Hu, et al.

An Explosion-proof Oil-immersed Transformer. Chinese Patent No. CN212303352U · January 5, 2021.
Z. Zhang, B. Chen, Y. Hu, et al.

An Indoor Positioning and Navigation System for the Blind and Its Method. Chinese Patent No. CN111854761A · October 30, 2020.
B. Chen, Y. Hu, Z. Zhang.

A UAV Carrying Platform. Chinese Patent No. CN211731848U · October 23, 2020.
Z. Zhang.

Cloud Computing Big Data Support Management System V1.0. Chinese Software Copyright 2020SR0334426 · April 15, 2020.
Z. Zhang.

Academic Service

Workshop Organising

  • I am serving as a Coordinator for TIME 2027: the 3rd International Workshop on Transformative Insights in Multi-faceted Evaluation, held in conjunction with The Web Conference 2027.
  • I served as a Coordinator for TIME 2026: the 2nd International Workshop on Transformative Insights in Multi-faceted Evaluation, held in conjunction with The Web Conference 2026.

Journal Reviewing

  • I serve as a Reviewer for Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR).
  • I serve as a Reviewer for SN Computer Science.

Contact