Hongkai Yu, Ph.D.
Director, Physical AI Lab @ UTK
Associate Professor, EECS Department, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dr. Hongkai Yu leads the Physical AI Lab at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Yu received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from University of South Carolina (Advisor: Dr. Song Wang) in 2018. Before joining UTK, he was an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University. He was a Honorary Research Associate at University of Wisconsin-Madison (Visiting Advisor: Dr. Xiaopeng Li) in 2024. His research interests include computer vision, machine learning, autonomous driving, connected automated vehicles, robotics, and edge AI. He has published about 80 papers on prestigious conferences and journals, such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, AAAI, ACM MM, ICRA, IROS, IEEE Transactions, etc. He is the Area Chair for ACM Multimedia 2022-2024 conferences and Senior Program Committee for AAAI 2026 conference and the Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Journal of Computer Science and Technology. He was awarded “World's Top 2% Scientists” in the area of Artificial Intelligence by Stanford/Elsevier in 2025. His research works have been supported by the external funds from National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, Ohio Department of Transportation, Brookhaven National Laboratory, etc.
Education
- PhD in Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina, 2018
- MS in Traffic Information Engineering and Control, Chang’an University, 2012
- BS in Automation, Chang’an University, 2009
Services
- Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles
- Associate Editor, IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Associate Editor, Journal of Computer Science and Technology
- Area Chair, ACM Multimedia 2022-2024
- Senior Program Committee, AAAI 2026