Zhicong Sun (Zeeco) 孙智聪

PhD Candidate, PolyU · Incoming Postdoc, NTU DISC Lab

I am a final-year PhD candidate at PolyU, advised by Prof. Jacqueline Lo, Prof. Anthony Chen, Prof. Siu-Ming Lo, and Prof. Jinxing Hu.

My research focuses on robotic perception, reasoning, and planning in dynamic, unstructured environments and their applications to safety-critical scenarios such as wildfire response. I also work on the safety & security of cyber-physical systems.

Previously, I received my M.Eng. from SUSTech (advised by Prof. Shuang-Hua Yang and Prof. Yulong Ding), and my B.Eng. from HIT (advised by Prof. Changjun Yu).

news

May 2026 Excited to share that I will join NTU DISC Lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher, working with Prof. Bryan G. Pantoja-Rosero.
Oct 2025 WildfireX-SLAM accepted to MMM 2026 as Oral.
Sep 2025 Updated personal page; new project page for D4DGS-SLAM.
Jun 2025 D4DGS-SLAM accepted to IEEE/RSJ IROS 2025 as Oral.
Jun 2024 Wrapped up research internship at Huawei 2012 Theory Lab, Hong Kong.
Jun 2024 Survey paper on joint safety & security risk analysis published in IET Cyber-Physical Systems.
May 2024 AOC-IDS accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2024 (co-author).
Nov 2023 Contradictions identification paper published in IEEE IoT Journal (26-page article).
Sep 2023 Started PhD at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

selected publications

full list on Scholar →

Robotic Perception, Reasoning & Planning

IROS 2025 Oral

Embracing Dynamics: Dynamics-aware 4D Gaussian Splatting SLAM

Zhicong Sun, Jinxing Hu, Jacqueline Lo

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2025.

arXiv project code poster

@inproceedings{sun2025embracing,
  title={Embracing dynamics: Dynamics-aware 4d gaussian splatting slam},
  author={Sun, Zhicong and Lo, Jacqueline and Hu, Jinxing},
  booktitle={2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages={5331--5338},
  year={2025},
  organization={IEEE}
}

MMM 2026 Oral

WildfireX-SLAM: A Large-scale Low-altitude RGB-D Dataset for Wildfire SLAM and Beyond

Zhicong Sun, Jinxing Hu, Jacqueline Lo

32nd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, 2026.

arXiv project code & dataset

@inproceedings{sun2026wildfirex,
  title={WildfireX-SLAM: A Large-Scale Low-Altitude RGB-D Dataset for Wildfire SLAM and Beyond},
  author={Sun, Zhicong and Lo, Jacqueline and Hu, Jinxing},
  booktitle={International Conference on Multimedia Modeling},
  pages={533--546},
  year={2026},
  organization={Springer}
}

Cyber-Physical Systems · Safety & Security

IEEE IoT-J 2023 26 pages

Contradictions Identification of Safety and Security Requirements for Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Zhicong Sun, Yulong Ding, Shuang-Hua Yang

IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2023.

DOI PDF

@article{sun2023contradictions,
  title={Contradictions identification of safety and security requirements for industrial cyber--physical systems},
  author={Sun, Zhicong and Ding, Yulong and Pei, Ke and Yang, Shuang-Hua},
  journal={IEEE Internet of Things Journal},
  volume={11},
  number={7},
  pages={12033--12057},
  year={2023},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

IET CPS 2024 Survey

Joint Safety and Security Risk Analysis in Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems: A Survey

Zhicong Sun, Guang Cheng, Yulong Ding, Shuang-Hua Yang

IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications, 2024.

DOI PDF

@article{sun2024joint,
  title={Joint safety and security risk analysis in industrial cyber-physical systems: A survey},
  author={Sun, Zhicong and Chen, Guang and Ding, Yulong and Yang, Shuang-Hua},
  journal={IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory \& Applications},
  volume={9},
  number={4},
  pages={334--349},
  year={2024},
  publisher={Wiley Online Library}
}

INFOCOM 2024

AOC-IDS: Autonomous Online Framework with Contrastive Learning for Intrusion Detection

Xinchen Zhang, Running Zhao, Zhihan Jiang, Zhicong Sun, Yulong Ding, Edith C.-H. Ngai, Shuang-Hua Yang

IEEE INFOCOM, 2024.

DOI arXiv

@inproceedings{zhang2024aoc,
  title={Aoc-ids: Autonomous online framework with contrastive learning for intrusion detection},
  author={Zhang, Xinchen and Zhao, Running and Jiang, Zhihan and Sun, Zhicong and Ding, Yulong and Ngai, Edith CH and Yang, Shuang-Hua},
  booktitle={IEEE INFOCOM 2024-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications},
  pages={581--590},
  year={2024},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Co-first-authored and under-review works (TCYB, TDSC) are listed on Google Scholar.

education & experience

2023 — present Ph.D., Robotics & CEE · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Advisors: Prof. Jacqueline Lo, Prof. Anthony Chen, Prof. Siu-Ming Lo, Prof. Jinxing Hu
2024 Research Intern · Huawei 2012 Theory Lab, Hong Kong
2020 — 2023 M.Eng., Computer Science and Engineering · Southern University of Science and Technology
Advisors: Prof. Shuang-Hua Yang, Prof. Yulong Ding
2016 — 2020 B.Eng., Communication Engineering · Harbin Institute of Technology
Advisors: Prof. Changjun Yu

awards & honors

2020 Top 10 Influential Graduate, HITwh — ranked 2^nd, selection ratio 10 / 2368, with scholarship
2020 Second Prize, Preliminary Contest of Business Plan, 15^th China Graduate Electronic Design Contest (First Author)
2019 Second Prize, Final Tournament of the 18^th RoboMaster University Championship (First Author)
2019 Grand Prize, North China Division, 18^th Robomaster University Technical Challenge (First Author)
2018 Grand Prize, 7^th China Marine Vehicle Design and Construction Contest (First Author)
2017—'19 Science and Technology Innovation Scholarship, HITwh (3 consecutive years)

▸ show 10 more awards & honors

2020 Second Prize, South China Division, 15^th China Graduate Electronic Design Contest (Second Author)
2019 First Prize, Northern Division, 18^th RoboMaster University Championship (First Author)
2019 Outstanding Scientific and Technological Innovation Individual, HITwh
2019 Participation Award, ICRA RoboMaster AI Challenge (Member)
2018 Third Prize, University Student Science and Technology Innovation Competition, Shandong (Second Author)
2018 Third Prize, Northern Division, 17^th RoboMaster University Championship (First Author)
2018 First Prize, HITwh Internal Contest, Shandong Science and Technology Innovation Competition (Second Author)
2018 Second Prize, 1^st HITwh Headmaster Cup Science and Technology Contest (First Author)
2018 First Prize, HITwh AI & Intelligent Hardware Contest (First Author)
2017—'18 Outstanding Party Member · Excellent Volunteer · Social Work / Sports Scholarship, HITwh

services

Reviewer · ICCV · IROS · IEEE Internet of Things Journal · Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering (Springer) · MMM