PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Yongdong Zhang

Also known as Yong-Dong ZHANG, Yong-Dong Zhang, Yong-dong Zhang, 张勇东

Yongdong Zhang is a USTC computer scientist whose AI research spans multimedia analysis and online content security. He earned degrees at Dalian University of Technology and Tianjin University, worked at the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2002 to 2017, and joined USTC as a professor in 2017. His work includes high-throughput internet-video computing, the ABINet scene-text recognizer, and machine-generated-text detection; it earned the 2019 National Natural Science Award and the 2023 National Technical Invention Award, and IEEE named him a Fellow in 2025. As of October 2026, he is a professor and executive dean at USTC and leads a national project to build a large-scale controllable social-network simulator.

Works
826
Citations
36,291
h-index
86
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1991–2002

    Degrees in engineering

    He earns a bachelor's and a master's degree at Dalian University of Technology and completes a doctorate at Tianjin University in 2002.

  2. 2002–2017

    Research at the Computing Institute

    From 2002 to 2017, he works at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in assistant, associate and full researcher roles.

  3. 2017–2019

    Professor and executive dean

    He joins USTC as a professor in July 2017 and becomes executive dean of its School of Information Science and Technology in July 2019.

  4. 2019

    National Natural Science Award

    He ranks first among the contributors to high-throughput computing theory and methods for internet video streams, which earns the second-class National Natural Science Award in 2019.

  5. 2021

    ABINet for scene text

    In 2021, he coauthors ABINet, a scene-text recognizer that separates vision and language-model learning and iteratively corrects recognition predictions.

  6. 2023–2025

    National invention award and IEEE Fellowship

    In 2023, he ranks first among USTC's contributors to the second-class National Technical Invention Award for all-media content risk control. In 2024, he coauthors USTC-BUPT's SemEval system for machine-generated-text detection; it wins the multilingual track and ranks second in the monolingual track. IEEE names him a Fellow in 2025 for contributions to internet multimedia processing and analysis.

  7. 2026

    Social-network simulator project

    In 2026, he leads a national scientific-instrument project to build a large-scale controllable social-network simulator, with work scheduled through 2030.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and executive dean

    He is a professor at USTC and executive dean of its School of Information Science and Technology. He has held the professorship since 2017 and the deanship since 2019.

Career

  1. Since 2017University of Science and Technology of ChinaProfessor, Executive Dean
  2. 2023–2025Nanchang University
  3. 2021–2024Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology
  4. 2019–2023China General Nuclear Power Corporation
  5. 2018–2020Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School
  6. 2018–2025South China Normal University
  7. 2014–2017Tsinghua University
  8. 2014–2017University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
  9. 2014–2017Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology
  10. 2013–2016Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science
  11. 2009–2016Sun Yat-sen University
  12. 2002–2017Chinese Academy of SciencesAssistant, Associate, and Full Researcher

Education

  1. 2002Tianjin UniversityDoctorate
  2. Dalian University of TechnologyBachelor's and Master's degrees

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

  1. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes University of Science and Technology of China. 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.
  2. 44% of AI career moves go from one university to anotherIncludes University of Science and Technology of China. We estimate how 26,439 AI career moves link universities, companies, labs, nonprofits and government research centers, with decade counts, net flows and the top paths.
  3. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes University of Science and Technology of China. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Science and Technology of China. 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.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. 中国科学技术大学 zhangyongdong--Home--Home faculty.ustc.edu.cn. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Key Technologies of Internet Data Intelligent Security Analysis and Detection en.nwpu.edu.cn. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Read Like Humans: Autonomous, Bidirectional and Iterative Language Modeling for Scene Text Recognition openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. USTC-BUPT at SemEval-2024 Task 8: Enhancing Machine-Generated Text Detection via Domain Adversarial Neural Networks and LLM Embeddings aclanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. IEEE 2025新晋Fellow名单正式公布 cn.ieee.org. Checked 20 October 2026.