Chen Gao | 髙諶

Senior Research Scientist at Waymo

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

— 1 Peter 5: 6-7

Portrait of Chen Gao

I am a senior research scientist at Waymo, where I work on 3D/4D simulation and perception for autonomous driving. Prior to Waymo, I was a researcher at Meta, focusing on high-fidelity 3D/4D reconstruction and generative AI for Hyperscape.

I completed my Ph.D. at Virginia Tech, where I was advised by Jia-Bin Huang. Prior to that, I received my M.S. and B.S. from the University of Michigan and Oregon State University.

Email  /  CV  /  Scholar  /  Twitter  /  Github

NEWS
[2026/04]
I will join Waymo as a Senior Research Scientist.
[2025/09]
Mark Zuckerberg just unveiled our team’s Hyperscape at Meta Connect 2025!
[2025/02]
Our paper on textured Gaussians is accepted to CVPR 2025.
[2024/07]
Our paper on reflection-aware NeRF is accepted to SIGGRAPH Asia 2024.
PUBLICATION

Textured Gaussians for Enhanced 3D Scene Appearance Modeling

Brian Chao, Hung-Yu Tseng, Lorenzo Porzi, Chen Gao, Tuotuo Li, Qinbo Li, Ayush Saraf, Jia-Bin Huang, Johannes Kopf, Gordon Wetzstein, Changil Kim

CVPR, 2025

Project arXiv code

Reflection-Aware Neural Radiance Fields

Chen Gao, Yipeng Wang, Changil Kim, Jia-Bin Huang, Johannes Kopf

SIGGRAPH Asia, 2024

Project arXiv

Modeling Ambient Scene Dynamics for Free-view Synthesis

Meng-Li Shih, Jia-Bin Huang, Changil Kim, Rajvi Shah, Johannes Kopf, Chen Gao

SIGGRAPH, 2024

Project arXiv

SpecNeRF project teaser image

SpecNeRF: Gaussian Directional Encoding for Specular Reflections

Li Ma, Vasu Agrawal, Haithem Turki, Changil Kim, Chen Gao, Pedro V. Sander, Michael Zollhöfer, Christian Richardt

CVPR, 2024

Project arXiv

OmnimatteRF: Robust Omnimatte with 3D Background Modeling

Geng Lin, Chen Gao, Jia-Bin Huang, Changil Kim, Yipeng Wang, Matthias Zwicker, Ayush Saraf

ICCV, 2023

Project arXiv code

Progressively Optimized Local Radiance Fields for Robust View Synthesis

Andreas Meuleman, Yu-Lun Liu, Chen Gao, Jia-Bin Huang, Changil Kim, Min H. Kim, Johannes Kopf

CVPR, 2023

Project arXiv code

Robust Dynamic Radiance Fields

Yu-Lun Liu, Chen Gao, Andreas Meuleman, Hung-Yu Tseng, Ayush Saraf, Changil Kim, Yung-Yu Chuang, Johannes Kopf, Jia-Bin Huang

CVPR, 2023

Project arXiv code

Dynamic View Synthesis from Dynamic Monocular Video

Chen Gao, Ayush Saraf, Johannes Kopf, Jia-Bin Huang

ICCV, 2021

Project arXiv code

Portrait Neural Radiance Fields from a Single Image

Chen Gao, Yichang Shih, Wei-Sheng Lai, Chia-Kai Liang, Jia-Bin Huang

arXiv, 2020

Project arXiv

Flow-edge Guided Video Completion

Chen Gao, Ayush Saraf, Jia-Bin Huang, Johannes Kopf

ECCV, 2020

Project arXiv code

DRG: Dual Relation Graph for Human-Object Interaction Detection

Chen Gao, Jiarui Xu, Yuliang Zou, Jia-Bin Huang

ECCV, 2020

Project arXiv code

NAS-DIP project teaser animation

NAS-DIP: Learning Deep Image Prior with Neural Architecture Search

Yun-Chun Chen*, Chen Gao*, Esther Robb, Jia-Bin Huang

ECCV, 2020

Project arXiv code

SDN project teaser animation

Why Can't I Dance in the Mall? Learning to Mitigate Scene Bias in Action Recognition

Jinwoo Choi, Chen Gao, Joseph Messou, Jia-Bin Huang

NeurIPS, 2019

Project arXiv code

iCAN human-object interaction project teaser animation

iCAN: Instance-Centric Attention Network for Human-Object Interaction Detection

Chen Gao, Yuliang Zou, Jia-Bin Huang

BMVC, 2018

Project arXiv code

Panoramic Robust PCA project teaser animation

Panoramic Robust PCA for Foreground-Background Separation on Noisy, Free-Motion Camera Video

Chen Gao*, Brian E. Moore*, Raj Rao Nadakuditi

IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, 2019

Project arXiv code

Augmented Robust PCA project teaser animation

Augmented Robust PCA For Foreground-Background Separation on Noisy, Moving Camera Video

Chen Gao, Brian E. Moore, Raj Rao Nadakuditi

GlobalSIP, 2017 (Oral)

Project arXiv code

EDUCATION

Virginia Tech Doctor of Philosophy

University of Michigan Master of Science

Oregon State University Bachelor of Science

INDUSTRY

Senior Research Scientist 2026 – Present

Research Scientist 2022 – 2026

Research Intern Summer 2021

Research Intern Summer 2020

Research Intern Summer 2019

MISC

Road Trip

I enjoy road-trip as it's a great way to experience local customs. The spectacular landscape reminds me of how great our Creator is. One of my dreams is to visit all the national parks in the US.

22 / 63 National Parks visited
  • Arches - Utah
  • Bryce Canyon - Utah (Favourite!)
  • Canyonlands - Utah
  • Capitol Reef - Utah
  • Crater Lake - Oregon
  • Everglades - Florida
  • Glacier National Park - Montana
  • Grand Canyon - Arizona
  • Grand Teton - Wyoming
  • Great Sand Dunes - Colorado
  • Great Smoky Mountains - North Carolina, Tennessee
  • Joshua Tree - California
  • Kings Canyon - California
  • Mesa Verde - Colorado
  • Mount Rainier - Washington
  • North Cascades - Washington
  • Olympic - Washington
  • Sequoia - California
  • Shenandoah - Virginia
  • Yellowstone - Wyoming, Montana, Idaho
  • Yosemite - California
  • Zion - Utah

Painting

I spent 6 years learning figure sketch, traditional Chinese painting , and Gongbi , specialized in Bird-and-flower painting . Painting has always been a way for me to slow down and find inner calm. These days, I enjoy drawing anime characters as a quiet counterbalance to research, reconnecting with the joy of drawing I had as a child. You can find some of them here.

Activities

I regularly engage in hiking, paddleboarding, and snowboarding. If you're in Seattle and enjoy outdoor activities, feel free to contact me.