Dr Wenhao Zhang

Dr. Wenhao Zhang is Co-Director of the Centre for Machine Vision at Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He holds a BEng in Automation, an MEng in Control, and an MSc in Electronics, before completing his PhD at the CMV on 3D computer vision analysis of human demographics and behaviours. 

Wenhao’s research focuses on computer vision and machine learning (including deep learning), with interdisciplinary applications in agri-tech, healthcare, and environmental and ecological systems. He is an HEA Fellow, passionate about designing and delivering practice-led, research-informed teaching, and currently leads the modules UFMFRR-15-M Machine Vision and UFCFFV-15-M Advanced AI, Computer Vision, and Cyber Security. He was featured in the ‘UWE 30 to Watch’ list in 2022. 

Wenhao has secured ~£5M in external research and knowledge exchange funding as PI/Co-I over the past three years, with examples of ongoing and completed projects including: 

- Recently awarded KTPs (2026-), with combined funding of ~£1M (details to follow) 

- AWARE-AI: Towards recognition of animal emotion for welfare monitoring using deep affective AI models to analyse behaviour (UKRI, 2026-2028) 

- HoliWell: Holistic assessment of animal welfare using emotion and deep learning (European Partnership on Animal Health and Welfare/Defra, 2025-2028) 

- IntelliPig: Automated on-farm pig health monitoring system (Innovate UK 10073790, 2023-2026) 

- KTP on AI and machine vision to innovate nurse call systems (Innovate UK 10082097, 2023-2026) 

- Vision detection for early signs of digital dermatitis and lameness in dairy cattle (Innovate UK 10027119, 2022-2024), leading to the commercialisation of the award-winning PediVue system 

- Eye tracking and machine learning for early diagnosis of dementia (BRACE, 2023-2025) 

- Deep learning for renal fibrosis assessment in dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound scans (Royal Society, 2021-2024) 

- Low-cost adaptive 3D multi-scale imaging for plant phenotyping (PhenomUK, 2020-2021) 

Wenhao has also driven the translation of research into applied and deployed solutions through government-funded research, industrial collaboration, and consultancy, leading to commercialised systems (e.g., SKAi spot-spraying system), patents (e.g., US12094058B2), and media coverage (e.g., BBC, CNN, VetTimes, Farmers Weekly). 

Wenhao currently serves as Director of Studies for four PhD projects, including UKRI-funded and industry-partnership PhDs, spanning areas such as 3D object detection in aerospace, multimodal analysis in forensics, and naturalistic and VR-based eye tracking for disease diagnosis.