Fei-Fei Li (; born 1976) is a
Chinese-American
Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from m ...
computer scientist who is known for establishing
ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in
computer vision in the 2010s.
She is the
Sequoia Capital Professor of Computer Science at
Stanford University. Li is a Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and a Co-Director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as the director of the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...
(SAIL) from 2013 to 2018.
In 2017, she co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization working to increase diversity and inclusion in the field of artificial intelligence. Her research expertise includes
artificial intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
,
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
,
deep learning,
computer vision and
cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental process ...
.
Li was elected a member of the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
(NAE) in 2020 for contributions in building large knowledge bases for machine learning and visual understanding. She is also a member of the
National Academy of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...
(NAM), and
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
(AAAS).
Early life and education
Li was born in Beijing, China in 1976 and grew up in
Chengdu
Chengdu (, ; simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), alternatively romanized as Chengtu, is a sub-provincial city which serves as the capital of the Chinese pro ...
. When she was 12, her father moved to the US; when she was 15, she and her mother joined him in
Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey.
She graduated from
Parsippany High School
Parsippany High School (also known as PHS) is a four-year comprehensive public high school, one of two high schools in the township of Parsippany-Troy Hills, in Morris County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Parsippany-Tr ...
in 1995,
where she was inducted to the Hall of Fame of Parsippany High School in 2017.
Li majored in physics but also studied computer science and engineering as an undergraduate student at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, from where she graduated with high honors with an A.B. in physics and certificates in applied and computational mathematics and engineering physics in 1999. Li completed her senior thesis, titled "Auditory Binaural Correlogram Difference: A New Computational Model for Huggins Dichotic Pitch", under the supervision of Professor of Electrical Engineering Bradley Dickinson. During her years at Princeton, she returned home most weekends so that she could work in her parents'
dry-cleaning
Dry cleaning is any cleaning process for clothing and textiles using a solvent other than water.
Dry cleaning still involves liquid, but clothes are instead soaked in a water-free liquid solvent. Tetrachloroethylene (perchloroethylene), known in ...
store.
Li then pursued graduate studies at the
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
, where she received a Ph.D. in
electrical engineering in 2005. Li completed her dissertation, titled "Visual Recognition: Computational Models and Human Psychophysics", under the primary supervision of
Pietro Perona and secondary supervision of
Christof Koch
Christof Koch ( ; born November 13, 1956) is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for B ...
. Her graduate studies were supported by the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) is a prestigious grant awarded annually by the National Science Foundation to approximately 2,000 students pursuing research-based Master's and doctoral degrees in the ...
and
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, founded by Paul Soros and Daisy Soros in 1997, is a United States postgraduate fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants. In 2021, the Fellowship received 2,445 applications and aw ...
.
Career
From 2005 to August 2009, Li was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...
and Computer Science Department at Princeton University, respectively. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012, and then full professor in 2017. At Stanford, Li served as the director of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018. She became the founding co-director of Stanford's University-level initiative - the Human-Centered AI Institute, along with co-director Dr.
John Etchemendy
John W. Etchemendy (born 1952 in Reno, Nevada) is an American logician and philosopher who served as Stanford University's twelfth Provost. He succeeded John L. Hennessy to the post on September 1, 2000 and stepped down on January 31, 2017.
E ...
, former provost of Stanford University.
On her sabbatical from Stanford University from January 2017 to fall of 2018, Li joined Google Cloud as its Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. At Google, her team focused on democratizing AI technology and lowering the barrier for entrance to businesses and developers, including the developments of products like AutoML.
In September 2017, Google secured a contract from the Department of Defense called
Project Maven, which aimed to use AI techniques to interpret images captured by drone cameras.
Google told employees who protested the company's work on Project Maven that their role was "specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes."
In June 2018, Google told employees it would not seek renewal of the contract.
In internal emails which were later leaked to reporters, Li expressed enthusiasm for the Google Cloud role in Project Maven, but warned against mentioning its AI component, saying that military AI is linked in the public mind with the danger of autonomous weapons. Asked about those leaked emails, Li told ''The New York Times'', "I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI."
In the fall of 2018, Li left Google and returned to Stanford University to continue her professorship.
Li is also known for her nonprofit work as the co-founder and chairperson of nonprofit organization
AI4ALL, whose mission is to educate the next generation of AI technologists, thinkers and leaders by promoting diversity and inclusion through human-centered AI principles. The program was created in collaboration with
Melinda Gates
Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French; August 15, 1964) is an American philanthropist and former multimedia product developer and manager at Microsoft. French Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world's most powerful women ...
and
Jensen Huang
Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang (; born February 17, 1963) is a Taiwanese American billionaire business magnate, electrical engineer, and the co-founder, current president and CEO of Nvidia Corporation.
Early years and education
Huang was born in Ta ...
.
Prior to establishing AI4ALL in 2017, Li and her former student
Olga Russakovsky, currently an assistant professor in Princeton University, co-founded and co-directed the precursor program at Stanford called SAILORS (Stanford AI Lab OutReach Summers).
SAILORS was an annual summer camp at Stanford dedicated to 9th grade high school girls in AI education and research, established in 2015 till it changed its name to AI4ALL @Stanford in 2017.
In 2018, AI4ALL has successfully launched five more summer programs in addition to Stanford, including Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, U. of California Berkeley, and Canada's Simon Fraser University.
Li has been described as an "AI pioneer" and a "researcher bringing humanity to AI".
Li was elected as a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 2021, the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
, and the
National Academy of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...
in 2020.
In May 2020, Li joined the board of directors of
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
as an independent director. On October 27, 2022, following
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...
’s
purchase
Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between ...
of the company, he removed Li and eight others from Twitter's nine-member board of directors, leaving himself as the sole director.
Research
Li works on
AI,
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
,
computer vision,
cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental process ...
and
computational neuroscience
Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematical models, computer simulations, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to u ...
. She has published more than 300 peer-reviewed research papers. Her work appears in
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
and
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...
journals including ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'', ''
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Sci ...
'', ''
Journal of Neuroscience
A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to:
*Bullet journal, a method of personal organization
*Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period
*Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...
'',
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) is an annual conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, which is regarded as one of the most important conferences in its field. According to Google Scholar Metrics (2022 ...
,
International Conference on Computer Vision
The International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is a research conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held every other year. It is considered to be one of the top conferences in computer vision, ...
,
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (abbreviated as NeurIPS and formerly NIPS) is a machine learning and computational neuroscience conference held every December. The conference is currently a double-track meet ...
,
European Conference on Computer Vision
The European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) is a biennial research conference with the proceedings published by Springer Science+Business Media. Similar to ICCV in scope and quality, it is held those years which ICCV is not. It is considere ...
,
International Journal of Computer Vision
The ''International Journal of Computer Vision'' (IJCV) is a journal published by Springer. The senior editor-in-chief is Jean Ponce, and the editors-in-chief are Jiri Matas, Yasuyuki Matsushita, and Svetlana Lazebnik
Svetlana Lazebnik (born 197 ...
, and ''
''. Among her best-known work is the
ImageNet project, which has revolutionized the field of large-scale visual recognition.
Li has led the team of students and collaborators to organize the international competition on ImageNet recognition tasks called ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) between 2010 and 2017 in the academic community.
Li's research in computer vision contributed significantly to a line of work called Natural Scene Understanding, or later, Story-telling of images. She is a recognized for her work in this area by the
International Association for Pattern Recognition in 2016.
She delivered a talk on the main stage of TED in Vancouver in 2015, and has since then been viewed more than 2 million times.
In recent years, Fei-Fei Li's research work expanded to
AI and Healthcare, collaborating closely with
Stanford Medical School
Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
professor Arnold Milstein. She has also worked on improving bias in image recognition, for instance by removing concepts with low
imageability from
ImageNet.
Teaching
She teaches the Stanford course CS231n on "Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition", whose 2015 version was previously online at
Coursera
Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
. She has also taught CS131, an introductory class on computer vision.
Selected honors and awards
*1999
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
*2006 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship
*2009 NSF CAREER Award
*2010 Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
*2011 Fellow,
Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
*2015 One of the Leading Global Thinkers of 2015, Foreign Policy
* 2016 IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Prize
eference link*2016 J.K. Aggarwal Prize, International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR)
* 2016 One of the 40 “The great immigrants,” Carnegie Foundation
* 2017 WITI@UC Athena Award for Academic Leadership, University of California
*2017 One of Seven Women in Technology honorees, Elle Magazine
* 2018 Elected as
ACM Fellow
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing
* ...
for "contributions in building large knowledge bases for machine learning and visual understanding"
* 2018 "America's Top 50 Women In Tech" by
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
*2018 U.S. Congressional hearing by Subcommittee on Research and Technology & Subcommittee on Energy
*2019 Technical Leadership Abie Award Winner, AnitaB.org
*2019 She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women.
*2020 Elected member of the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
*2020 Elected member of the
National Academy of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...
*2020 Distinguished Alumni Award Winner of
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
*2020 Member of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
*2021
ACM Fellow
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing
* ...
*2021 Elected member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
Books
Li contributed one chapter to ''Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it'' (2018) by the American futurist
Martin Ford.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Fei-Fei
1976 births
21st-century American scientists
American nonprofit executives
American science writers
American women academics
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
American writers of Chinese descent
BBC 100 Women
Businesspeople from New Jersey
California Institute of Technology alumni
Chinese emigrants to the United States
Computer vision researchers
Educators from Beijing
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Living people
Machine learning researchers
Parsippany High School alumni
People from Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey
Princeton University alumni
Princeton University faculty
Scientists from Beijing
Sloan Research Fellows
Stanford University Department of Computer Science faculty
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
Women nonprofit executives
Writers from Beijing
Writers from New Jersey
21st-century American women
Members of the National Academy of Medicine
Directors of Twitter, Inc.