Re: I'll file this in the ...
Since it's Uni researchers, it's most like Phd candidates working on their thesis papers for a degree
Speculation is fun (I suppose), but I happen to have access to a marvelous world-wide collection of all sorts of information.
Wong is a PhD student at University of Michigan, but he's only in his second year - too early to be working on his dissertation. (Since this is a US university, it'd be a dissertation for the PhD, not a "thesis".) Which is not to say that it won't eventually become part of that dissertation, of course; dissertations in CS at US universities are often fix-ups of a handful of refereed articles or conference presentations.
Fu is an Associate Professor at U of M, and Xu is a professor of some rank at Zhejiang University.
More importantly, this is perfectly good research, despite itzman's anti-intellectual posturing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
