معرفی
Dr Hao Cheng is an Assistant Professor (from 1 Oct 2024) in the Department of Earth Observation Science, ITC Faculty, University of Twente, the Netherlands. He currently holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on vehicle-vulnerable road user interactions for safer intelligent transportation and autonomous driving systems.
Education:
- Ph.D. (with distinction) in Civil Engineering & Geodetic Science, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, 2021
- M.Sc. (with distinction) in Internet Technologies & Information Systems, joint programme of TU Braunschweig, Leibniz Universität Hannover, TU Clausthal & University of Göttingen, Germany, 2017
Research interests lie at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Geo-Information Science, with principal themes:
- Deep learning & computer vision for road-user behaviour modelling
- Trajectory prediction and motion forecasting for autonomous driving
- Interaction & safety analysis between vehicles and vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists)
- Ethical, explainable and accessible AI for geospatial applications
- Graph neural networks, diffusion models and transformer architectures applied to dynamic scene understanding
His recent publication portfolio (2018-2025) demonstrates a strong methodological core in deep learning and computer vision deployed across transportation safety, 3D mapping, remote sensing and human-machine interaction. A notable trend is the migration from early LSTM-based traffic modelling toward contemporary transformer, graph and diffusion frameworks that deliver diverse, controllable and interpretable predictions for real-world autonomous-driving scenes.
Scientific recognition:
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions European Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA) – VeVuSafety project
Grants & projects: Cheng is principal investigator of the MSCA-funded VeVuSafety project (Grant 101062870) which develops learning-based models of vehicle-VRU interactions to enable safer intelligent transport systems.
Labs & teams: From October 2024 he will lead research activities within the Department of Earth Observation Science at ITC, University of Twente, collaborating with the broader ITC AI-for-Geo groups and transportation-safety institutes across Europe.
