Zhigeng Pan, a native of Huai'an, Jiangsu, is a Second-Level Professor and Chief Scientist of a National Key R&D Program. He currently serves as the Dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST).

After earning his Ph.D. in Engineering from Zhejiang University in 1993, he joined the State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG at the same university. Due to his outstanding academic achievements, he was promoted exceptionally to Associate Researcher in 1994 and Researcher in 1996, and became a Ph.D. supervisor in 1998. In 2000, he was recognized as one of the Top 100 Outstanding Young Teachers in Chinese Universities (a part of the New Century Talent Program) and was honored as a National Outstanding Individual for the Olympics in 2008. In 2021, he joined NUIST, establishing the VR and Intelligent Systems Research Team.

Professor Pan holds over ten major academic positions, including Executive Vice Chairman of the China Metaverse Technology and Application Innovation Platform, Chair of the Digital Cultural Heritage Committee of the China Society of Image and Graphics (CSIG), and President of the China Cultural Metaverse Joint Research Institute. He also founded the international journal Metaverse and serves on the editorial boards of authoritative journals such as Virtual Reality. From 2011 to 2020, he served consecutive terms as Vice President of CSIG.

With 30 years of dedication to Virtual Reality (VR) research, his primary research interests include the educational metaverse, military metaverse, intelligent human-computer interaction, and digital cultural heritage preservation. He has led two National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC) key projects and one National Key R&D Program, and has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award (2008), the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Award (2020), and five provincial and ministerial-level awards.

He has published over 200 research papers, including 70+ SCI-indexed papers. His TVCG highly cited paper ranks in the top 1% globally, and his C&G paper was recognized among China’s Top 50 Most Influential Computer Science Papers by ScienceDirect. He also holds over 30 invention patents, including innovations such as AI-based Guandan (a Chinese card game) and the Sleep Metaverse. His academic achievements have been recognized in Stanford University’s Global Top 2% Scientists List.