CARVIEW

MOTORHOMES

Select Language

HTTP/2 200 server: GitHub.com content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 last-modified: Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:45:02 GMT access-control-allow-origin: * strict-transport-security: max-age=31556952 etag: W/"694ae32e-7ba6" expires: Sun, 28 Dec 2025 04:48:08 GMT cache-control: max-age=600 content-encoding: gzip x-proxy-cache: MISS x-github-request-id: E07D:3ABDEF:72DDA5:80C152:6950B430 accept-ranges: bytes age: 0 date: Sun, 28 Dec 2025 04:38:08 GMT via: 1.1 varnish x-served-by: cache-bom-vanm7210051-BOM x-cache: MISS x-cache-hits: 0 x-timer: S1766896689.552622,VS0,VE223 vary: Accept-Encoding x-fastly-request-id: c95cfb094c80ec43ffd8531fa33143dcccfd88eb content-length: 9414 Lu Dong

Lu Dong (董璐)

Ph.D. Student

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB)
301 Davis Hall, Buffalo, New York, US, 14260

Email: ludong@buffalo.edu

About Me

I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), University at Buffalo-The State University of New York (UB) , working with Prof. Ifeoma Nwogu at the Human Behavior Modeling Lab. Prior to my Ph.D. studies, I obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science and Technology from the School of Computer Science and Technology at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) in China, where I was advised by Prof. Xinyu Yang at the YLab .

My research focuses on generative AI, 3D human modeling, and agentic intelligence— specifically advancing human-centered video generation and interactive 3D digital humans endowed with domain expertise and empathetic social intelligence. My work spans large language models (LLMs), 3D vision, generative models, and multimodal foundation models. Key projects include sign-language generation, multi-person interaction, human–scene interaction, and human–robot collaboration. Previously, I gained experience in reinforcement learning, recommendation systems, and data visualization. I am now seeking full-time roles as a Research Scientist or Postdoctoral Researcher to continue advancing my research.

News []

2025.12: I’m honored to share that I received the 2025 CSE “PhD Research Award”. I am deeply grateful to my advisor for her continuous guidance and encouragement, and to our lab and all my collaborators for their unwavering support.
2024.09: One paper on Agentic Frameworks for Human and Social Robot Interaction has been accepted by IROS 2025 .
2025.05: Started my summer research intern journey at NEC Laboratories America, Inc. in Princeton, NJ. (on-site)
2025.04: I successfully passed the Ph.D. dissertation proposal defense at CSE Department of UB.
2025.03: I was invited to give a talk on AI for Human Behavior at Women in Tech Western New York .
2024.12: I’m honored to share that I have been awarded the Best AI Project Award at the 2024 CSE Poster Competition.
2024.11: I will be presenting my work at the EMNLP 2024 Conference on November 12. See you in Miami!
2024.10: After a competitive process, five outstanding candidates have advanced to the final phase of Research Acceleration . Congratulations to them and best wishes for their continued success!
2024.10: We are launching an initiative called the Research Acceleration Program , aimed at helping early-stage AI researchers accelerate their growth, focusing on AIGC, Human Motion Generation, with applications in children's educational interactions, sign language synthesis, and social intelligence. UB master's and undergraduate students are encouraged to apply. If you're interested, please feel free to send me your resume.
2024.10: Happy to be invited as a speaker for a panel discussion on 'AI Research and Career Development' at UB.
2024.09: I’ll be presenting my work at ECCV 2024 on September 30 and October 4. See you in Milan, Italy!
2024.09: One first-author paper on 3D sign language motion generation has been accepted by EMNLP 2024 .
2024.09: I’m honored to share that I have received the DEI Leadership Award at the IJCB 2024 Conference.
2024.09: I’m excited to serve as the Local Student Chair for the IJCB 2024 Conference Organizing Team.
2024.08: Two papers have been accepted by ECCV 2024: one on enhancing facial expression inference, and the other on open-domain multi-person motion generation.
2024.08: I am honored to share that my work has been recognized by National AI Institute for Exceptional Education (AI4ExceptionalEd), the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (IAD) and UB-CSE. [Read] [More].
2024.05: I will present my work at FG 2024 Conference on May 27 and 30. See you in Istanbul, Turkey.
2024.04: Two papers on sign language generation have been accepted by FG 2024.
2024.03: I participated in the AI4EE: Year 1 Annual Review Site Visit and presented our work in the event.
2023.09: The National AI Institute for Exceptional Education (AI4EE) will support my research aimed at analyzing and modeling children's non-verbal behaviors, such as facial expressions and body gestures, to enhance educational performance.
2023.08: I was invited to give a talk on Internships in the course CSE501, Fall2023, UB.
2023.07: One paper on human motion synthesis has been accepted by ACM MM 2023.
2023.06: I successfully passed my Oral Qualifying Exam (OQE) and became a PhD candidate at UB.
2023.05: Started my research intern journey at InnoPeak Technology (OPPO US Research) in Seattle, WA. (on-site)
2022.11: I was invited to be a judge of the 2022 UB Hacking Competition!
2022.10: I was invited to give a talk in the course CSE501, Fall2022, UB.
2022.05: Started my research intern journey at InnoPeak Technology (OPPO US Research) in Palo Alto, CA. (on-site)
2021.08: Started my Ph.D. journey following my advisor at UB, Buffalo, NY.

Selected Research

AutoMisty: A Multi-Agent LLM Framework for Automated Code Generation in the Misty Social Robot
Lu Dong*, Xiao Wang*, Sahana Rangasrinivasan, Ifeoma Nwogu, Srirangaraj Setlur, Venu Govindaraju. (*Equal contribution)
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems [IROS2025]
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

Word-Conditioned 3D American Sign Language Motion Generation
Lu Dong, Xiao Wang, Ifeoma Nwogu.
In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics [EMNLP 2024]
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

Ig3D: Integrating 3D Face Representations in Facial Expression Inference
Lu Dong*, Xiao Wang*, Srirangaraj Setlur, Venu Govindaraju, Ifeoma Nwogu.
The 18th European Conference on Computer Vision [ECCV 2024] Workshop
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

SignAvatar: Sign Language 3D Motion Reconstruction and Generation
Lu Dong, Lipisha Chaudhary, Fei Xu, Xiao Wang, Mason Lary, Ifeoma Nwogu.
The 18th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition [FG 2024].
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

Towards Open Domain Text-Driven Synthesis of Multi-Person Motions
Mengyi Shan, Lu Dong, Yutao Han, Yuan Yao, Tao Liu, Ifeoma Nwogu, Guo-Jun Qi, Mitch Hill.
The 18th European Conference on Computer Vision [ECCV 2024]
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

A Comparative Study of Video-based Human Representations for American Sign Language Alphabet Generation
FeiXu, Lipisha Chaudhary, Lu Dong, Srirangaraj Setlur, Venu Govindaraju, Ifeoma Nwogu.
The 18th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition [FG 2024] Workshop.
DOI PDF BibTeX

Language-guided Human Motion Synthesis with Atomic Actions
Yuanhao Zhai, Mingzhen Huang, Tianyu Luan, Lu Dong , Ifeoma Nwogu, Siwei Lyu, David Doermann, Junsong Yuan
ACM Multimedia [MM 2023].
Please check title link for more details.
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

Exploring the General Melodic Characteristics of XinTianYou Folk Songs
Juan Li, Lu Dong, Jianhang Ding, Xinyu Yang
12th Sound and Music Computing Conference(SMC)
DOI PDF BibTeX Project Webpage

Selected Project

A smooth 3D Human Pose Estimation pipeline for video in the wild
The majority of current models have been trained on limited close set data, which often results in subpar performance when applied to real-world video data. One of the major challenges in this context is the issue of self-occlusion, which refers to instances where parts of a subject's body obstruct or cover other parts. This results in a less smooth and precise performance. This project aims to tackle this issue.
Please check title link for more details.

A Training ChatBot to facilitate medical knowledge dissemination in underdeveloped regions
This project is undertaken in providing for support for a non-profit organization with the aim of addressing the lack of medical knowledge in underdeveloped regions of India. This shortfall leads to an alarming number of preventable fatalities each year. We have developed a training chatbot to enhance the understanding of medical knowledge and local resources by volunteers and the local population. The chatbot will serve as an educational tool to improve medical literacy and ultimately, save lives.
Please check title link for more details.

A Covid Analysis Search Engine: Dissecting Twitter data to analyze government & public attitude towards Covid and Vaccines
Do authoritative figures have any influence on the trend of COVID-19, what is the attitude of the general public toward COVID-19 and vaccines, whether changes in public attitudes are influenced by authoritative speech? The aim of this project is to design and develop a full-stack search engine that integrates advanced functionalities for retrieval, translation, sentiment analysis, attitude tracking, topic & area statistics, and disinformation detection from multiple dimensions.
Please check title link for more details.

Mentorship Program

Research Acceleration Program
Building on my own research areas, I initiated the Research Acceleration Program to support the rapid growth of early-stage AI researchers, with a focus on human-centered multimodal intelligence—spanning generative AI, multimodal large models, and LLM-based agentic systems for applications in education, sign language communication, and digital humans. The program is designed to mentor students through the journey of turning research ideas into concrete, deployable pipeline systems.
Please check title link for more details.

Experience

Research Assistant

Research Assistant, National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, University at Buffalo-SUNY (UB), Sep 2023 – Present
Research Assistant, Human Behavior Modeling Lab, University at Buffalo-SUNY (UB), Aug 2021 – Present
Research Assistant, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Aug 2020 – May 2021
Research Assistant, Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU), Aug 2013 – May 2016

Research Internship

Research Intern, NEC Laboratories America, Inc., On-Site, May 2025 – Present
Research Intern, InnoPeak Technology, Seattle, WA, On-Site, June 2023 – Aug 2023
Research Intern, InnoPeak Technology, Palo Alto, CA, On-Site, May 2022 – Aug 2022

Selected Awards & Honors

PhD Research Award , UB, 2025.
Best AI Project , UB 2024.
IJCB Conference Leadership Award , 2024.
ECCV Conference Travel Grant , 2024.
National Graduate Academic Scholarship , 2013-2016.
National Endeavor Undergraduate Scholarship for Outstanding Students , 2010-2011
Excellent Graduate Student Honor, 2014-2016 ; Excellent Undergraduate Student Honor, 2010-2011.
Silver Medal in Women’s 100m Hurdles, Shaanxi Provincial University Games, 2014.
Champion Team in Women’s Basketball (Captain) First-time achievement for the CS Department, 2010.

Academic Services

Conference Organization

2024.09 Served as the Local Student Chair for IJCB 2024 Conference @ Buffalo, NY.

Conference & Journal Reviewer

ACL Rolling Review (ARR), February & July 2025; (Association for Computational Linguistics)
ACM MM 2022, 2023, 2024 (ACM International Conference on Multimedia)
Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), 2025
Springer Nature: Machine Vision and Applications (SN MVA), 2024
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (IEEE TAFFC), 2024

Invited Talks & Competition Judge

2025.03: I was invited to give a talk on AI for Human Behavior at Women in Tech Western New York.
2024.10: I was invited as a speaker for a panel discussion on 'AI Research and Career Development' at UB.
2023.8: I was invited to give a talk on Internships in the course CSE501, Fall2023, UB.
2022.11.06 Invited as a Judge for 2022 UB Hacking Competition.
2022.10: Delivering a talk, introducing Human Pose Estimation and Ph.D Life Guidance in the course CSE-501, Fall2022.

Membership

ACL Member; IEEE Student Member; IEEE Biometrics Council Member

Selected Photos

Last Updated on December, 2024

Original Source | Taken Source