He Sun (孙赫)

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering & Physics (Boya Young Scholar)
College of Future Technology, Peking University
Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University
National Biomedical Imaging Center, Peking University

I build frontier imaging instruments that extend human vision for scientific discovery and advanced manufacturing. My lab at Peking University combines physics-grounded algorithms—computational physics, control, and generative AI—with hardware innovations for imaging at extreme scales. My work has supported various challenging science missions, such as black hole imaging and the search for Earth-like exoplanets, as well as biomedical imaging modalities including ultrasound tomography and computational microscopy.

Contact: Email Group Website Google Scholar GitHub Twitter

Hiring
I always look for motivated students and researchers (interns, PhD/Master applicants, and postdocs). More details →

News
- 04/2026 1 paper accepted to ICML. VLM3D: VLM-guided high-fidelity 3D reconstruction & generation →
- 03/2026 He Sun awarded Pujiang AGI4S Scholar.
- 02/2026 2 papers accepted to CVPR. InstantViR: Real-time video restoration at 35+ FPS with one-step diffusion →, MARVAL: Distillation & post-training for ultra-high-dimensional image generation →
- 01/2026 1 paper accepted to IEEE TIP. LatentDEM: Blind inverse problems with latent diffusion priors →
More →

Experience

2022 – present Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering & Physics, Peking University
2019 – 2022 Postdoctoral Researcher & Amazon AI4Science Fellow, California Institute of Technology (Host: Katie Bouman)
Key contributor to the EHT imaging team for Galactic center black hole imaging and feature extraction
2018 Summer Research Intern, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Cambridge, MA, USA
2014 – 2019 Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - Control and Dynamical Systems, Princeton University (Advisor: N. Jeremy Kasdin)
Thesis: Efficient Wavefront Sensing and Control for Space-based High-contrast Imaging
2010 – 2014 B.Eng. in Engineering Mechanics and B.S. in Economics, Peking University

Research

My research spans the following areas. For more details, visit our lab website.

Adaptive Optics

Event Horizon Telescope image of M87 black hole

Computational Imaging

Computational Optics
& Wave Physics

AI + Science

Publications

As of 2026, I have published 100+ papers in top journals (e.g., Nature Astronomy/IEEE TPAMI) and AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS/ICML/CVPR), with 10,000+ citations. Below is a selection of recent and representative works. Full list: Google Scholar.

Astronomy & Space Science

α-Deep Probabilistic Inference (α-DPI): Efficient Uncertainty Quantification from Exoplanet Astrometry to Black Hole Feature Extraction

He Sun^†, Katherine L. Bouman, Paul Tiede, Jason J. Wang, Sarah Blunt, Dimitri Mawet. The Astrophysical Journal, 2022.

Black Hole Imaging Bayesian Inference paper website code
Reconstructing Satellites in 3D from Amateur Telescope Images

Zhiming Chang, Boyang Liu, Yifei Xia, Weimin Bai, Weimin Guo, Boxin Shi, He Sun^†. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 2025.

Satellite Imaging 3D Vision paper website code
Advances in High-Contrast Computational Imaging for Astronomy

Bin Ren^†, Kaining Yang, Ruobing Dong, He Sun^†. Laser & Optoelectronics Progress, 2026.

Exoplanet Imaging Adaptive Optics paper

Biomedicine

EM Generalist: A Physics-Driven Diffusion Foundation Model for Electron Microscopy

Enze Ye, Chixiang Lu, Zixuan Jiang, Weimin Bai, Shaochi Ren, Chenyu Wang, Jinyang Zhang, Ruohua Shi, Lei Ma, Kun Song, Xiaojuan Qi, Haibo Jiang, He Sun^†. Nature Communications, under review.

Electron Microscopy Generative AI paper website code
Ultrasound Tomography of Musculoskeletal Tissues with Generative Neural Physics

Zhijun Zeng, Youjia Zheng, Chang Su, Qianhang Wu, Hao Hu, Zeyuan Dong, Shan Gao, Yang Lv, Rui Tang, Ligang Cui, Zhiyong Hou, Weijun Lin, Zuoqiang Shi^†, Yubing Li^†, He Sun^†. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), under review.

Ultrasound Tomography Neural PDE paper website

2026

Let Language Constrain Geometry: Vision-Language Models as Semantic and Spatial Critics for 3D Generation

Weimin Bai, Yubo Li, Weijian Luo, Zeqiang Lai, Yequan Wang, Wenzheng Chen^†, He Sun^†. ICML, 2026.

3D Vision Vision-Language Models paper website code
Masked Auto-Regressive Variational Acceleration: Fast Inference Makes Practical Reinforcement Learning

Yuxuan Gu, Weimin Bai, Yifei Wang, Weijian Luo, He Sun^†. CVPR, 2026.

Generative AI Reinforcement Learning paper website code
InstantViR: Real-Time Video Inverse Problem Solver with Distilled Diffusion Prior

Weimin Bai, Suzhe Xu, Yiwei Ren, Jinhua Hao, Ming Sun, Wenzheng Chen, He Sun^†. CVPR, 2026, Highlight.

Video Restoration Diffusion Model paper website code
Blind Inversion using Latent Diffusion Priors

Weimin Bai, Siyi Chen, Wenzheng Chen^†, He Sun^†. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP), 2026.

Inverse Problems Diffusion Model paper website code
Advances in High-Contrast Computational Imaging for Astronomy

Bin Ren^†, Kaining Yang, Ruobing Dong, He Sun^†. Laser & Optoelectronics Progress, 2026.

Exoplanet Imaging Adaptive Optics paper
EM Generalist: A Physics-Driven Diffusion Foundation Model for Electron Microscopy

Enze Ye, Chixiang Lu, Zixuan Jiang, Weimin Bai, Shaochi Ren, Chenyu Wang, Jinyang Zhang, Ruohua Shi, Lei Ma, Kun Song, Xiaojuan Qi^†, Haibo Jiang^†, He Sun^†. Nature Communications, under review.

Electron Microscopy Diffusion Model paper website code

2025

FlowDAS: A Flow-Based Framework for Data Assimilation

Siyi Chen, Yixuan Jia, Qing Qu, He Sun^†, Jeffrey A. Fessler. NeurIPS, 2025.

Data Assimilation Generative AI paper code
Uni-Instruct: One-step Diffusion Model through Unified Diffusion Divergence Instruction

Yifei Wang, Weimin Bai, Colin Zhang, Debing Zhang, Weijian Luo^†, He Sun. NeurIPS, 2025.

Generative AI Diffusion Model paper code
Dive3D: Diverse Distillation-based Text-to-3D Generation via Score Implicit Matching

Weimin Bai, Yubo Li, Weijian Luo, Wenzheng Chen, He Sun^†. TMLR, 2025.

3D Vision Diffusion Model paper website code
Reconstructing Satellites in 3D from Amateur Telescope Images

Zhiming Chang, Boyang Liu, Yifei Xia, Youming Guo, Boxin Shi, He Sun^†. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 2025.

Satellite Imaging 3D Vision paper website code
Robust Single-shot Structured Light 3D Imaging via Neural Feature Decoding

Jiaheng Li, Qiyu Dai, Lihan Li, Praneeth Chakravarthula, He Sun, Baoquan Chen, Wenzheng Chen. SIGGRAPH Asia, 2025.

3D Vision Neural Feature Decoding paper website code
Pose-Free 3D Quantitative Phase Imaging of Flowing Cellular Populations

Enze Ye, Wei Lin, Shaochi Ren, Yakun Liu, Xiaoping Li, Hao Wang, He Sun^†, Feng Pan^†. arXiv, 2025.

Quantitative Phase Imaging 3D Vision paper code
OpenBreastUS: Benchmarking Neural Operators for Wave Imaging Using Breast Ultrasound Computed Tomography

Zhijun Zeng, Youjia Zheng, Hao Hu, Zeyuan Dong, Yihang Zheng, Xinliang Liu, Jinzhuo Wang, Zuoqiang Shi, Linfeng Zhang, Yubing Li, He Sun. arXiv, 2025.

Ultrasound Neural PDE paper website
Ultrasound Tomography of Musculoskeletal Tissues with Generative Neural Physics

Zhijun Zeng, Youjia Zheng, Chang Su, Qianhang Wu, Hao Hu, Zeyuan Dong, Shan Gao, Yang Lv, Rui Tang, Ligang Cui, Zhiyong Hou, Weijun Lin, Zuoqiang Shi^†, Yubing Li^†, He Sun^†. arXiv, 2025.

Ultrasound Neural PDE paper website
Learning Diffusion Model from Noisy Measurement using Principled Expectation-Maximization Method

Weimin Bai, Weiheng Tang, Enze Ye, Siyi Chen, Wenzheng Chen, He Sun^†. ICASSP (Oral), 2025.

Inverse Problems Diffusion Model paper code

2024

An Expectation-Maximization Algorithm for Training Clean Diffusion Models from Corrupted Observations

Weimin Bai, Yifei Wang, Wenzheng Chen, He Sun^†. NeurIPS, 2024.

Inverse Problems Diffusion Model paper code
Imaging Biomacromolecules in Action with Liquid-phase Electron Microscopy

Jiaye Li, He Sun^†, Huan Wang^†. Trends in Chemistry, 2024.

Electron Microscopy Liquid-phase EM paper
The Persistent Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole of M87

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2024.

Black Hole Imaging Interferometric Imaging paper

2023

Discovering Structure From Corruption for Unsupervised Image Reconstruction

Oscar Leong, Angela F. Gao, He Sun, Katherine L. Bouman. IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, 2023.

Inverse Problems Unsupervised Learning paper website code
Image Reconstruction without Explicit Priors

Oscar Leong, Angela F. Gao, He Sun, Katherine L. Bouman. ICASSP, 2023.

Inverse Problems Unsupervised Learning paper website
Filamentary Structures as the Origin of Blazar Jet Radio Variability

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. Nature Astronomy, 2023.

Black Hole Imaging Interferometric Imaging paper
Recovering a Molecule's 3D Dynamics from Liquid-phase Electron Microscopy

Enze Ye, Yuhang Wang, Hong Zhang, Yiqin Gao, Huan Wang, He Sun^†. ICCV, 2023.

Electron Microscopy 3D Vision paper website code
Deep Learning-Assisted Analysis of Single Molecule Dynamics from Liquid-phase Electron Microscopy

Bin Cheng, Enze Ye, He Sun^†, Huan Wang^†. Chemical Communications, 2023.

Electron Microscopy 3D Vision paper

2022

α-Deep Probabilistic Inference (α-DPI): Efficient Uncertainty Quantification from Exoplanet Astrometry to Black Hole Feature Extraction

He Sun^†, Katherine L. Bouman, Paul Tiede, Jason J. Wang, Sarah Blunt, Dimitri Mawet. The Astrophysical Journal, 2022.

Black Hole Imaging Bayesian Inference paper website code
First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. I–VI

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2022.
He Sun led the neural-network-based analysis of SgrA*'s variability and morphology in Paper IV, featured in the Scientific Background to the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 as a notable AI application in astronomy.

Black Hole Imaging EHT · SgrA* Paper I Paper II Paper III Paper IV Paper V Paper VI

Before PKU

Deep Probabilistic Imaging: Uncertainty Quantification and Multi-modal Solution Characterization for Computational Imaging

He Sun^†, Katherine L. Bouman. AAAI, 2021.

Uncertainty Quantification Bayesian Inference paper website code
Efficient Wavefront Sensing for Space-based Adaptive Optics

He Sun^†, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Robert Vanderbei. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), 2020.

Exoplanet Imaging Adaptive Optics paper
High-Contrast Integral Field Spectrograph (HCIFS): Multi-spectral Wavefront Control and Reduced-dimensional System Identification

He Sun^†, Alexei Goun, Susan Redmond, Michael Galvin, Tyler Groff, Maxime Rizzo. Optics Express, 2020.

Exoplanet Imaging Hyper-spectral Imaging paper
Learning a Probabilistic Strategy for Computational Imaging Sensor Selection

He Sun^†, Adrian V. Dalca, Katherine L. Bouman. ICCP, 2020.

Computational Imaging Sensor Selection paper website code
Modern Wavefront Control for Space-based Exoplanet Coronagraph Imaging

He Sun^†, Jessica Gersh-Range, N. Jeremy Kasdin. IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2019, Best Paper.

Exoplanet Imaging Adaptive Optics paper
Identification and Adaptive Control of a High-contrast Focal Plane Wavefront Correction System

He Sun^†, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Robert Vanderbei. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), 2018.

Exoplanet Imaging Adaptive Optics paper