Fei Fei Li
Summary
Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018.
During her sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to September 2018, Dr. Li was Vice President at Google and served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud.
Dr. Li’s current research interests include cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and AI in healthcare, particularly ambient intelligent systems for healthcare delivery. Her past research focused on cognitive and computational neuroscience.
She is the inventor of ImageNet and the ImageNet Challenge, a critical large-scale dataset and benchmarking effort that has significantly advanced deep learning and AI. Dr. Li is a national leading voice for advocating diversity in STEM and AI and is co-founder and chairperson of the national non-profit AI4ALL, which aims to increase inclusion and diversity in AI education.
Dr. Li has published more than 200 scientific articles in top-tier journals and conferences, including Nature, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, CVPR, ICCV, NIPS, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, IJCV, IEEE-PAMI, New England Journal of Medicine, and Nature Digital Medicine. Her book, ‘The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI’, offers an engaging narrative of a scientist's journey and a clear explanation of the origins and nature of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Li is also a TED Speaker, delivering insights on spatial computing, AI, and related fields. She has worked extensively to contribute to the birth of modern AI, and is rightly called 'The Godmother of AI".
Dr. Li received her B.A. degree in physics from Princeton in 1999 with high honors, and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor. Before that, she was on the faculty at Princeton University (2007-2009) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2005-2006).
Currently, Dr. Li is building a startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to enable artificial intelligence (AI) to perform advanced reasoning. She raised funds for the company in a recent seed funding round, with investors including Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures, a Canadian firm she joined as a scientific partner last year.
Biography
Dr. Fei-Fei Li was born in Beijing, China in 1976 and grew up in Chengdu, Sichuan. At the age of 12, her father moved to the United States, and she and her mother joined him in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, when she was 15. She graduated from Parsippany High School in 1995 and was later inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2017.
Dr. Li pursued her undergraduate studies at Princeton University, where she majored in physics and also studied computer science and engineering. She graduated with high honors in 1999, earning a Bachelor of Arts with a major in physics and certificates in applied and computational mathematics and engineering physics. Her senior thesis was titled "Auditory Binaural Correlogram Difference: A New Computational Model for Huggins Dichotic Pitch", supervised by Professor Bradley Dickinson. During her time at Princeton, she worked in her parents' dry-cleaning store on weekends.
Dr. Li then attended the California Institute of Technology, where she earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 2005. Her dissertation, ‘Visual Recognition: Computational Models and Human Psychophysics’, was supervised by Pietro Perona and Christof Koch. Her graduate studies were supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
From 2005 to 2006, Dr. Li was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She then joined Princeton University's Computer Science Department as an assistant professor from 2007 to 2009. In 2009, she moved to Stanford University as an assistant professor, where she was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012 and full professor in 2018. At Stanford, she served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018 and co-founded the Human-Centered AI Institute.
During a sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to fall 2018, Dr. Li joined Google Cloud as its Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. Returning to Stanford in the fall of 2018, Dr. Li continued her professorship and expanded her research. She co-founded AI4ALL, a non-profit organisation aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion in AI education. The program, which started as SAILORS at Stanford, expanded to several other universities, including Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and UC Berkeley.
Dr. Li's research focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience. She has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and is known for her work on the ImageNet project, which significantly advanced large-scale visual recognition. She also worked on reducing bias in image recognition and explored AI applications in healthcare.
Dr. Li has received numerous awards and honors, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. She has taught courses on deep learning for computer vision and introductory computer vision at Stanford.
In 2020, Dr. Li joined the board of directors of X (formerly Twitter) as an independent director. After Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in 2022, she was removed from the board. In August 2023, she was appointed to the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board to provide insights on the intersection of science, technology, ethics, governance, and sustainable development.
Vision
Dr. Fei-Fei Li's vision centers on advancing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity by creating technology that is ethical, inclusive, and improves people's lives. She emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, integrating AI with humanistic and societal considerations, and prioritizing diversity in AI research and applications. Dr. Li envisions AI as a tool to address global challenges, enhance education, and promote social good, ensuring that technological advancements are aligned with human values and accessible to all.
Recognition and Awards
References
- ImageNet: A Pioneering Vision for Computers - History of Data Science
- After Words: After Words with Fei-Fei Li | C-SPAN.org
- Li Fei-Fei - IEEE Xplore Author Profile
- How One Woman Is Pushing the Boundaries of A.I. | Fei-Fei Li (youtube.com)
- Fei-Fei Li — Stanford Digital Economy Lab
- Fei-Fei Li Quotes - BrainyQuote
- Caltech Alumni Association | Award Recipient: Fei-Fei Li
- Fei-Fei Li - Wikipedia
- Fei-Fei Li | Stanford University School of Engineering
- AI scientist Fei-Fei Li: ‘Maths is pretty clean. Humans are messy’ (ft.com)
- Fei-Fei Li | Speaker | TED
- Fei-Fei Li | Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine & Imaging (stanford.edu)
- viewCV (stanford.edu)
- Stanford Computer Vision Lab
- Fei-Fei Li: A Candid Look at a Young Immigrant’s Rise to AI Trailblazer (stanford.edu)
- The Worlds I See — keeping the human at the heart of AI (ft.com)
- Fei-Fei Li: With spatial intelligence, AI will understand the real world | TED Talk
- How Fei-Fei Li Will Make Artificial Intelligence Better for Humanity | WIRED
- Fei-Fei Li | Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute (stanford.edu)
- Fascination, persistence and optimism: how Fei-Fei Li helped shape the AI revolution in a field dominated by alpha males (theconversation.com)
- Fei-Fei Li: How we're teaching computers to understand pictures | TED Talk
- Exclusive: Stanford AI leader Fei-Fei Li building 'spatial intelligence' startup | Reuters
- Meet Fei-Fei Li, the recipient of the National Geographic Further Award
- "Godmother of A.I." Fei-Fei Li on technology development: "The power lies within people" - CBS News
- Fei-Fei Li: The Researcher Bringing Humanity to AI - History of Data Science
- With Spatial Intelligence, AI Will Understand the Real World | Fei-Fei Li | TED - YouTube
- Stanford University CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision
- Dr. Fei-Fei Li - Radical Ventures
- Fei-Fei Li - Sequoia Capital Professor and Professor (by courtesy) of Operations, Information & Technology at the Graduate School of Business (stanford.edu)
- Fei-Fei Li | Stanford Graduate School of Business
- 'Embrace this messiness': Computer vision pioneer Fei-Fei Li explains her hope for AI and humanity – GeekWire
- Fei-Fei Li (forbes.com)
