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Yichao Zhou

Ph.D. in Computer Science

University of California, Berkeley

Biography

I joined the Apple ARKit team after graduation. Previously, I received my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, advised by Prof. Yi Ma. My dissertation is on “Learning to Detect Geometric Structures from Images for 3D Parsing".

I am interested in 3D vision, computer graphics, and artificial intelligence. My recent research focuses on integrating geometric concepts and data-driven approaches into a unified framework. To this end, I design methods to extract high-level geometric structures from images, such as lines, wireframes, vanishing points, and symmetries, and use them to parse scenes into high-quality compact CAD-like 3D models and achieve robust localization.

You can download my personal PGP public key here.

Interests

  • 3D Vision
  • Computer Graphics
  • Artificial Intelligence

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2020

    University of California, Berkeley

  • BSc in Computer Science and Technology, 2015

    Tsinghua University

Publications

”*” indicates equal contribution

Yichao Zhou, Shichen Liu, Yi Ma (2021). NeRD: Neural 3D Reflection Symmetry Detector. CVPR 2021.

Preprint Code

Yichao Zhou (2020). Learning to Detect Geometric Structures from Images for 3D Parsing. Doctoral Dissertation.

PDF Video

Yichao Zhou, Jingwei Huang, Xili Dai, Linjie Luo, Zhili Chen, Yi Ma (2020). HoliCity: A City-Scale Data Platform for Learning Holistic 3D Structures. Technical Report. arXiv:2008.03286 [cs.CV].

Preprint Code Project

Yichao Zhou, Shichen Liu, Yi Ma (2020). Learning to Detect 3D Reflection Symmetry for Single-View Reconstruction. Technical Report. arXiv:2006.10042 [cs.CV].

Preprint Code

Jingwei Huang, Yichao Zhou, Leonidas Guibas (2020). ManifoldPlus: A Robust and Scalable Watertight Manifold Surface Generation Method for Triangle Soups. Technical Report. arXiv:2005.11621 [cs.GR].

Preprint Code

Yichao Zhou, Haozhi Qi, Jingwei Huang, Yi Ma (2019). NeurVPS: Neural Vanishing Point Scanning via Conic Convolution. NeurIPS 2019.

Preprint Code Poster Slides

Yichao Zhou, Haozhi Qi, Yi Ma (2019). End-to-End Wireframe Parsing. ICCV 2019.

Preprint Code Poster

Jingwei Huang, Yichao Zhou, Thomas Funkhouser, Leonidas Guibas (2019). FrameNet: Learning Local Canonical Frames of 3D Surfaces from a Single RGB Image. ICCV 2019.

Preprint Code

Yichao Zhou, Haozhi Qi, Simon Zhai, Qi Sun, Zhili Chen, Li-Yi Wei, Yi Ma (2018). Learning to Reconstruct 3D Manhattan Wireframes from a Single Image. ICCV 2019 (Oral Presentation).

Preprint Code Dataset Poster Video

Jingwei Huang*, Yichao Zhou*, Matthias Nießner, Jonathan Shewchuk, Leonidas Guibas (2018). QuadriFlow: A Scalable and Robust Method for Quadrangulation. SGP 2018 (Best Paper), Computer Graphics Forum.

PDF Code Dataset Demo Online Tool

Yichao Zhou, Wei Chu, Sam Young, Xin Chen (2017). BandNet: A Neural Network-Based, Multi-Instrument Beatles-Style MIDI Music Composition Machine. ISMIR 2019.

Preprint Poster Slides Audio

Yichao Zhou, Bruce R. Donald, Jianyang Zeng (2016). Parallel Computational Protein Design. Methods in Molecular Biology.

PDF Code

Yichao Zhou, Yuexin Wu, Jianyang Zeng (2015). Computational Protein Design Using AND/OR Branch-and-Bound Search. RECOMB 2015.

Preprint Code Dataset Slides

Yichao Zhou, Jianyang Zeng (2015). Massively Parallel A* Search on a GPU. AAAI 2015 (Oral Presentation).

PDF Code Slides Appendix

Yichao Zhou, Wei Xu, Bruce R. Donald, Jianyang Zeng (2014). An Efficient Parallel Algorithm for Accelerating Computational Protein Design. ISMB 2014, Bioinformatics.

PDF Code Dataset Poster Slides

Recent Posts

Vanishing Points and Their Applications

Vanishing points are an important concept in 3D vision. Many papers related to them are using a notation called Gaussian sphere …
Apr 2, 2019 7 min read math

Welcome to My Blog

Nov 26, 2018 1 min read life

Press Coverage

New Scientist Magazine, Issue 3214
Archive.org

Awards

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
February 2021 – Present
Cupertino, California

3D Vision Research Scientist

Apple Inc.

I joined the Apple ARKit team as a 3D vision research scientist.
 
 
 
 
 
May 2019 – August 2019
Palo Alto, California

Research Intern

Bytedance Inc.

I created a real-world data platform of urban environments by aligning the city CAD model to the street-view panorama images. I was advised by Yi Ma and Linjie Luo.
 
 
 
 
 
May 2018 – August 2018
San Jose, California

Research Intern

Adobe Research

I did the research on how to reconstruct a 3D scene for uban environments by utilizing their global regularities and symmetries. I enjoyed my time with my advisors Qi Sun, Zhili Chen, Li-Yi Wei, and Kalyan Sunkavalli.
 
 
 
 
 
May 2017 – August 2017
Venice, California

Research Intern

Snapchat Inc.

I worked on a project about algorithm-based Beatles-style music composition with the help from an outstanding composer and percussionist Sam Young at UCLA. I was advised by Wei Chu and Xin Chen.
 
 
 
 
 
May 2016 – August 2016
Los Gatos, California

Research Intern

Bellus 3D Inc.

During the internship, I implemented a software to deform a face mesh to fit the point cloud of a scanned face along with the Morphable Face Model. I was advised by James Davis and Jing Liu.
 
 
 
 
 
September 2015 – December 2020
Berkeley, California

Research Assistant

University of California, Berkeley

I received my Ph.D. degree here. My dissertation is on “Learning to Detect Geometric Structures from Images for 3D Parsing”.
 
 
 
 
 
December 2013 – June 2015
Beijing

Research Assistant

Tsinghua University

Advised by Jianyang Zeng, I did research related to the proteins’ 3D structures in the Machine Learning and Computational Biology Group at IIIS when I was an undergraduate. I designed fast and massively parallel combinotorial search algorithms and tested them on the protein design problems. I also implemented a CUDA version of RELION to accelerate the 3D reconstruction of protein structures from cryo-microscopy images, which later turned into my undergraduate thesis.
 
 
 
 
 
August 2013 – November 2013
Beijing

Research Intern

Microsoft Research Asia

I was a research intern in the Natural Language Processing Group at MSRA, advised by Jianwen Zhang. I studied method of applying Markov Logic Network for the knowledge database completion problem to fill in the missing entires in Freebase.

Service

I was a teaching assistant of the following courses at UC Berkeley:

Skills

Python

Deep Learning

C++

CUDA

Blender 3D

OpenGL/GLSL