Zhiyun (Richard) Peng 彭志云

About me

I am a sixth-year Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University (SFU), where I also serve as a sessional instructor and Research Assistant. I am advised by Dr. Eugene Fiume, and my research focuses on physically and biomechanically based facial animation. Prior to joining SFU, I earned my Master of Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Chongqing University in 2020, under the supervision of Dr. Junjie Tang. I am originally from Yichun, Jiangxi Province, China.

Outside of academia, I am an active musician, playing both the piano and clarinet. I used to perform with the SFU Concert Orchestra and the SFU Choir (Tenor 2). I also enjoy staying active through tennis, cycling, and gym, and I love spending my downtime reading classic literature and novels. I am a native Mandarin speaker and fluent in English. In professional and public contexts, I prefer to go by "Richard," though I warmly welcome "Zhiyun" from friends and fellow countrymen.

CV

My Linkedin. My CV. (It's a website CV, not a PDF). My Google scholar website.

Teaching

The courses I have taught:

2026 FALL: Natural Language Processing CMPT 413/713
The course calendar for Natural Language Processing CMPT 413/713

Past courses:
In addition to this classroom experience, I have actively developed and delivered comprehensive instructional materials online. I created a 26-video lecture series covering assignment analysis and implementation for Introduction to Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, and Computer Vision. These videos are hosted on YouTube and Bilibili, where they have accumulated over 4,600 views, 111 subscriptions, 147 upvotes, and 197 favorites (save), as of 20260801. An example of my recent teaching material, "Recurrent Neural Network Stanford CS231N Computer Vision," can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF-s11-a4po, and the BiliBili version: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1UhNM6QEkR/.

My projects

1. Computer graphics, physically and biomechanically based facial animation: Beneath the Skin: Interactive Biomechanical Facial Simulations via Composable Co-Expressions.
2. Computer graphics, facial animation: Beneath the Skin: Bringing Digital Faces to Life with Intuitive Physics. (A knowledge popularity work targeting audiences outside computer graphics to explain my research). [Video] [Doc] [Submitted, under review]
3. Renewable energy forecasting, machine learning: A novel deep learning ensemble model with data denoising for short-term wind speed forecasting.