Wen Gao has joined with the Peking University as a professor since 2006. He worked for the Harbin Institute of Technology as a teaching assistant after his graduation in 1985. He served as a lecturer from 1988 to 1991, and became the full professor in 1991, and head of computer science department in 1993. He was with the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT),
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as professor from 1996 to 2006. During his career at CAS, he served as the managing director of ICT from 1998 to 1999, the executive vice president of Graduate School of CAS (now the University of CAS) from 2000 to 2004, the vice president of University of Science and Technology of China from 2000 to 2003. In 1993, he was a visiting scientist in
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University. He was a visiting scientist in Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. Wen Gao is active in national and international academic activities. He has been the founding director of Peng Cheng Laboratory since 2018. He was the vice president of National Natural Science Foundation of China from 2013 to 2018, and the President of China Computer Federation from 2016 to 2020. He was the founding director of NERCVT (National Engineering Research Center of Visual Technology) of Peking University and the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) on Video Coding Technology. He was also the chairman of steering committee for Intelligent Computing System in National Hi-Tech Program from 1996 to 2000. He has chaired several conferences: IEEE ICME 2007, ACM Multimedia 2009, IEEE ISCAS 2013, and also served on the advisory and technical committees of numerous professional organizations. ==Research==