Yicheng (Albert) Zhan

yicheng_zhan2001@outlook.com

I am Yicheng Zhan (战弈诚), a Ph.D. candidate at University College London in the Computational Light Laboratory, advised by Dr. Kaan Akşit. I received my M.Sc. from University College London and my B.Sc. from King’s College London.

My research lies at the intersection of computer vision, generative models, and neural rendering, with a focus on photorealistic 3D content for holographic AR/VR displays. I build learned 3D representations, such as Gaussian splatting and radiance fields, and generative models that bring the wave nature of light, including polarization, interference, and diffraction, into how scenes are captured, represented, and displayed. I also develop wave-optics renderers to simulate these light phenomena.

My main goal is to build visual models that behave like the real world, serving as reliable sources of reality beyond visually correct scenes. Applications span AR/VR, next-generation holographic displays, virtual production, and physically accurate simulation for scientific discovery and machine perception.

Reviewer: SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, AAAI, ISMAR (conferences); IEEE TVCG, Optica, Optics Express (journals)

news

Sep 11, 2026	Our paper Hologram Representation via Quadratic Phase Gaussian Splatting is accepted at ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 Technical Communications!
Jul 20, 2026	I presented our work Complex-Valued Holographic Radiance Fields at the SIGGRAPH 2026 Technical Papers session in Los Angeles, USA!
Jun 29, 2026	Our poster Clustered Codebook Quantization for 2D Gaussian-based Image Compression is accepted to ACM SIGGRAPH 2026 Poster Track!
Jun 19, 2026	Our paper Complex-Valued 2D Gaussian Representation for Computer-Generated Holography is accepted at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2026!

selected publications

ECCV

Complex-Valued 2D Gaussian Representation for Computer-Generated Holography

Yicheng Zhan^*, Xiangjun Gao^*, Long Quan, and Kaan Akşit * Equal Contribution

In Computer Vision – ECCV 2026, Malmö, Sweden, Sep 2026

DOI arXiv Bib PDF Code Website

@inproceedings{zhan2026complexvalued2d,
  author = {Zhan, Yicheng and Gao, Xiangjun and Quan, Long and Ak\c{s}it, Kaan},
  title = {Complex-Valued 2D Gaussian Representation for Computer-Generated Holography},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  booktitle = {Computer Vision -- ECCV 2026},
  editor = {Favaro, Paolo and Kukelova, Zuzana and Maki, Atsuto and Rohrbach, Anna and Schindler, Konrad and Tombari, Federico},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  address = {Cham},
  pages = {557--576},
  isbn = {978-3-032-37574-2},
  location = {Malmö, Sweden},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-37574-2_31},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15022},
}

ACM TOG

Complex-Valued Holographic Radiance Fields

Yicheng Zhan, Dong-Ha Shin, Seung-Hwan Baek, and Kaan Akşit

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Presented in SIGGRAPH 2026), Los Angeles, California, USA, Apr 2026

DOI arXiv Bib PDF Code Website

Highlight at Graphics4Science Workshop at SIGGRAPH 2026

@article{zhan2025complexvalued,
  author = {Zhan, Yicheng and Shin, Dong-Ha and Baek, Seung-Hwan and Ak\c{s}it, Kaan},
  title = {Complex-Valued Holographic Radiance Fields},
  year = {2026},
  issue_date = {June 2026},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  volume = {45},
  number = {3},
  issn = {0730-0301},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3804450},
  doi = {10.1145/3804450},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics (Presented in SIGGRAPH 2026)},
  month = apr,
  articleno = {31},
  numpages = {16},
  keywords = {Novel view synthesis, radiance fields, 3D gaussians, computer-generated holography},
  location = {Los Angeles, California, USA},
}

AAAI

Enhancing Binary Encoded Crime Linkage Analysis Using Siamese Network

Yicheng Zhan, Fahim Ahmed, Amy Burrell, Matthew Tonkin, Sarah Galambos, Jessica Woodhams, and Dalal Alrajeh

In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Singapore, Mar 2026

DOI arXiv Bib PDF Code

@article{zhan2026enhancing,
  author = {Zhan, Yicheng and Ahmed, Fahim and Burrell, Amy and Tonkin, Matthew and Galambos, Sarah and Woodhams, Jessica and Alrajeh, Dalal},
  title = {Enhancing Binary Encoded Crime Linkage Analysis Using Siamese Network},
  year = {2026},
  month = mar,
  journal = {In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  volume = {40},
  number = {46},
  pages = {39576--39584},
  publisher = {AAAI Press},
  location = {Singapore},
  doi = {10.1609/aaai.v40i46.41309},
  url = {https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/41309},
}

arXiv

Configurable Holography: Towards Display and Scene Adaptation

Yicheng Zhan, Liang Shi, Wojciech Matusik, Qi Sun, and Kaan Akşit

arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.01558, Mar 2024

arXiv Bib PDF

@article{zhan2024configurable,
  author = {Zhan, Yicheng and Shi, Liang and Matusik, Wojciech and Sun, Qi and Ak\c{s}it, Kaan},
  title = {Configurable Holography: Towards Display and Scene Adaptation},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.01558},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01558},
}