PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Lin Zhang

Lin Zhang is a computer vision professor at Tongji University in Shanghai whose research covers perceptual image quality assessment and the environment perception of intelligent vehicles. He earned B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003 and 2006, then a PhD at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2011, when FSIM, the feature similarity index for image quality assessment that he coauthored with Lei Zhang, Xuanqin Mou and David Zhang, appeared in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. After joining Tongji's School of Software Engineering in August 2011, he won a Best Paper Award (Honorable Mention) in Pattern Recognition in October 2012 for finger-knuckle-print verification, published VSI in 2014 and a completely blind image quality evaluator in 2015, and coauthored the BeVIS indoor-parking SLAM benchmark in January 2023. In April 2026, he coauthored Keep It CALM, a calibration-free framework for kilometer-level SLAM with visual geometry foundation models. He is a full professor at Tongji's School of Computer Science and Technology and an associate editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation.

Timeline

  1. 2003–2011

    Degrees in Shanghai and Hong Kong

    He earns B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003 and 2006. In 2011, he receives a PhD from the Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

  2. 2011

    The FSIM quality index

    FSIM, coauthored with Lei Zhang, Xuanqin Mou and David Zhang, is published in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing in 2011. The full-reference image quality index uses phase congruency as its primary feature and gradient magnitude as its secondary feature. Tests on six benchmark databases show higher agreement with human ratings than the metrics it is compared with.

  3. March 2011–August 2011

    Joining Tongji University

    He works as a Research Associate in the Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University from March 2011 to August 2011. In August 2011, he joins the School of Software Engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai, where he serves as an associate professor in the Media Arts and Sciences faculty.

  4. October 2012

    A Pattern Recognition paper award

    In October 2012, his 2010 paper on online finger-knuckle-print verification for personal authentication wins a Best Paper Award (Honorable Mention) in the journal Pattern Recognition.

  5. 2014–2015

    VSI and a blind evaluator

    In 2014, he publishes VSI, a visual saliency induced index for perceptual image quality assessment, in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing with Ying Shen and Hongyu Li. In 2015, he coauthors a feature-enriched completely blind image quality evaluator with Lei Zhang and Alan C. Bovik in the same journal.

  6. January 2023

    An indoor parking SLAM benchmark

    In January 2023, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications publishes SLAM for Indoor Parking, which he coauthors with Xuan Shao, Ying Shen, Shengjie Zhao, Dandan Zhu and Yicong Zhou. The article establishes BeVIS, a benchmark dataset with front-view visual, inertial and surround-view sensors for evaluating SLAM systems in autonomous indoor parking, and proposes VISSLAM-2, a tightly coupled semantic framework.

  7. April 2026

    Keep It CALM for SLAM

    In April 2026, he coauthors Keep It CALM with Tianjun Zhang, Fengyi Zhang, Tianchen Deng and Hesheng Wang. The paper addresses kilometer-level SLAM with visual geometry foundation models and proposes a plug-and-play framework that needs no pre-calibration.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Tongji University

    He is a full professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology at Tongji University, with research interests in environment perception of intelligent vehicles, pattern recognition, computer vision and perceptual image and video quality assessment. He also serves as an associate editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation.

Career

  1. Since 2011Tongji UniversityAssociate Professor
  2. 2011Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityResearch Associate

Education

  1. 2011Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityPh.D.
  2. 2006Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityM.Sc.
  3. 2003Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityB.Sc.

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Tongji 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 Tongji 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. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Tongji University. 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.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Hong Kong Polytechnic 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.

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

  1. Keep It CALM: Toward Calibration-Free Kilometer-Level SLAM with Visual Geometry Foundation Models via an Assistant Eye arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. FSIM: A Feature SIMilarity Index for Image Quality Assessment www4.comp.polyu.edu.hk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. FSIM: A Feature Similarity Index for Image Quality Assessment | IEEE Signal Processing Society signalprocessingsociety.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Lin Zhang-同济大学软件学院 sse.tongji.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. SLAM for Indoor Parking: A Comprehensive Benchmark Dataset and a Tightly Coupled Semantic Framework - East China Normal University pure.ecnu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.