Zizhao Li

About

Zizhao Li is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on computer vision, machine learning, and trustworthy AI, with particular interests in open-world recognition, out-of-distribution detection, and uncertainty-aware perception for autonomous systems.

His recent work studies how 2D and 3D perception models can recognize unknown objects and detect distribution shifts in open environments. He has worked on open-world object detection with vision-language models, LiDAR-based out-of-distribution detection, 3D shape anomaly detection, and semantic-guided LiDAR generation. His research has been published at top computer vision venues, including CVPR, ICCV, BMVC, and TMLR.

Publications

(* denotes equal contribution)

Neural Distribution Prior for LiDAR Out-of-Distribution Detection

Zizhao Li, Zhengkang Xiang, Jiayang Ao, Feng Liu, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

CVPR 2026 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ★ CVPR Compute Gold Star

Paper Project Page Code
Hierarchical Point-Patch Fusion with Adaptive Patch Codebook for 3D Shape Anomaly Detection

Xueyang Kang*, Zizhao Li*, Tian Lan, Dong Gong, Kourosh Khoshelham, Liangliang Nan

CVPR 2026 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ✓ CVPR Compute Transparency Champion

Paper Poster
Relative Energy Learning for LiDAR Out-of-Distribution Detection

Zizhao Li, Zhengkang Xiang, Jiayang Ao, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

ISPRS 2026 ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing IF 12.9

Paper Code
Out-of-Distribution Detection in 3D Applications: A Review

Zizhao Li, Xueyang Kang, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

Neurocomputing 2026 Neurocomputing

Paper
Digital Twin Approach to Accessibility Assessment of Public Transport

Kourosh Khoshelham, Junjie Zhang, Marko Radanovic, Zizhao Li, Shuyu Zhu, Yuan Zhao, Martin Tomko

ISPRS Archives 2026 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLIX-B2-2026, 1245–1250

Paper
You Only Reprogram Once: Rethinking Prolonged Training for Visual Reprogramming

Zizhao Li, Mohammed Yaqoob Ansari, Xinyu Su, Jiayang Ao, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

Preprint 2026 arXiv:2609.36661

Paper
Reprogramming Vision-Language Models via Structured Prompt Reparameterization

Zizhao Li, Chengyi Cai, Mohammed Yaqoob Ansari, Feng Liu, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

Preprint 2026 arXiv:2609.36680

Paper
From Open Vocabulary to Open World: Teaching Vision Language Models to Detect Novel Objects

Zizhao Li, Zhengkang Xiang, Joseph West, Kourosh Khoshelham

BMVC 2025 36th British Machine Vision Conference Oral

Paper Code
SG-LDM: Semantic-Guided LiDAR Generation via Latent-Aligned Diffusion

Zhengkang Xiang, Zizhao Li, Amir Khodabandeh, Kourosh Khoshelham

ICCV 2025 International Conference on Computer Vision

Paper
Contrastive Class Anchor Learning for Open Set Object Recognition in Driving Scenes

Zizhao Li, Kourosh Khoshelham, Joseph West

TMLR 2024 Transactions on Machine Learning Research

Paper Code

Scholarships, Awards & Funding

2026CVPR Compute Gold Star Neural Distribution Prior for LiDAR OOD Detection
2026CVPR Compute Transparency Champion Hierarchical Point-Patch Fusion for 3D Shape Anomaly Detection
2025Engineering and IT Conference Travel Scholarship, The University of Melbourne
2024Melbourne Research Scholarship, The University of Melbourne
2022Melbourne Engineering and Information Technology Foundation Scholarship, The University of Melbourne
2020Executive Dean's Recognition of Academic Excellence, University of Adelaide

Education

The University of Melbourne Mar 2024 – Present

Doctor of Philosophy · Melbourne, VIC

Melbourne Research Scholarship
Confirmation of candidature: Mar 2025

The University of Melbourne Feb 2022 – Dec 2023

Master of Computer Science · Melbourne, VIC

Melbourne Engineering and Information Technology Foundation Scholarship
WAM: 82.062

University of Adelaide Feb 2019 – Dec 2021

Bachelor of Computer Science · Adelaide, SA

Executive Dean's Recognition of Academic Excellence 2020
GPA: 6.75/7

Experience

The University of Melbourne Mar 2025 – Jul 2025

Academic Tutor — Imaging the Environment (GEOM30009) · Melbourne, VIC

Taught tutorials supporting student understanding of imaging and environmental mapping.
Assessed assignments and provided feedback to improve technical understanding.

The University of Melbourne Feb 2024 – Aug 2024

Research Assistant · Melbourne, VIC

Digital twin project for Melbourne's tram system — accessibility assessment for people with disabilities.
Built a web-based visualization interface for multi-modal transport data exploration.
Developed an automated pipeline for assessing public transport accessibility.

Adelaide Fringe Jan 2021 – Mar 2021

Software Engineer Intern · Adelaide, SA

Analysed target users, created personas, and designed a software prototype.
Built website backend with Ruby on Rails.

Programming	Python, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby
Frameworks / Tools	PyTorch, OpenCV, Git, Linux, LaTeX
Research Areas	3D Computer Vision, Multimodal Learning, LiDAR Perception, OOD Detection, Open-World Recognition