Zheming Zuo
Research Fellow
Room 114
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
Email: Z.Zuo.1 [at] bham.ac.uk

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About Me

Zheming Zuo is a Research Fellow, in the School of Computer Science, at the University of Birmingham, U.K. since 2024, working on multimodal machine learning and data pipelines for highstakes environments (i.e., "Fire Rescue Commander Assessment" with London Fire Brigade and the "AI-driven Tennis Coach" with Lawn Tennis Association) following an EPSRC project of "Adaptive Multi-Source Transfer Learning Approaches for Environmental Challenges". Prior to this, he, as a PDRA, delivered two full life-circle independent AI research projects collectively spanning 4.5 years in 2 UK research institutes, i.e. "Deep Learning for Smart Brand Protection" in partnership with Procter & Gamble (P&G) within the Scalable Computing Group, School of Computing at Newcastle University and "Machine Learning for Pervasive Healthcare" that was funded by UKRI (2.5 years) with the Vision, Imaging, and Visualisation in Durham (ViVID) group at Durham University, UK. His research interests include Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Fuzzy Logic, and their industrial applications.

News
  • • 06 / 2026: Hosted 🤝the delegation from Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in
    📍the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham
  • • 12 / 2025: One paper is accepted by Elsevier Array 🎉
  • • 09 / 2025: Reviewed 4 papers 📋 for AAAI 2026
  • • 07 / 2025: Presented a keynote on Advancing Robust and Explainable AI: Innovations in Visual Segmentation and Classification at
    📍Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China
  • • 07 / 2025: We organised the EPSRC-funded Wrokshop on AI Solutions for Environmental Challenges in
    📍the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham
  • • 07 / 2025: Co-hosted 🤝Dr Zoe Li from the McMaster University in 📍the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham
  • • 07 / 2025: One paper is accepted by Energy and Buildings 🎉
  • • 05 / 2025: Presented a talk on Adaptive Multi-Source Transfer Learning for River Ice Challenges in AI and Sustainability Conference at
    Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), UK
  • • 12 / 2024: One paper will be presented at AAAI 2025 🎉
  • • 12 / 2024: Served as a Program Committee member 🤵of Human-Autonomous Vehicle Interaction Workshop (HAVI) at WACV 2025
  • • 11 / 2024: Attended Second UK AI Conference 2024 at 📍The Exchange, Birmingham
  • • 11 / 2024: Attended Adaptation & Resilience Workshop at 📍Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA)
  • • 09 / 2024: Very glad to receive the Best Paper Award at ECCV 2024 Workshop on Vision-based InduStrial InspectiON (VISION)! 🎉
  • • 09 / 2024: Presented a talk on Visual Transfer Learning for Industrial Inspection at Socio-Technical Systems (STS) group meeting,
    📍University of Birmingham, UK
  • • 09 / 2024: Start my Research Fellow job 💼 at University of Birmingham
  • • 08 / 2024: One paper will be presented at ECCV 2024 🎉
  • • 05 / 2024: One paper is accepted by MDPI JMSE 🎉
  • • 05 / 2024: Co-hosted delegation 🤝from the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United Kingdom of Great Britain
    and Northern Ireland     in 📍the School of Computing at Newcastle University
  • • 04 / 2024: One paper will be presented at IEEE CVPR 2024 🎉
  • • 03 / 2024: Reviewed 4 papers 📋 for IEEE CAI 2024
  • • 02 / 2024: Co-hosted 🤝senior director from the Procter & Gamble (HQ) in 📍the School of Computing at Newcastle University
  • • 12 / 2023: Reviewed 6 papers 📋 for ISBI 2024
  • • 12 / 2023: One paper is accepted by VISAPP 2024 🎉
  • • 03 / 2023: Reviewed 2 papers 📋 for FUZZ-IEEE 2023
  • • 12 / 2022: Reviewed 3 papers 📋 for ISBI 2023
  • • 09 / 2022: Start my PDRA job 💼 at Newcastle University
  • • 06 / 2022: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for Artificial Intelligence Review
  • • 03 / 2022: One paper is accepted by IoTBDS 2022 🎉
  • • 03 / 2022: Reviewed 3 papers 📋 for FUZZ-IEEE 2023
  • • 11 / 2021: One paper is accepted by IEEE WACV Workshops 2022 🎉
  • • 08 / 2021: One paper is accepted by JMIR Medical Informatics 🎉
  • • 08 / 2021: One paper is accepted by Elsevier Technological Forecasting and Social Change 🎉
  • • 07 / 2021: Presented a talk on Machine Learning for Digital Healthcare at 📍Evergreen Health Solutions Ltd., Manchester, UK
  • • 02 / 2021: One paper is accepted by Springer Intelligent Service Robotics 🎉
  • • 07 / 2020: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IEEE T-IINF
  • • 06 / 2020: We (team: CASIOT-UMAC) win 1st place at the UG2+ Challenge on the Face Detection track in IEEE CVPR 2020 🎉
    [leaderboard - Track 1.2] [fact sheet]
  • • 05 / 2020: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IEEE T-IINF
  • • 04 / 2020: Successfully defend my PhD thesis titled Feature Extraction and Encoding for Video Action Recognition at
    Northumbria University 🎉 [pdf]
  • • 04 / 2020: One paper is accepted by The Journal of Navigation 🎉
  • • 03 / 2020: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for WILEY Expert Systems
  • • 02 / 2020: Reviewed 3 papers 📋 for FUZZ-IEEE 2020
  • • 02 / 2020: One paper is accepted by IEEE T-IP 🎉
  • • 11 / 2019: One paper is accepted by IEEE T-IINF 🎉
  • • 09 / 2019: Presented a talk on Preprocessing Techniques for Dark Face Detection Enhancement at
    📍Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  • • 09 / 2019: Start my PDRA job 💼 at Durham University
  • • 08 / 2019:Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IJUFKS
  • • 06 / 2019: One paper is accepted by Springer UKCI 2019 🎉
  • • 06 / 2019: We (team: CAS-Newcastle-TUM) win 1st place at the UG2+ Challenge on the Face Detection track in IEEE CVPR 2019 🎉
    [slides] [poster] [leaderboard - Track 2.2]
  • • 05 / 2019: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for WILEY Expert Systems
  • • 05 / 2019: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IEEE Access
  • • 04 / 2019: One paper is awarded the IEEE CIS Outstanding Student-Paper Travel Grant on FUZZ-IEEE 2019 🎉
  • • 04 / 2019: Reviewed 2 papers 📋 for IEEE ICIST
  • • 03 / 2019: Two papers are accepted by FUZZ-IEEE 2019 🎉
  • • 02 / 2019: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IEEE Access
  • • 02 / 2019: One paper is accepted by MDPI Applied System Innovation 🎉
  • • 09/ 2018: Organised BMVA BMVC 2018 as a website chair 🤵 and poster sessions helper, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  • • 09 / 2018: One paper is awarded the Best Paper on Springer UKCI 2018 🎉
  • • 07 / 2018: One paper is accepted by BMVA BMVC 2018 🎉
  • • 05 / 2018: One paper is accepted by Springer UKCI 2018 🎉
  • • 05 / 2018: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for Springer UKCI 2018
  • • 03 / 2018: One paper is accepted by FUZZ-IEEE 2018 🎉
  • • 01 / 2018: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for IEEE T-CSVT
  • • 01 / 2018: One paper is accepted by IEEE Access 🎉
  • • 12 / 2017: Reviewed 1 paper 📋 for ICACI 2018
  • • 08 / 2017: Reviewed 3 paper 📋 for IEEE ISM 2017
  • • 06 / 2017: One paper is accepted by Springer UKCI 2017 🎉
  • • 02 / 2017: One paper is accepted by InTech as a book chapter 🎉
  • • 06 / 2016: Reviewed 4 papers 📋 for Springer UKCI 2016
🔽 Show more
Selected Publications [Full Publication List]
FedGA: Federated Learning with Gradient Alignment for Error Asymmetry Mitigation
Chenguang Xiao, Zheming Zuo*, Shuo Wang
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Workshop on Federated Learning for Unbounded and Intelligent Decentralization, oral, 2025
*Corresponding author
An Augmentation-based Model Re-adaptation Framework for Robust Image Segmentation
Zheming Zuo, Joseph Smith, Jonathan Stonehouse, Boguslaw Obara
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) Workshop on Vision-based InduStrial InspectiON, oral + poster, 🏆Best Paper Award, 2024
Robust and Explainable Fine-Grained Visual Classification with Transfer Learning: A Dual-Carriageway Framework
Zheming Zuo, Joseph Smith, Jonathan Stonehouse, Boguslaw Obara
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops, oral, 2024
How Quality Affects Deep Neural Networks in Fine-Grained Image Classification
Joseph Smith, Zheming Zuo, Jonathan Stonehouse, Boguslaw Obara
19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISAPP), oral, 2024
IDEA-Net: Adaptive Dual Self-Attention Network for Single Image Denoising
Zheming Zuo, Xinyu Chen, Han Xu, Jie Li, Wenjuan Liao, Zhi-Xin Yang, Shizheng Wang
IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) Workshops, oral, 2022
Curvature-based Feature Selection with Application in Classifying Electronic Health Records
Zheming Zuo*†, Jie Li*, Han Xu, Noura Al Moubayed
Elsevier Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TFSC), (SJR: Q1, IF: 12.9), 2021
*Equal contribution
†Corresponding author
Data Anonymization for Pervasive Health Care: Systematic Literature Mapping Study
Zheming Zuo, Matthew Watson, David Budgen, Robert Hall, Chris Kennelly, Noura Al Moubayed
JMIR Medical Informatics (JMIR Med. Inform.), (SJR: Q1, IF: 3.1), 2021
A Multi-Subpopulation Bacterial Foraging Optimisation Algorithm with Deletion and Immigration Strategies for Unmanned Surface Vehicle Path Planning
Yang Long, Yixin Su, Binghua Shi, Zheming Zuo, Jie Li
Springer Intelligent Service Robotics (Intel. Serv. Robotics), (SJR: Q1, IF: 2.3), 2021
An A*-based Bacterial Foraging Optimisation Algorithm for Global Path Planning of Unmanned Surface Vehicle
Yang Long, Zheming Zuo, Yixin Su, Jie Li, Huajun Zhang
The Journal of Navigation (J. Navig.), (SJR: Q2, IF: 2.4), 2020
Advancing Image Understanding in Poor Visibility Environments: A Collective Benchmark Study
Wenhan Yang, Ye Yuan, Wenqi Ren, Jiaying Liu, Walter J. Scheirer, Zhangyang Wang, Taiheng Zhang, Qiaoyong Zhong, Di Xie, Shiliang Pu, Yuqiang Zheng, Yanyun Qu, Yuhong Xie, Liang Chen, Zhonghao Li, Chen Hong, Hao Jiang, Siyuan Yang, Yan Liu, Xiaochao Qu, Pengfei Wan, Shuai Zheng, Minhui Zhong, Taiyi Su, Lingzhi He, Yandong Guo, Yao Zhao, Zhenfeng Zhu, Jinxiu Liang, Jingwen Wang, Tianyi Chen, Yuhui Quan, Yong Xu, Bo Liu, Xin Liu, Qi Sun, Tingyu Lin, Xiaochuan Li, Feng Lu, Lin Gu, Shengdi Zhou, Cong Cao, Shifeng Zhang, Cheng Chi, Chubing Zhuang, Zhen Lei, Stan Z. Li, Shizheng Wang, Ruizhe Liu, Dong Yi, Zheming Zuo, Jianning Chi, Huan Wang, Kai Wang, Yixiu Liu, Xingyu Gao, Zhenyu Chen, Chang Guo, Yongzhou Li, Huicai Zhong, Jing Huang, Heng Guo, Jianfei Yang, Wenjuan Liao, Jiangang Yang, Liguo Zhou, Mingyue Feng, Likun Qin
IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (T-IP), (SJR: Q1, IF: 10.8), 2020
Histogram of Fuzzy Local Spatio-Temporal Descriptors for Video Action Recognition
Zheming Zuo, Longzhi Yang, Yonghuai Liu, Fei Chao, Ran Song, Yanpeng Qu
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (T-IINF), (SJR: Q1, IF: 11.7), 2020
Curvature-based Sparse Rule Base Generation for Fuzzy Interpolation using Menger Curvature
Zheming Zuo, Jie Li, Longzhi Yang
Springer 19th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI), oral, 2019
Adaptive Activation Function Generation for Artificial Neural Networks through Fuzzy Inference with Application in Grooming Text Categorisation
Zheming Zuo, Jie Li, Bo Wei, Longzhi Yang, Fei Chao, Nitin Naik
IEEE 28th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), oral, 🏆IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Outstanding Student-Paper Travel Grant Award, 2019
An Intelligent Online Grooming Detection System Using AI Technologies
Philip Anderson, Zheming Zuo, Longzhi Yang, Yanpeng Qu
IEEE 28th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), oral, 2019
Enhanced Gradient-based Local Feature Descriptors by Saliency Map for Egocentric Action Recognition
Zheming Zuo, Bo Wei, Fei Chao, Yonghong Peng, Longzhi Yang
MDPI Applied System Innovation (ASI), , (SJR: Q1, IF: 3.8), Highlighted as cover story [link], 2019
Saliency-Informed Spatio-Temporal Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors and Fisher Vectors for Visual Action Recognition
Zheming Zuo, Daniel Organisciak, Hubert P. H. Shum, Longzhi Yang
BMVA 29th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), poster, 2018
Dendritic Cell Algorithm with Fuzzy Inference System for Input Signal Generation
Noe Elisa, Jie Li, Zheming Zuo, Longzhi Yang
Springer 18th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI), oral, 🏆Springer Best Paper Award, 2018
Grooming Detection using Fuzzy Rough Feature Selection and Text Classification
Zheming Zuo, Jie Li, Philip Anderson, Longzhi Yang, Nitin Naik
IEEE 27th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), oral, 2018
Gaze-Informed Egocentric Action Recognition for Memory Aid Systems
Zheming Zuo, Longzhi Yang, Yonghong Peng, Fei Chao, Yanpeng Qu
IEEE Access, (SJR: Q1, IF: 3.4), 2018
A Fall Detection/Recognition System and an Empirical Study of Gradient-Based Feature Extraction Approaches
Ryan Cameron, Zheming Zuo, Graham Sexton, Longzhi Yang
Springer 17th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI), oral, 2017
Fuzzy interpolation systems and applications
Longzhi Yang, Zheming Zuo, Yanpeng Qu, Fei Chao
Modern Fuzzy Control Systems and Its Applications, InTech, Janeza Trdine 9, Rijeka, Croatia. DOI: 10.5772/68051. 2017
Academic Activities
Invited Talker
Conference Organiser
Journal Reviewer
  •   • IEEE Access
  •   • WILEY Expert Systems
  •   • Artificial Intelligence Review
  •   • IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (T-IINF)
  •   • The Journal of Navigation (Cambridge University Press)
  •   • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (T-CSVT)
  •   • International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems (IJUFKS)
Conference Reviewer
  •   • Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2026
  •   • IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
  •   • International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI) 2017, 2018
  •   • International Conference on Information Science and Technology (ICIST) 2019
  •   • IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2023, 2024
  •   • Springer UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI) 2016, 2018
  •   • IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM) 2017
  •   • IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) 2024
Education
Dec. 2020

Ph.D. in Comput. Sci.
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Dec. 2014

M.Sc. in Comput. Sci.
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK

Jun. 2012

B.Eng. in Comput. Sci. & Technol.
Southeast University
Nanjing, China

Awards