Yuheng Wu
吴宇恒

Headshot of Yuheng Wu

PhD Candidate

Department of Computer Science

University of Wisconsin-Madison

yuheng.wu [at] wisc.edu

I am a 4th year PhD candidate at the MadAbility Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, supervised by Prof. Yuhang Zhao. My research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, AI-powered Interactive System, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), and Accessibility.

I’m interested in building intelligent interactive systems that empower people.

Before UW-Madison, I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 2022.

Publications

2026

  1. SceneGlance augmenting two cluttered scenes for low-vision users. Left: a kitchen counter where knives and a glass carry yellow solid overlays while utensils and bowls are outlined in blue. Right: a busy street where bicycles, traffic and pedestrian signals, and a curb drain are outlined in green with floating icon labels, and the sidewalk and other objects are outlined in blue.
    What to Distinguish and How? Opportunities and Challenges of Augmenting Multiple, Cluttered Objects in Complex Scenes for People with Low Vision
    Yuheng Wu, Ruijia Chen, Jaewook Lee, Jia Li, Kexin Zhang, Meng Fong Lio, and 5 more authors
    ASSETS, 2026
  2. NaviNote enables blind and low vision (BLV) users to explore their surroundings via a five-stage pipeline after localizing their precise positions using Visual Positioning System (VPS) in a pre-scanned area on a smartphone: (1) User asks about the area using natural language; (2) User navigates to a specific location within the area by following the turn-by-turn instructions NaviNote provides; (3) User listens to nearby spatial annotations created by other BLV users; (4) User asks follow-up questions on spatial annotations and from other information sources; (5) User creates their own spatial annotations. Arrows in the figure indicate the internal flow of the pipeline. During the interaction, the user wears a vest that holds the smartphone with camera facing forward.
    NaviNote: Enabling In-situ Spatial Annotation Authoring to Support Exploration and Navigation for Blind and Low Vision People
    🏆 Honorable Mention
    Ruijia Chen*, Yuheng Wu*, Charlie Houseago, Filipe Gaspar, Filippo Aleotti, Dorian Gálvez-López, and 6 more authors
    * Equal contribution
    CHI, 2026
  3. Overview of AskNow, an interactive system powered by LLM, consisting of a Student Interface and an Instructor Interface. In a large-scale classroom: (1) AskNow listens to the instructor using streaming speech-to-text technology; (2) Students can ask questions through their own devices and get immediate feedback grounded in the ongoing lecture context; (3) The Instructor Interface displays common confusion areas in real time.
    AskNow: An LLM-powered Interactive System for Real-Time Question Answering in Large-Scale Classrooms
    Ziqi Liu, Yuankun Wang, Hui-Ru Ho, Yuheng Wu, Yuhang Zhao, and Bilge Mutlu
    CHI, 2026

2022

  1. Teaser image of the project: TreeVisual: Design and Evaluation of a Web-Based Visualization Tool for Teaching and Learning Tree Visualization
    TreeVisual: Design and Evaluation of a Web-Based Visualization Tool for Teaching and Learning Tree Visualization
    Brendan J. O'Handley, Yuheng Wu, Haobin Duan, and Chaoli Wang
    ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, 2022

Education

Logo of University of Wisconsin–Madison University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ph.D. in Computer Science
Sep. 2022 - Present
Logo of Peking University Peking University
B.S. in Computer Science
Aug. 2018 - Jul. 2022

Professional Experience

Logo of Niantic Spatial Niantic Spatial
Research and Development Intern
Mentor: Dr. Jessica Van Brummelen and Prof. Gabriel Brostow
May. 2025 - Sep. 2025
London, United Kingdom
Logo of Microsoft Microsoft Research Asia
Research Intern, Data and Knowledge Intelligence (DKI)
Mentor: Dr. Yun Wang
Jan. 2022 - Jun. 2022
Beijing, China

Service and Teaching

Reviewer

UIST'26, CHI'26, ICCV'25, CSCW'24, ISMAR'24

Workshops

Co-organizer, Workshop on Vision Foundation Models and Generative AI for Accessibility: Challenges and Opportunities, ICCV 2025

Teaching

  • CS320: Data Science Programming II
    Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
  • CS220: Data Science Programming I
    Head Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Summer 2024
  • CS577: Introduction to Algorithms
    Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring 2023
  • CS220: Data Science Programming I
    Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2022

Miscellaneous

  • Award & Honors: David G. Walsh Research Travel Awards, Fall 2025
  • CV / LLM: PyTorch, OpenCV, Model Fine-Tuning, Real-time Recognition/Segmentation Pipelines, Agentic LLM Systems
  • AR / VR Development: Unity, MRTK (HoloLens), OpenXR, Meta XR, Niantic VPS/Lightship, ARKit, A-Frame
  • Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript, C#, C/C++, Swift, HTML/CSS, SQL
  • Other skills: MATLAB, R, ReactJS, VueJS, Flask, Git
  • Languages: Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, English
    • Slowly learning Spanish 🇪🇸