Outstanding Faculty Award
Chenliang Xu receives the 2025 Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award
Associate Professor Chenliang Xu from the Department of Computer Science is being recognized for his innovation as a researcher and teacher and his service to the University with the 2025 Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award.
Xu is one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of computer vision, a major branch of artificial intelligence. His research aims to build a general, human-like AI through a sophisticated combination of multimodal audio-visual perception, vision-grounded language acquisition, and perception-oriented action planning.
In 2016, Xu joined the Rochester faculty after completing his PhD at the University of Michigan. In 2021, he was awarded the James P. Wilmot Distinguished Professorship, established to support “some of the most promising young men and women in the early stages of their academic careers.” He was promoted to associate professor in 2022.
A prolific researcher, Xu has already published more than 100 peer-review publications, including three best paper awards. His work has caught the attention of industry leaders, earning his group research funding from both startups and big tech companies, including Adobe, Corning, InnoPeak, Markable AI, Nvidia, Tencent AI, and Viscovery.
Xu is an affiliated faculty member with the Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and has active collaborations with colleagues in the departments of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and electrical and computer engineering.
A popular instructor, Xu’s courses in computer vision, deep learning, and augmented and virtual reality consistently receive high ratings from students. He currently supervises the research of seven PhD students, seven master’s students, and three undergraduate students. One of his students won a Barnard fellowship in 2020, and he has mentored many recipients of NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) awards.
In service to the University, Xu co-chairs the Department of Computer Science’s PhD admissions committee and is a member of a planning committee for a proposed PhD program in data science. Beyond the University, he is an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and an area chair for ACM Multimedia and the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR).
“Chenliang is an exemplary member of the Hajim faculty,” says Professor Chen Ding, chair of the Department of Computer Science. “We are exceptionally fortunate to have him on the faculty, and he is a major contributor to our international reputation.”
Adds Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the Hajim School, “Chenliang is an outstanding faculty member, an innovative researcher, an effective educator, and a valued contributor to the University. He is exceptionally deserving of this recognition for his many achievements.”