Changzeng Fu 傅昌锃
Northeastern University
Osaka University
SSTC · Northeastern University

Changzeng Fu
傅昌锃

Associate Professor · HACI Lab · SSTC-NEU

RChangzeng Fu is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University. He holds a Ph.D. from Osaka University, Japan, and is recognized as a Yanzhao Young Talent (Class A). He also holds appointments as a Visiting Associate Professor at Osaka University and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney.

Affective Computing Social Robotics HRI / HAI Multimodal AI Depression Detection
HACI Lab Banner

MPDD Challenge Series

Multimodal Personality-aware Depression Detection — our flagship international benchmark challenge co-organized with ACM Multimedia

2025
MPDD Challenge 2025
The first MPDD challenge co-located with ACM MM 2025. Personality-guided multimodal depression detection using audio, video, and text.
Visit Challenge Site
2026
MPDD-AVG Challenge 2026
The second edition expanding to audio-visual-gesture modalities, advancing automated mental health assessment research.
Visit Challenge Site

Research Interests

We combine cognitive science, psychology, robotics, and AI to explore emotion-aware intelligent systems — from theory to real-world applications.

HACI research framework tree diagram HACI tree with three research tracks and six leaf topics, plus framework summary panel. Research Framework The HACI lab combines multimodal perception, cognitive reasoning, and affective expression to build socially intelligent agents. Key Objectives Perceive human states through multimodal signals Speech · Vision · Text · Physiological Signals Model psychological and cognitive mechanisms Personality · Emotion Synthesize empathetic and expressive behaviors Speech · Face · Gesture Applications · Social robotics & HRI / HAI · Mental health assessment · Affective dialogue systems · Human-agent long-term bonds Modalities Audio Video Text Physiology HACI Social Interaction Multimodal Behavior Recognition Multimodal Affective Expression Long-term Interaction Building sustained engagement and trust over extended periods Rapport Building Fostering emotional resonance and social bonds Multimodal Emotion Recognition Analyzing speech, vision, and text to perceive human emotions Personality-aware Depression Detection Inferring personality traits for mental health assessment Affective Behavior Generation Synthesizing expressive speech, facial expressions, and gestures Agent-based Affective Interaction Strategy Designing empathetic and socially appropriate agent responses Lab root Research track Topic

Affective Computing

Multimodal emotion recognition from speech, vision, and text using deep graph neural networks and transformer architectures.

Social Robotics & HRI

Designing emotionally expressive humanoid robots that modulate authority, warmth, and social connectedness through bodily movement.

Mental Health AI

Automatic depression detection systems leveraging facial action units, physiology signals, and personality-aware multimodal frameworks.

Dialogue & Conversation

Dialogue act classification, emotional voice conversion, and rapport-building conversation systems for human-agent interaction.

Agent Expressive Expression Generation

Emotional voice generation, expressive gesture synthesis, and emotional talking head for interactive agents.

Cognitive Science

Incorporating psychological and cognitive models to optimize interaction strategies between humans and intelligent agents.

Education & Experience

Education

PhD

Doctor of Philosophy

Osaka University, Japan
2019.10 – 2022.03 · Supervisor: Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro
ME

Master of Engineering

Osaka University, Japan
2017.10 – 2019.09 · Supervisor: Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro
BS

Bachelor of Engineering

Northeastern University, China
2013.09 – 2017.06

Positions

2025.01 – Present
Associate Professor
SSTC, Northeastern University, China
2026.04 – Present
Invited Associate Professor
Osaka University, Japan
2022.04 – Present
Guest Researcher
RIKEN, Japan
2022.12 – 2024.12
Lecturer
SSTC, Northeastern University, China
2022.12 – 2026.03
Guest Faculty
Osaka University, Japan
2022.04 – 2022.11
Specially Appointed Assistant Professor
Osaka University, Japan
2021.03 – 2022.04
Intern Researcher
RIKEN, Japan
2019.10 – 2021.03
Intern Researcher
ATR, Japan
2018.10 – 2018.12
Visiting Engineer
Toshiba R&D, Japan

Systems & Demonstrations

Selected prototypes and live systems built by the HACI Lab.

EED Depression Detection

EED-based Depression Detection System

Automatic depression assessment using eye-expression dynamics and multimodal AI.

Robot Coffee

Humanoid Robot Recommending Coffee

A social robot uses geo-gender affinity models to personalize recommendations.

Social Robot

Robot Sociability via Shared Experiences

Humanoid presents mind and sociability by narrating collected group experiences.

Android Robot

Android Robot for Social Connectedness

Shares user history from interactions to enhance human-human and human-robot bonds.

Cat Robot

Cat-like Emotional Robot

Enhancing emotional expression using tail movements with human-like gaze cues.

Mental Health Platform

Multimodal Mental Health Evaluation Platform

Integrated platform for automated mental health assessment using multiple bio-signals.

Contact

Open to research collaboration, student inquiries, and invited talks.

Institution
SSTC, Northeastern University, China
Lab
Human-Center Affective Computing & Interaction Lab (HACI)
Email (NEU)
fuchangzeng [AT] qhd.neu.edu.cn
Email (Osaka)
changzeng.fu [AT] irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp
GitHub
github.com/hacilab

🙏 Acknowledgements

Deepest appreciation to Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro — without his kind support, research life in Japan would not have been possible.

Sincere gratitude to Professor Carlos Toshinori Ishi, Professor Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Professor. Takashi Minato, and Dr. Chaoran Liu for leading me into the worlds of robotics, speech technology, and AI.

Awards

🏆 2021–2022 大阪大学国際共創大学院 独創的教育研究活動賞
(Osaka University Graduate School — Outstanding Research Award)