Associate Professor Chang Xu
People_

Associate Professor Chang Xu

ARC Future Fellow
Associate Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision
School of Computer Science
Phone
+61 2 8627 6015
Associate Professor Chang Xu

Dr Chang Xu is Associate Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision at the School of Computer Science, University of Sydney. He obtained a Bachelor of Engineering from Tianjin University, China, and a Ph.D. degree from Peking University, China. While pursing his PhD degree, Chang received fellowships from IBM and Baidu. His research interests lie in machine learning, data mining algorithms and related applications in artificial intelligence and computer vision, including multi-view learning, multi-label learning, visual search and face recognition. His research outcomes have been widely published in prestigious journals and top tier conferences.

Nowadays, data is increasingly cheap and ubiquitous. The corpuses are too voluminous to fit on a single machine. Meanwhile, the variety of data stands out on its own, as the data often include various data types, such as video, music and text. They are heterogeneity in modality, sources and semantics. On the other hand, they are typically messy, incomplete, and unstructured. Given these challenges, the ability to handle data variety and use it to our advantage is becoming ever more important.

Dr Chang Xu's passion is to devise ways to understand how data variety works and how it can be interrogated and exploited for the broadest possible purposes.

"We humans can intelligently integrate information from their natural senses of vision, hearing, touch and so on to make the decision. This innate ability enables us to confidently interpret our current environment or situation no matter how complex it is.

"A machine can also easily collect diverse information through different sensors or extractors, e.g., colour descriptor, local binary patterns, local shape descriptor and spatial temporal context captured by multiple cameras for human activity understanding in camera network, or the word content of webpage, and the website address and name to distinguish this particular web page before your eyes now.

"How best to describe these heterogeneous data, explore their underlying properties and inner relationships, and leverage them for distinct decision needs excite me about the research.

"I identify significant challenges, provide fundamental theoretical supports, and formulate innovative algorithmic solutions to understand and manipulate data variety. One of my ultimate research aims is allowing machines to intelligently handle multiple information sources like humans.

"I warmly welcome students and peers to collaborate with me in the related research fields to make contributions to the realization of Artificial Intelligence."

COMP5329 Deep Learning

Project titleResearch student
Privacy-Preserving Data GenerationsChen CHEN
Guidance in Diffusion ModelsAnh-dung DINH
Generative Models for Radar Reflectivity Image SynthesisAsher HU
Efficiency of Large Language ModelsTerry PEI
Uncertainty Calibration for Deep Neural NetworksLinwei TAO
Solving Graph Similarity Problem using Deep Learning modelsMouyi XU
Advancing Quadrupedal Robotics for Agility Competitions with Parkour Learning and Robust Person FollowingZunzhi YOU
Protein Sequence-based 3D Molecule Generation using Deep Generative ModelChuyang ZHOU
Comprehensive Optimization of Deep Learning: Efficient and Effective Algorithm and System DesignZhongzhu Charlie ZHOU

Publications

Journals

  • Chang, L., Wang, Y., Du, B., Xu, C. (2025). Rectangling and enhancing underwater stitched image via content-aware warping and perception balancing. Neural Networks, 181, 106809. [More Information]
  • Yang, Z., Qiu, Z., Xu, C., Fu, D. (2024). MM-NeRF: Multimodal-Guided 3D Multi-Style Transfer of Neural Radiance Field. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. [More Information]
  • Wang, Y., Du, B., Wang, W., Xu, C. (2024). Multi-tailed vision transformer for efficient inference. Neural Networks, 174, 106235. [More Information]

Conferences

  • You, Z., Liu, D., Han, B., Xu, C. (2024). Beyond pretrained features: Noisy image modeling provides adversarial defense. The Thirty-seventh Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), New Orleans, US: NeurIPS. [More Information]
  • Dong, M., Liu, D., Sun, C., Xu, C. (2023). Calibrating a Deep Neural Network with Its Predecessors. IJCAI International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
  • Zhang, J., Liu, D., Zhang, S., Xu, C. (2023). Contrastive Sampling Chains in Diffusion Models. The Thirty-seventh Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), New Orleans, US: NeurIPS.

2025

  • Chang, L., Wang, Y., Du, B., Xu, C. (2025). Rectangling and enhancing underwater stitched image via content-aware warping and perception balancing. Neural Networks, 181, 106809. [More Information]

2024

  • You, Z., Liu, D., Han, B., Xu, C. (2024). Beyond pretrained features: Noisy image modeling provides adversarial defense. The Thirty-seventh Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), New Orleans, US: NeurIPS. [More Information]
  • Yang, Z., Qiu, Z., Xu, C., Fu, D. (2024). MM-NeRF: Multimodal-Guided 3D Multi-Style Transfer of Neural Radiance Field. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. [More Information]
  • Wang, Y., Du, B., Wang, W., Xu, C. (2024). Multi-tailed vision transformer for efficient inference. Neural Networks, 174, 106235. [More Information]

2023

  • Yang, S., Dong, M., Wang, Y., Xu, C. (2023). Adversarial Recurrent Time Series Imputation. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 34(4), 1639-1650. [More Information]
  • Guo, D., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2023). Bilinear Graph Networks for Visual Question Answering. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 34(2), 1023-1034. [More Information]
  • Dong, M., Liu, D., Sun, C., Xu, C. (2023). Calibrating a Deep Neural Network with Its Predecessors. IJCAI International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

2022

  • Tang,, Y., Han,, K., Guo, J., Xu, C., Li, Y., Xu,, C., Wang,, Y. (2022). An Image Patch is a Wave: Phase-Aware Vision MLP. Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, : IEEE Computer Society.
  • Pei, X., Liu, D., Qian, L., Xu, C. (2022). Contrastive Code-Comment Pre-training. 22nd IEEE International Conference on Data Mining ICDM 2022, : Springer Verlag. [More Information]
  • Wang, X., Huang, J., Ma,, S., Nepal,, S., Xu, C. (2022). DeepFake Disrupter: The Detector of DeepFake Is My Friend. Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, : IEEE Computer Society.

2021

  • Song, D., Wang, Y., Chen, H., Xu, C., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2021). AddersR: Towards energy efficient image super-resolution. 2021 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2021), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
  • Yang, S., Guo,, T., Wang,, Y., Xu, C. (2021). Adversarial Robustness through Disentangled Representations. 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021, : International Astronautical Federation, IAF.
  • Chen,, X., Xu, C., Dong, M., Xu,, C., Wang,, Y. (2021). An Empirical Study of Adder Neural Networks for Object Detection. NeurIPS 2021, Virtual, Online: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH.

2020

  • Tang, Y., Wang, Y., Xu, Y., Chen, H., Shi, B., Xu, C., Xu, C., Tian, Q., Xu, C. (2020). A semi-supervised assessor of neural architectures. 2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2020), Seattle: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
  • Li, Y., Yang, Z., Wang, Y., Xu, C. (2020). Adapting neural architectures between domains. 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), San Diego: Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS).
  • Chen, H., Wang, Y., Xu, C., Shi, B., Xu, C., Tian, Q., Xu, C. (2020). AdderNet: Do we really need multiplications in deep learning? 2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2020), Seattle: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]

2019

  • Wang, G., Chen, X., Xu, C. (2019). Adversarial Watermarking to Attack Deep Neural Networks. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2019), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
  • Zhu, X., Xu, C., Hui, L., Lu, C., Tao, D. (2019). Approximated Bilinear Modules for Temporal Modeling. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2019), : Springer Verlag. [More Information]
  • Han, K., Wang, Y., Shu, H., Liu, C., Xu, C., Xu, C. (2019). Attribute Aware Pooling for Pedestrian Attribute Recognition. 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2019), Macao: International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence. [More Information]

2018

  • Wang, Y., Xu, C., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2018). Adversarial Learning of Portable Student Networks. The Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18), Palo Alto: AAAI Press.
  • Chen, X., Xu, C., Yang, X., Tao, D. (2018). Attention-GAN for Object Transfiguration in Wild Images. 15th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2018), Cham: Springer. [More Information]
  • Liu, M., Xu, C., Luo, Y., Xu, C., Wen, Y., Tao, D. (2018). Cost-Sensitive Feature Selection by Optimizing F-measures. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 27(3), 1323-1335. [More Information]

2017

  • Wang, Y., Xu, C., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2017). Beyond filters: Compact feature map for portable deep model. The 34th International Conference on Machine Learning, (ICML 2017), online: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research.
  • Wang, Y., Xu, C., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2017). Beyond RPCA: Flattening Complex Noise in the Frequency Domain. 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17), USA: AAAI Press.
  • Du, Y., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2017). Collaborative Rating Allocation. 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2017), Melbourne: International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence. [More Information]

2016

  • Wang, Y., Xu, C., You, S., Tao, D., Xu, C. (2016). CNNpack: Packing Convolutional Neural Networks in the Frequency Domain. 30th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2016), Barcelona, Spain, Barcelona: Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS).
  • Xu, C., Wang, G., Liu, X., Guo, D., Liu, T. (2016). Health Status Assessment and Failure Prediction for Hard Drives with Recurrent Neural Networks. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 65(11), 3502-3508. [More Information]
  • Xu, C., Liu, T., Tao, D., Xu, C. (2016). Local Rademacher Complexity for Multi-Label Learning. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 25(3), 1495-1507. [More Information]

2015

  • Xu, C., Tao, D., Xu, C. (2015). Large-margin multi-label causal feature learning. 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015), Austin: AAAI Press.
  • Xu, C., Tao, D., Li, Y., Xu, C. (2015). Large-margin multi-view Gaussian process. Multimedia Systems, 21(2), 147-157. [More Information]
  • Ding, C., Xu, C., Tao, D. (2015). Multi-Task Pose-Invariant Face Recognition. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 24(3), 980-993. [More Information]

2014

  • Xu, C., Tao, D., Xu, C. (2014). Large-Margin Multi-View Information Bottleneck. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 36(8), 1559-1572. [More Information]
  • Xu, C., Tao, D., Xu, C., Rui, Y. (2014). Large-margin weakly supervised dimensionality reduction. 31st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2014), Beijing: International Machine Learning Society.
  • Chen, E., Qiu, S., Xu, C., Tian, F., Liu, T. (2014). Word embedding: Continuous space representation for natural language. Shuju Caiji Yu Chuli / Journal of Data Acquisition and Processing, 29(1), 19-29.

2013

  • Xu, C., Tao, D., Li, Y., Xu, C. (2013). Large-margin multi-view Gaussian process for image classification. 5th International Conference on Internet Multimedia Computing and Service (ICIMCS 2013), New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). [More Information]
  • Luo, Y., Tao, D., Xu, C., Xu, C., Liu, H., Wen, Y. (2013). Multiview Vector-Valued Manifold Regularization for Multilabel Image Classification. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 24(5), 709-722. [More Information]
  • Luo, Y., Tao, D., Xu, C., Li, D., Xu, C. (2013). Vector-valued multi-view semi-supervised learning for multi-label image classification. 27th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2013), Bellevue: AAAI Press.

2012

  • Xu, C., Li, Y., Zhou, C., Xu, C. (2012). Learning to rerank images with enhanced spatial verification. 2012 19th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2012), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]

Selected Grants

2024

  • Generative Visual Pre-training on Unlabelled Big Data, Xu C, Sun C, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP)
  • Deep Adder Networks on Edge Devices, Xu C, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Future Fellowships (FT)

2022

  • Cracking the Code: AI Gender Bias in the Asia Pacific, Sinpeng A, Boichak O, Xu C, Chia Y, Ford M, DVC Research/Sustainable Development Goal collaboration program