Dr. Zhigang Deng is Moores Professor of Computer Science and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Computer Science Department of University of Houston. He earned Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California in 2006. He also completed B.S. degree in Mathematics from Xiamen University (China), and M.S. in Computer Science from Peking University (China). Over the years, he had worked at or consulted for the Founder Group (China), AT&T Research, Tencent USA, and Qualcomm. His current research interests are in the broad areas of computer graphics, computer animation, virtual humans, human computer conversation, and robotics. He is the recipient of many awards including Moores Professorship, ACM ICMI 2024 Best Paper Runner-up Award, IEEE TCCLS Best Paper Award, CASA Best Paper Awards, ACM ICMI Ten Year Technical Impact Award, UH Teaching Excellence Award, ICRA Best Medical Robotics Paper Runner-up Award, and Google Faculty Research Award. His research has been funded by NSF, NIH, NASA, DOD, Texas NHARP, QNRP, and various industry sources (Google, Honda, Electronic Arts, Nokia, etc). Besides serving as the conference/program co-chair for CASA 2014, SCA 2015, MIG 2022, PG 2023, and CGI 2024, he has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Computer Graphics Forum, Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds Journal, etc. His research work has been incorporated into many de facto graphics/animation packages (including Maya, and Houdini) and used in many game studios (e.g., Electronic Arts). He is an ACM distinguished member and an IEEE Senior Member.