Prof. Tao WANG is a Research Professor at the School of Computer Science, Peking University, where he also directs the Laboratory of Affective and Cognitive Intelligent Robotics. He serves as Secretary-General of the Beijing Computer Federation (concurrently Director of its Professional Committee on Robotic Affective Computing). He is an IEEE Senior Member, a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and a member of two IEEE RAS Technical Committees: Human-Robot Interaction & Coordination and Humanoid Robotics. He has also held academic roles in Chinese societies (e.g., Member of the China Computer Federation’s Award Evaluation Committee), served on the editorial boards of journals such as the Artificial Intelligence Section of Electronics, and acted as Technical Program Committee member or organizer for multiple international conferences.
Prof. Wang received his Bachelor’s (1999) and Doctoral (2006) degrees from Peking University. From 2006 to 2008, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Tsinghua University–Intel Joint Postdoctoral Station, before working as a Staff Research Scientist at Intel. He joined Peking University in November 2010, where he served as Executive Director of the Center for Energy-Efficiency Computing and Applications (Dec 2010 – Aug 2016) and later as Vice President of the Advanced Institute of Information Technology, Peking University (May 2018 – Aug 2023). Since 2017, he has been Director of the Laboratory of Affective and Cognitive Intelligent Robotics.
His research interests span computer system architecture, intelligent robotic systems, affective and cognitive computing, and human-robot interaction. He has led dozens of national, provincial-ministerial, and industry-collaborative projects, and has received four provincial-ministerial awards, including the First Prize of Natural Science (Ministry of Education) and the First Prize of Higher Education Teaching Achievements (Beijing). He holds more than 20 authorized invention patents, has published over 80 academic papers (several receiving Best Paper Awards), and is the editor of Embodied Intelligent Robotics: Principles and Practice (a National Key Publication of the “14th Five-Year Plan”, forthcoming in late 2025). He also teaches Introduction to Intelligent Robotic Systems and related courses at Peking University.
Prof. Wang’s proposed affective and cognitive models and algorithms—enabling expression recognition, attention analysis, and physiological indicator detection—have been widely adopted by leading industrial organizations and influenced numerous research institutions and enterprises in China. The affective robots developed under his direction, capable of emotional interaction as well as demonstrating traditional arts (qin, qi, shu, hua), and performing reception and guidance tasks, have represented Peking University at multiple exhibitions. His work in affective and cognitive models, algorithms, and robotic systems has also been featured by major media outlets, including China Central Television (CCTV).
