PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hongtao Lu

Also known as 卢宏涛

Hongtao Lu is a computer scientist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who works on machine learning and computer vision, from the stability of neural networks to text-driven motion generation. He studied mathematics at Sichuan Normal University, earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Southeast University in 1997, and joined Jiao Tong in 1999 after a postdoctoral post at Fudan University. A head pose estimation paper he co-authored won a best paper award at ACCV 2009, and Elsevier named him to its list of highly cited Chinese computer science researchers each year from 2014 to 2018. In 2023 he co-authored the CVPR papers T2M-GPT, which generates human motion from text, and the URUR benchmark for ultra-high-resolution segmentation. He is a tenured professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong, where the School of Computer Science places him in the computer vision and embodied intelligence direction of its Institute of Artificial General Intelligence.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1987–1993

    Mathematics at Sichuan Normal

    He earns a B.S. in mathematics from Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu in 1987 and an M.S. in mathematics there in 1990. From 1990 to 1993, he lectures in the mathematics department at Chuxiong Normal University in Yunnan province.

  2. 1993–1999

    A Southeast University doctorate

    He studies in the radio engineering department at Southeast University under He Zhenya and completes a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1997. From 1997 to 1999, he is a postdoctoral fellow in the computer science department at Fudan University in Shanghai.

  3. 1999–2005

    Joining Shanghai Jiao Tong

    He joins the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University as an associate professor in 1999 and becomes a full professor in 2001. Between 2001 and 2005, he also spends time as a visiting scholar at City University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and RIKEN in Japan.

  4. 2003–2006

    Shuguang Scholar and Amari paper

    He is named a Shanghai Shuguang Scholar in 2003 and is selected for the Ministry of Education's New Century Excellent Talent Program in 2005. In 2006, he and Shun-ichi Amari publish a paper in IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks on the global exponential stability of multitime scale competitive neural networks.

  5. 2009–2010

    Best paper at ACCV 2009

    At ACCV 2009 in Xi'an, the paper "Head Pose Estimation based on Manifold Embedding and Distance Metric Learning" by Xiangyang Liu, Hongtao Lu and Daqiang Zhang wins a best paper award. In 2010, he receives a Shanghai Natural Science Second Prize.

  6. 2014–2018

    Elsevier list and tenure

    He appears each year from 2014 to 2018 on Elsevier's list of highly cited Chinese researchers in computer science. In May 2016, he becomes a tenured professor in the computer science department at Shanghai Jiao Tong.

  7. 2023

    T2M-GPT and a segmentation benchmark

    In 2023, he co-authors T2M-GPT, a text-to-motion model that pairs a VQ-VAE with a GPT-style transformer and reaches an FID of 0.116 on HumanML3D; the paper appears on arXiv in January 2023 and at CVPR 2023. He is also a co-author of the CVPR 2023 paper that introduces URUR, a dataset of 3,008 ultra-high-resolution images from 63 cities, together with the WSDNet segmentation framework.

  8. As of October 2026

    Institute of Artificial General Intelligence

    The School of Computer Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong places him with Yue Ding in the computer vision and embodied intelligence direction of its Institute of Artificial General Intelligence. The direction covers multimodal large models, autonomous driving, diffusion models, 3D reconstruction and vision-language-action models. He remains a tenured professor in the computer science department.

Career

  1. Since 1999Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityAssociate Professor, Full Professor
  2. 2001–2005City University of Hong KongVisiting Scholar
  3. 2001–2005Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityVisiting Scholar
  4. 2001–2005RIKENVisiting Scholar
  5. 1997–1999Fudan UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow
  6. 1990–1993Chuxiong Normal UniversityLecturer

Education

  1. 1997Southeast UniversityPhD
  2. 1990Sichuan Normal UniversityM.S. in Mathematics
  3. 1987Sichuan Normal UniversityB.S. in Mathematics

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Hongtao Lu. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Shanghai Jiao Tong University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Shanghai Jiao Tong 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Lu Hongtao, Professor, Computer Science & Engineering - SEIEE, Shanghai Jiao Tong University bjwb.seiee.sjtu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Hongtao Lu faculty profile - School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University cs.sjtu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Generating Human Motion From Textual Descriptions With Discrete Representations (CVPR 2023) openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representations (arXiv) arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Ultra-High Resolution Segmentation With Ultra-Rich Context: A Novel Benchmark (CVPR 2023) openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Institute of Artificial General Intelligence - School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University cs.sjtu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.