Anyi Rao

Anyi Rao is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) where he leads the Multimedia Creativity Lab (MMLab@HKUST) and serves as Associate Director of the HKUST Media Intelligence Research Center. He received his Ph.D. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and completed postdoctoral research at Stanford University. His research explores human-AI collaboration for creativity, focusing on understanding, editing, and creating art, media, and film.

Research Interests: Rao's work centers on developing AI tools that enhance human creativity in visual media production. Key areas include:

• Controllable generative models for image and video synthesis
• AI-assisted cinematography and virtual production tools
• Multimodal understanding of films and creative content
• Human-AI collaborative workflows for artistic creation

His research has produced influential tools like ControlNet and AnimateDiff used by industry leaders including Netflix and Amazon.

Publication Trends: Rao's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on diffusion models, controllable generation, and video understanding systems. His work consistently bridges technical innovation with practical applications in media production, showing increasing emphasis on real-time creative tools and filmmaker-AI collaboration paradigms.

Awards and Honors:

• Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (2025)
• Rising Star Award, World AI Conference (2024)
• Marr Prize (Best Paper), ICCV (2023)
• Magic Grant, Brown Institute for Media Innovation (2023)
• Hong Kong PhD Fellowship (2021)

Academic Activities: Rao actively recruits students for his research group and has secured multiple grants including Amazon Video Research Fund and Tencent Rhino-Bird Grant. He organized the SIGGRAPH/CVPR Creative Visual Content Workshops and curated the Hong Kong AI Film Festival. He serves on program committees for major conferences including CVPR, ICLR, and SIGGRAPH Asia.