Yu Kong

Dr. Yu Kong is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University. He is now directing the ACTION Lab. He serves Pattern Recognition and IEEE Transactions on Multimedia as an Associate Editor. He also serves CVPR, ICCV, IJCAI, AAAI, Multimedia, FG, etc., as an Area Chair. He is an IEEE Senior Member. His research has been supported by National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, Google, Meta, Nvidia, Adobe, Josiah Mary Jr Foundation, and Knight Foundation.

Dr. Kong’s research focuses on building AI systems that represent, understand, and generate human behaviors. His research spans human motion and human-object interaction modeling, video understanding (including egocentric videos), and trustworthy generative AI. Together, these research directions lay the foundation for AI systems to learn from human activities and interactions, leverage physical principles and prior knowledge, and ultimately interact with the physical world in a human-like manner to better serve people.

Openings: We have openings for Fall 2026 for Ph.D. students, Visiting Scholars, and Research Assistants. You can either 1) fill in the external contact form (preferred) or 2) send your application package to actionlab@msu.edu. I will review applications periodically. Due to large volume of applications, I am not able to track and respond to every applicant. How to apply?