Dr. Fei-Fei Li is a pioneering computer scientist who has profoundly shaped the trajectory of artificial intelligence through visionary leadership and groundbreaking research. She serves as the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and co-directs Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, which she co-founded to ensure AI development aligns with human values. Born in Beijing, China, and raised in Chengdu, she immigrated to the United States at age 15 with her family, overcoming significant challenges as a teen arriving without English fluency or established connections. After earning her B.A. in physics with High Honors from Princeton University in 1999, she completed her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 2005, where her foundational work in computer vision began to take shape.
Dr. Li's most transformative contribution to science is the creation of ImageNet and the ImageNet Challenge, a large-scale dataset and competition that catalyzed the deep learning revolution in computer vision around 2012. This seminal work provided the critical training data and benchmarking framework that enabled the dramatic improvements in image recognition algorithms, widely regarded as one of the three driving forces behind modern AI. Her research has produced over 400 scientific articles that have fundamentally advanced understanding in deep learning, computer vision, and embodied AI systems, with applications spanning ambient intelligence for healthcare delivery and spatial reasoning. The ripple effects of her ImageNet dataset continue to influence virtually all branches of artificial intelligence, establishing a new paradigm for data-driven machine learning research that has reshaped both academia and industry.
Beyond her technical contributions, Dr. Li has been instrumental in promoting ethical AI development through her pioneering concept of Human-Centered AI, which advocates for technologies that augment human capabilities rather than replace them. She co-founded AI4ALL in 2017 to increase diversity and inclusion in AI, and has served as advisor to the White House and leaders across industry on responsible AI development. Currently as the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of World Labs, an AI company focused on spatial intelligence and generative AI (as of 2024–2025), she is advancing spatial intelligence and generative AI to create systems that understand three-dimensional physical spaces, building on her lifelong vision of AI that serves humanity's needs. Her 2023 memoir The Worlds I See chronicles her remarkable journey from immigrant to one of the most influential figures in AI, while continuing to guide the field toward more thoughtful and humanistic technological development.
