Ying Wu
Ying Wu is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University whose computer vision work includes visual motion and pattern analysis. He completed a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001, after degrees at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Tsinghua University, and joined Northwestern as an assistant professor in 2001. With Jiang Wang, Zicheng Liu, and Junsong Yuan, he published a CVPR paper in June 2012 that learns an actionlet ensemble for recognizing actions from depth cameras. IEEE named him a Fellow in 2017, and the International Association for Pattern Recognition named him a Fellow in 2020. He serves as editor-in-chief of Machine Vision and Applications.
- Now at
- Northwestern University
- Works
- 444
- Citations
- 19,501
- h-index
- 67
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 17 October 2026.
Timeline
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1994–2001
Degrees in China and Illinois
He receives a B.S. in automatic control from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1994 and an M.S. in the Automation Department at Tsinghua University in 1997. He completes a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. From 1997 to 2001 he works as a research assistant with Thomas S. Huang at the Image Formation and Processing group of the Beckman Institute, and in the summers of 1999 and 2000 he interns with the Vision Technology Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
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2001–2012
Faculty ranks at Northwestern
He joins Northwestern University as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in 2001. He becomes an associate professor in 2007 and a full professor in 2012.
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2003
An NSF CAREER award
He receives a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2003. With support from NSF award IIS-0347877, his group studies high-dimensional visual motion, including the motion of the human body and hand.
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June 2012
Actionlets for depth cameras
With Jiang Wang, Zicheng Liu, and Junsong Yuan, he publishes Mining Actionlet Ensemble for Action Recognition with Depth Cameras at CVPR in June 2012. An actionlet ensemble model represents each action, and features for depth data characterize human motion and human-object interactions.
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2017
An IEEE Fellowship
IEEE names him a Fellow in 2017 for contributions to motion analysis and pattern discovery in computer vision.
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2017
Program co-chair of CVPR
He serves as program co-chair of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in 2017.
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2020
An IAPR Fellowship
The International Association for Pattern Recognition names him a Fellow in 2020 for contributions to visual motion and pattern analysis in computer vision.
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As of October 2026
Professor at Northwestern
He is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University, with a courtesy appointment in computer science. From 2022 he serves as editor-in-chief of the IAPR journal Machine Vision and Applications. In 2024 his papers include Evidential Active Recognition and Active Open-Vocabulary Recognition.
Sources and credits
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- A Brief Bio and CV
- Collaborative Visual Analysis of Complex Motions
- Mining Actionlet Ensemble for Action Recognition with Depth Cameras - Microsoft Research
- Ying Wu Named 2017 IEEE Fellow | News & Events | Electrical and Computer Engineering | Northwestern Engineering
- Professional Services
- Chronological List of IAPR Fellows – International Association for Pattern Recognition
- Alphabetical List of IAPR Fellows – International Association for Pattern Recognition
- Wu, Ying | Faculty | Northwestern Engineering