Hui Ren

Research

I am interested in representation learning and its application in semantic and related scenarios. My current research focuses on Generative AI. I have a particular interest in Video Generation, Vision-language models, and Unified Multimodal Models. Previously, I explored Optimal Transport theory for Unsupervised Deep Clustering and 3D Semi-Supervised Learning, with a focus on imbalanced and open-world scenarios.

Generally speaking, my research aim is advancing intelligent systems that can simulate, understand, and interact with the world while efficiently leveraging prior knowledge to generalize across diverse real-world scenarios. - How far are we from the genuine advent of Artificial General Intelligence?

🚀 Open to Opportunities
I am actively looking for Summer 2026 Research Internship in topics of Video Generation, Vision-language Models (VLMs) and Unified Multimodal Models (UMMs).

News

Nov. 2025: I attended NeurIPS 2025 at San Diego, USA.
Sep. 2025: Our paper Opt-In Art: Learning Art Styles Only from Few Examples was accepted by NeurIPS 2025!
Sep. 2025: I received Amazon AI PhD Fellowship!
Aug. 2025: I enrolled in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a Ph.D. student in Computer Science.
Feb. 2025: Our paper Feature4X: Bridging Any Monocular Video to 4D Agentic AI with Versatile Gaussian Feature Fields was accepted by CVPR 2025!
Dec. 2024: I was awarded by National Scholarship (Top 0.2% nationwide, highest scholarship in China).
Dec. 2024: I was awarded as Outstanding Student, ranked top 2% in school.
July 2024: Our paper Dual-level Adaptive Self-Labeling for Novel Class Discovery in Point Cloud Segmentation was accepted by ECCV 2024!
June 2024: I was awarded by International Exchange Program First-class Scholarship (Top 2% in school).
May 2024: I attended ICLR 2024 at Vienna, Austria.
Feb. 2024: I joined MIT CSAIL Vision Group via MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP).
Jan. 2024: Our paper P²OT was accepted by ICLR 2024!

Publications

Note: * indicates equal contribution.

	Project on Video Generation Collaboration with MIT CSAIL and Runway Under Review
	Opt-In Art: Learning Art Styles Only from Few Examples Hui Ren, Joanna Materzyńska, Rohit Gandikota, David Bau, Antonio Torralba NeurIPS, 2025 Paper / Website / Code / Demo
	Feature4X: Bridging Any Monocular Video to 4D Agentic AI with Versatile Gaussian Feature Fields Shijie Zhou, Hui Ren, Yijia Weng, Shuwang Zhang, Zhen Wang, Dejia Xu, Zhiwen Fan, Suya You, Zhangyang Wang, Leonidas Guibas, Achuta Kadambi CVPR, 2025 Paper / Website
	P²OT: Progressive Partial Optimal Transport for Deep Imbalanced Clustering Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He ICLR, 2024 Paper / Code
	SP²OT: Semantic-Regularized Progressive Partial Optimal Transport for Imbalanced Clustering Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He Under Review of TPAMI Paper / Code
	Dual-level Adaptive Self-Labeling for Novel Class Discovery in Point Cloud Segmentation Ruijie Xu, Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He ECCV, 2024 Paper / Code
	Cascaded Sparse Feature Propagation Network for Interactive Segmentation Chuyu Zhang, Chuanyang Hu, Hui Ren, Yongfei Liu, Xuming He BMVC, 2023 Paper / Code

Selected course projects

Business War Policy Exploration
Artificial Intelligence

We proposed a business war model in which restaurants must balance attracting customers and making profits to maximize revenue and even defeat competitors.
We implemented and compared various AI strategies, including Expectimax search, Neural-Network prediction, and Reinforcement learning algorithms to explore the optimal policy.
Report / Code

Ray tracing based multi-resolution iso-surface rendering
Computer Graphics I

We rendered the iso-surface of vortices in a multi-resolution fluid velocity field based on ExaBricks data structure.
We implemented a bitmap accelerated KD-tree and BVH for multi-resolution data to support fast ray marching.
We proposed an advanced adaptive sampling strategy to solve the problem of rendering surface discontinuity, improving the rendering speed by more than 50x at the same precision.
We created a UI for conveniently adjusting the parameters and rendering.
Report / Code

Activities

Nov. 2025: Attend and present poster at NeurIPS 2025, San Diego, USA
Spring 2025: Teaching Assistant in CS182 Introduction to Machine Learning
May 2024: Attend and present poster at ICLR 2024, Vienna, Austria
Fall 2022: Teaching Assistant in SI100B Introduction to Information Science and Technology

Selected Awards and Honors

2025: Amazon AI PhD Fellowship
2025: Shanghai & University's Outstanding Graduate (Top 5% in school)
2024: National Scholarship (Top 0.2% nationwide, highest scholarship in China)
2024: Outstanding Student (Ranked top 2% in school)
2024: International Exchange Program First-class Scholarship (Top 2% in school)
2023: Outstanding Student (Ranked top 2% in school)
2023: Third prize, The 14th Chinese Mathematics Competition
2022: Merit Student (Ranked top 3%-7% in school)
2019: First prize, The 5th Annual International Mathematical Modeling Challenge, Greater China Region Contest

	Project on Video Generation Collaboration with MIT CSAIL and Runway Under Review
	Opt-In Art: Learning Art Styles Only from Few Examples Hui Ren, Joanna Materzyńska, Rohit Gandikota, David Bau, Antonio Torralba NeurIPS, 2025 Paper / Website / Code / Demo
	Feature4X: Bridging Any Monocular Video to 4D Agentic AI with Versatile Gaussian Feature Fields Shijie Zhou, Hui Ren, Yijia Weng, Shuwang Zhang, Zhen Wang, Dejia Xu, Zhiwen Fan, Suya You, Zhangyang Wang, Leonidas Guibas, Achuta Kadambi CVPR, 2025 Paper / Website
	P²OT: Progressive Partial Optimal Transport for Deep Imbalanced Clustering Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He ICLR, 2024 Paper / Code
	SP²OT: Semantic-Regularized Progressive Partial Optimal Transport for Imbalanced Clustering Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He Under Review of TPAMI Paper / Code
	Dual-level Adaptive Self-Labeling for Novel Class Discovery in Point Cloud Segmentation Ruijie Xu, Chuyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xuming He ECCV, 2024 Paper / Code
	Cascaded Sparse Feature Propagation Network for Interactive Segmentation Chuyu Zhang, Chuanyang Hu, Hui Ren, Yongfei Liu, Xuming He BMVC, 2023 Paper / Code