[1] In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his technical contributions and leadership in the area of multimedia computing.
Zhang[4] was a founding member, then the assistant managing director, of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA).
Prior to joining Microsoft, Zhang was with Hewlett-Packard Labs at Palo Alto, California, where he was a research manager.
A researcher in media computing, more specifically in video and image analysis, search and browsing, over the years, Zhang has authored four books, over 350 scientific papers,[5] and holds 62 US patents.
He has been elected Fellow of IEEE for contributions to media computing and leadership in content-based visual media analysis, retrieval, and browsing,[6] and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and won the “2008 Asian American Engineers of the Year” award.