Jitendra Malik

Jitendra Malik is the Arthur J. Chick Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in Bioengineering, Cognitive Science, and Vision Science groups. He previously served as Chair of the Computer Science Division (2002-2004) and Department Chair of EECS (2004-2006 and 2016-2017). He also worked part-time as Research Director and Site Lead at Facebook AI Research (Meta Inc.) during 2018-2019.

• Education: B.Tech in Electrical Engineering (IIT Kanpur, 1980), PhD in Computer Science (Stanford, 1985)
• Current Research: Computer Vision, Robotics, Machine Learning, Computational Modeling of Human Vision, and Biological Image Analysis

Making significant contributions to computer vision, robotics, and machine learning, Malik’s work includes foundational algorithms like anisotropic diffusion, normalized cuts, and R-CNN. His recent research focuses on embodied AI agents, dexterous manipulation, 3D scene reconstruction, and vision-language-action models. His publications have received 11 best paper awards, including test-of-time awards like the Longuet-Higgins Prize (3x) and Helmholtz Prize (3x).

Malik has mentored over 80 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom hold prominent positions at institutions like MIT, Caltech, Google, and Meta. His lab’s work spans computer vision, robot learning, and 3D modeling, with applications in autonomous systems, medical imaging, and computational biology.

Scientific Awards

• Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989)
• Distinguished Alumnus Award, IIT Kanpur (2008)
• IEEE PAMI-TC Distinguished Researcher (2013)
• K.S. Fu Prize, IAPR (2014)
• ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award (2016)
• IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (2018)
• IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award (2019)
• Fellow, IEEE, ACM, AAAS
• Member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences

As a leader in sensorimotor learning and humanoid robotics, Malik has pioneered approaches for vision-based quadcopter control, humanoid locomotion, and visuo-tactile perception, further advancing the field of artificial intelligence and computational vision.