PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hanwang Zhang

Also known as Zhang Hanwang

Hanwang Zhang is a computer scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore whose research connects computer vision, language and causal inference. He earned a PhD in computer science from the National University of Singapore in 2014, spent 2017 and 2018 as a research scientist at Columbia University, and joined NTU as a Nanyang Assistant Professor in 2018. His team's scene graph detection benchmark was a CVPR Best Paper finalist in 2019, and a 2020 CVPR paper he coauthored used counterfactual causality to remove training bias from scene graph generation. In 2021, he received the Young Scientist Award presented alongside Singapore's President's Science and Technology Awards, and in 2025 he coauthored the Selftok visual tokenizer. He is a professor in NTU's College of Computing & Data Science and holds the President's Chair in Artificial Intelligence.

Timeline

  1. 2009–2014

    Zhejiang degree and NUS PhD

    He earns a B.Eng in computer science from Zhejiang University in 2009 and a PhD in computer science from the National University of Singapore in 2014. The School of Computing at NUS gives him its Best Ph.D. Thesis Award in 2014.

  2. 2014–2018

    NUS fellowship and Columbia postdoc

    He is a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's School of Computing from 2014 to 2016. From 2017 to 2018, he is a research scientist (postdoc) in Columbia University's Department of Computer Science.

  3. 2018

    Nanyang Assistant Professor at NTU

    He joins Nanyang Technological University in 2018 as a Nanyang Assistant Professor.

  4. 2019

    CVPR finalist and Visual Dialog win

    In 2019, his team's scene graph detection benchmark is a finalist for the CVPR Best Paper award. Their visual dialog agent takes first place in the 2019 Visual Dialog Challenge.

  5. 2020

    Unbiased scene graph generation

    In 2020, he coauthors "Unbiased Scene Graph Generation from Biased Training" with Kaihua Tang, Yulei Niu, Jianqiang Huang and Jiaxin Shi, accepted by CVPR 2020. The method draws counterfactual causality from a trained causal graph to remove the effect of bad bias. He also receives the IEEE AI's 10 to Watch award in 2020.

  6. 2021

    Singapore's Young Scientist Award

    In 2021, he receives the Young Scientist Award, presented alongside Singapore's President's Science and Technology Awards and organised by the Singapore National Academy of Science. It recognises his group-theory approach to a general causal framework for artificial intelligence that can actively intervene in the environment.

  7. May 2025

    The Selftok visual tokenizer

    In May 2025, he is a coauthor of Selftok, a discrete visual tokenizer that builds an autoregressive prior into image tokens through the reverse diffusion process of image generation.

  8. As of October 2026

    President's Chair in Artificial Intelligence

    He is a professor in NTU's College of Computing & Data Science and holds the President's Chair in Artificial Intelligence. He is the faculty member of the MReaL Lab.

Career

  1. Since 2018Nanyang Technological UniversityNanyang Assistant Professor
  2. 2017–2018Columbia UniversityResearch Scientist (Postdoc)
  3. 2014–2016National University of SingaporeSenior Research Fellow

Education

  1. 2014National University of SingaporePhD in Computer Science
  2. 2009Zhejiang UniversityB.Eng in Computer Science

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Nanyang Technological University. 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.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Nanyang Technological University. 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.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Nanyang Technological University. 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.
  4. 5 of the 25 people with the most-cited recent papers also lead on career citationsIncludes Nanyang Technological University. We compare citations to 2023–2025 papers with career citations and h-index, after correcting reviewed publication-date errors: who leads, when they started and where they work.

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 Hanwang Zhang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. ICLR Mentorship Hanwang Zhang iclr.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Prof Zhang Hanwang | Academic Profile | DR-NTU | Research | NTU Singapore dr.ntu.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. A Truly Unbiased Model - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [2002.11949] Unbiased Scene Graph Generation from Biased Training arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Two NTU scientists conferred Singapore’s top honour for research discoveries and achievements | NTU Singapore ntu.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Zhang Hanwang – Asian Scientist Magazine asianscientist.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. [2505.07538] Selftok: Discrete Visual Tokens of Autoregression, by Diffusion, and for Reasoning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. MReaL Lab mreallab.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.