Cong Cao (曹聪)

Third-year PhD student in Computer Vision

I am a third-year PhD student at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), advised by Prof. Hao Li. My research explores 3D generative modeling and geometry learning for digital garments, including virtual try-on, garment retargeting, sewing pattern generation, and garment reconstruction.

MBZUAIAbu Dhabi, UAE
Cong Cao standing beneath flowering trees, wearing glasses and a gray top.

Research areas

Publications

Digital garments, 3D reconstruction, and generative modeling.

LUIVITON fits different garments to human, cartoon, and stylized characters.
SIGGRAPH 2026 · ACM TOG

Learned Universal Interoperable Virtual Try-ON

Cong Cao, Xianhang Cheng, Jingyuan Liu, Yujian Zheng, Zhenhui Lin, Ren Li, Meriem Chkir, Hao Li

An automated pipeline for fitting complex 3D garments to diverse humanoid characters using learned correspondences and simulation-guided fitting.

BibTeX citation
@article{cao2026luiviton,
  title = {Learned Universal Interoperable Virtual Try-ON},
  author = {Cao, Cong and Cheng, Xianhang and Liu, Jingyuan and
            Zheng, Yujian and Lin, Zhenhui and Li, Ren and
            Chkir, Meriem and Li, Hao},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics},
  volume = {45},
  number = {4},
  articleno = {156},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3811307}
}
Implicit garment representations and applications to sewing pattern estimation, completion, and refitting.
SIGGRAPH 2026

Learning Sewing Patterns via Latent Flow Matching of Implicit Fields

Cong Cao*, Ren Li*, Corentin Dumery, Hao Li (* equal contribution)

Learning implicit sewing pattern representations for garment generation and image-conditioned pattern estimation.

BibTeX citation
@inproceedings{cao2026learning,
  title = {Learning Sewing Patterns via Latent Flow Matching of Implicit Fields},
  author = {Cao, Cong and Li, Ren and Dumery, Corentin and Li, Hao},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGGRAPH 2026 Conference Papers},
  articleno = {179},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3799902.3811055}
}
Overview of the spatio-temporal diffusion framework for reconstructing garments from video.
TPAMI 2026

Spatio-Temporal Garment Reconstruction Using Diffusion Mapping via Pattern Coordinates

Yingxuan You*, Ren Li*, Corentin Dumery, Cong Cao, Hao Li, Pascal Fua

A unified framework for garment reconstruction from images and videos, using diffusion priors and temporal guidance to recover detailed, temporally consistent 3D geometry.

BibTeX citation (arXiv)
@misc{you2026spatiotemporal,
  title = {Spatio-Temporal Garment Reconstruction Using Diffusion Mapping via Pattern Coordinates},
  author = {You, Yingxuan and Li, Ren and Dumery, Corentin and
            Cao, Cong and Li, Hao and Fua, Pascal},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2602.24043},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass = {cs.CV},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.24043}
}
A single photograph of a dancer and the reconstructed 3D skirt shown from three viewpoints.
SIGGRAPH 2025

Single View Garment Reconstruction Using Diffusion Mapping Via Pattern Coordinates

Ren Li, Cong Cao, Corentin Dumery, Yingxuan You, Hao Li, Pascal Fua

Reconstructing detailed 3D garments and sewing patterns from a single image through diffusion-based mappings between image pixels, pattern coordinates, and geometry.

BibTeX citation
@inproceedings{li2025singleview,
  title = {Single View Garment Reconstruction Using Diffusion Mapping Via Pattern Coordinates},
  author = {Li, Ren and Cao, Cong and Dumery, Corentin and
            You, Yingxuan and Li, Hao and Fua, Pascal},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGGRAPH 2025 Conference Papers},
  year = {2025}
}

Education

  1. Present

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

    PhD in Computer Vision

    Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Advisor: Prof. Hao Li

  2. Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

    MSc in Computer Vision

    Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Advisor: Prof. Hao Li

    MSc thesisA Virtual Try-On System for Any Clothing and Body Model

  3. University of Bristol

    MSc in Robotics

    Bristol, UK

    Advisor: Dr. Paul O’DowdGraduated with Distinction

    MSc dissertationExploring Local Communication to Improve Swarm Box Pushing

  4. Xidian University

    BEng in Intelligence Science and Technology

    Xi’an, China

    GPA: 3.8/4.0

Internship

  1. Yalla Group Limited

    Research and Development Intern

    Dubai, UAE

    Fine-tuned CLIP on annotated real-world chatroom images to build an image classifier for content filtering.

Contact

Research inquiries and collaborations are welcome.

Cong Cao beneath flowering trees