Erzhen Hu

I am Erzhen Hu, a Ph.D candidate in Computer Science at the University of Virginia, advised by Prof. Seongkook Heo. Before that, I obtained M.S. in Statistics from University of Virginia, and B.A. in Sociology from Shanghai University. During my PhD, I have had the fortunate opportunity to intern and work with amazing researchers at Microsoft Research and Google. My work has been supported and recognized by 2024 Google PhD Fellowship.

As we approach the everyday use of virtual world, my research explores how to enable more flexible and frictionless way of connecting with people in virtual and hybrid spaces.

My research also includes exploring Human-AI communication paradigms by augmenting human-AI interactions through multi-modal agents, leveraging LLMs, and applying advanced 2D and 3D computer vision methods (e.g., interactive segmentation, multi-view diffusion models, and 3D Gaussian Splatting) for multi-user scenarios, video-mediated interactions and XR applications.

• Jun 2024: I have passed the Qualifying Exam and have become a Ph.D. candidate!
• Jun 2024: Serving as CSCW 2024 Poster and Demo Program Committee member.
• May 2024: Attended CHI 2024 at Hawaiʻi, USA.
• Jan 2024: Excited to start a research internship as Student Researcher at Google.
• Dec 2023: Serving as CHI 2024 Late-Breaking Work (LBW) Program Committee member.
• May 2023: Excited to start an internship as Research Intern at Microsoft Research.
• Mar 2023: Presented OpenMic at the Video Sharing session and ThingShare at the Human-AI collaboration session on Apr 25th (Tue). Check out the CHI 2023 program!
• Jan 2023: Two first-author papers accepted at CHI 2023.
• Nov 2022: Serving as CHI 2023 Late-Breaking Work (LBW) Program Committee member.
• Oct 2022: Reviewed CHI 2023 papers (1*special recognition) and SVed at UIST 2022.
• May 2022: Presented FluidMeet paper at CHI 2022 in New Orleans.
• Mar 2022: Presented FluidMeet at the Virtual Social Presence Seminar. You can watch the recorded 40-min talk here.