PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Tao Xiang

Also known as T. Xiang, Tao A Xiang

Tao Xiang is a computer-vision researcher whose work links video analysis, person re-identification and sketch recognition. He served as principal investigator for an EPSRC project on abnormal public-space video, coauthored Sketch-a-Net and OSNet, and contributed to FashionViL and CLIP-based sketch retrieval. In 2024, he coauthored a CLIP-based method for sketch classification across unknown categories and abstraction levels. As of October 2026, he is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Surrey and Chief Scientist at Samsung AI Research Centre, Cambridge.

Works
383
Citations
39,594
h-index
94
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. August 2009–October 2012

    Abnormal video analytics

    From August 2009 to October 2012, he serves as principal investigator for EPSRC project EP/G063974/1, which develops video analytics to detect abnormal behaviour in public spaces.

  2. 2015

    A BMVC Best Science Paper

    In 2015, he coauthors Sketch-a-Net that Beats Humans with Qian Yu, Yongxin Yang, Yi-Zhe Song and Timothy Hospedales; BMVC gives the paper its Best Science Paper award.

  3. 2019

    OSNet for person re-identification

    At ICCV in 2019, he coauthors OSNet, a lightweight person re-identification network that combines features from multiple visual scales. It uses 2.2 million parameters and surpasses human operators in re-identification accuracy.

  4. 2022

    FashionViL for fashion data

    In 2022, he coauthors FashionViL, a fashion-focused vision-and-language model built with two pre-training tasks tailored to fashion data.

  5. 2023

    CLIP for zero-shot sketch retrieval

    In 2023, he coauthors CLIP for All Things, which uses sketch-specific prompts for zero-shot sketch-based image retrieval at category and fine-grained levels.

  6. 2024

    CLIP for human-drawn sketches

    In 2024, he coauthors Do Generalised Classifiers really work on Human Drawn Sketches?, a method that adapts CLIP for classification across unknown categories and levels of sketch abstraction.

  7. As of October 2026

    Surrey and Samsung AI roles

    As of October 2026, he is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Surrey and Chief Scientist at Samsung AI Research Centre, Cambridge.

Career

  1. Since 2020SamsungChief Scientist
  2. Since 2019University of SurreyDistinguished Professor
  3. 2021–2025Meta
  4. 2020–2023IFlyTek
  5. 2014–2016University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
  6. 2003–2016University of London
  7. 2003–2019Queen Mary University of London

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

  1. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Tao Xiang. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Tao Xiang. 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.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Samsung. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Surrey. 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 with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Tao Xiang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Multi-Object Video Behaviour Modelling for Abnormality Detection and Differentiation gtr.ukri.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. BMVC 2015 awards bmva-archive.org.uk. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Omni-Scale Feature Learning for Person Re-Identification openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Surrey AI research achieves world-leading technology for visual recognition of people surrey.ac.uk. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Prof Tao Xiang | University of Surrey surrey.ac.uk. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Do Generalised Classifiers really work on Human Drawn Sketches? arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Artificial Intelligence MSc | University of Surrey surrey.ac.uk. Checked 22 October 2026.