Hongkai Wen

Hongkai Wen is a Professor (Chair in Machine Learning Systems) in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, UK. He holds dual appointments as a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (serving as Independent Scientific Advisor for BridgeAI and member of Turing Research Ethics team) and previously worked as Senior Research Scientist at Samsung AI Centre Cambridge and postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University.

Education:

• Computer Science, Keble College, University of Oxford

Research Focus: Develops intelligent multi-modal perception systems for real-world deployment with extreme computational efficiency. Core expertise spans ML systems optimization, neural architecture search, and cross-disciplinary applications in robotics, urban mobility, and wearable/IoT security. Pioneered event-based vision techniques and training-free NAS frameworks.

Publication Trends: Recent work (2023-2025) demonstrates accelerating innovation in diffusion model efficiency, on-device AI deployment, and sensor fusion techniques. Dominant themes include computational resource optimization for edge devices, multi-modal temporal modeling, and privacy-preserving spatial analytics, with significant contributions to NeurIPS, ICML, and CVPR venues.

Scientific Recognition:

• Best Paper Award, AutoML Conf 2023 (T-CET)
• Best Paper Runner-up, SenSys 2024 (AdaFlow)
• Best Paper Awards: IPSN 2014 & EWSN 2013
• 1st/2nd Place, Zero Cost NAS Competition (AutoML'22)

Mentorship & Funding: Actively supervises PhD candidates through thesis committees at Warwick, Ulster, and Queensland universities. Secured National AI Strategy Fund for Macro Neural Architecture Search research. Recruits annually for PhD positions with scholarships from UKRI, Turing Institute, and industry partnerships.

Research Leadership: Heads the AI/ML Systems (AMS) Division at Warwick, directing a 15+ member team developing deployable ML frameworks for mobile/robotic platforms. Maintains active collaborations with Samsung AI Centre and Turing Institute's BridgeAI programme on ethical AI deployment.