Prof. ZHANG Lei John, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis of the Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has been honoured with the prestigious 2026 Frontiers of Science Award presented by the International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS). This accolade recognises his outstanding research and major contributions to the field of image processing and computer vision.
Prof. Zhang was recognised in the “Information Sciences and Engineering” category for his paper “Beyond a Gaussian denoiser: residual learning of deep CNN for image denoising” published in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2017). He shares this distinction with co-authors from Harbin Institute of Technology, ULSee Inc., and Xi’an Jiaotong University.
Prof. Zhang’s research interests focus on computer vision, image and video analysis, deep learning, etc. As of 2026, his publications have attracted more than 130,000 citations. He was named a “Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher” consecutively from 2015 to 2025. He has also served as a (Senior) Associate Editor and (Senior) Area Chair for several top-tier international journals and conferences.
Beyond academia, Prof. Zhang’s research has been successfully translated into commercial products such as OPPO’s flagship smartphone series Find X7, X8 and X9.
The Frontiers of Science Award recognises exceptional, original research published over the past decade across Mathematics, Physics, and Information Science & Engineering. To receive this honour, a scientific achievement must be of the highest scholarly value and have made a major global impact in its field.
Learn more about Prof. Zhang’s research:
A vision to enhance image quality and analysis
