PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Chi-Keung Tang

Also known as Chi–Keung Tang, Chi Keung Tang, 鄧智強

Chi-Keung Tang is a computer vision researcher whose work spans interactive image editing, image matting, and language-model-based motion generation. He earned computer science degrees at CUHK, HKUST, and USC before joining HKUST's faculty in 2000. He coauthored Lazy Snapping and KNN Matting; his student Jia Chen won a CVPR award for a camera-shake deblurring paper, and Tang became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers during 2018–2019. As of October 2026, he is a professor at HKUST and coauthors video-segmentation research.

Works
266
Citations
14,365
h-index
61
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1992–2000

    Computer science degrees

    He earns a BS in computer science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1992 and an MPhil at HKUST in 1994. At USC, he earns an MSc in 1999 and a PhD in 2000 under Gerard Medioni.

  2. 2000–2005

    HKUST faculty appointments

    He joins HKUST's Computer Science Department as an assistant professor in 2000 and becomes an associate professor in 2005. He also starts as an adjunct researcher in Microsoft Research Asia's Visual Computing Group in 2000.

  3. 2004

    The Lazy Snapping tool

    In 2004, he coauthors Lazy Snapping, an interactive image-cutout tool. Its segmentation combines graph cuts with precomputed oversegmentation and gives users instant feedback on object boundaries.

  4. 2008

    A CVPR deblurring award

    His student Jia Chen wins CVPR's Best Student Poster Award for Robust Dual Motion Deblurring, a method that removes camera-shake blur from digital photos.

  5. 2013

    KNN Matting

    In 2013, he coauthors KNN Matting with Qifeng Chen and Dingzeyu Li. The method applies nearest neighbors in nonlocal neighborhoods to alpha matting and extracts multiple image layers.

  6. 2018–2019

    An IEEE Fellowship

    During 2018–2019, he is elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

  7. 2025

    Motion-Agent at ICLR

    In 2025, he coauthors Motion-Agent at ICLR, a framework for human-motion generation, editing, and understanding. MotionLLM maps motion to language-model tokens, while GPT-4 supports multi-turn conversational generation.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at HKUST

    He becomes a professor in HKUST's Department of Computer Science and Engineering in 2009 and holds that post in 2026. In 2026, he coauthors CoT-RVS, a zero-shot chain-of-thought paper on video segmentation.

Career

  1. Since 2000Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyAssistant Professor, Associate Professor
  2. From 2000Microsoft Research AsiaAdjunct Researcher

Education

  1. 2000University of Southern CaliforniaPhD
  2. 1999University of Southern CaliforniaMSc
  3. 1994Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyMPhil
  4. 1992Chinese University of Hong KongBS in computer science

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes Microsoft. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Chi-Keung Tang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Chi Keung Tang's CV cse.ust.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Lazy Snapping - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Research Papers Win Awards at Prestigious Conferences | HKUST CSE cse.hkust.edu.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. KNN matting - The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Research Portal researchportal.hkust.edu.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. HKUST Annual Report 2018-19 publications.ust.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Motion-Agent: A Conversational Framework for Human Motion Generation with LLMs arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Faculty Profiles - Chi Keung TANG | The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology facultyprofiles.hkust.edu.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Chi-Keung TANG | HKUST CSE cse.hkust.edu.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.