Prof. Jitendra Malik

(BT/EE/1980)

Prof. Jitendra Malik is among the world's most distinguished computer scientists, renowned for his pioneering contributions to computer vision, computational modeling of biological vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He currently serves as the Arthur J. Chick Professor in the Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley.

Profile

Prof. Jitendra Malik completed his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1980, graduating with the department's Gold Medal for academic excellence. He went on to complete his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1985. In January 1986, he joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he has served ever since.where he also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Bioengineering and is affiliated with the Cognitive Science and Vision Science groups.
In addition to his academic role, Prof. Malik has held senior industry research positions. He served as Research Scientist Director and Site Lead at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), Menlo Park, and later as VP of Robotics Research at FAIR, Meta Inc. He currently also serves as VP and Distinguished Scientist at FAR, Amazon.
Prof. Malik's research interests span artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, robotics, biosystems and computational biology, control and intelligent systems, computer graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), and signal processing-with particular emphasis on the intersection of computer vision, robotics, and machine learning, as well as computational modeling of human vision and biological image analysis. His work has produced several seminal concepts and algorithms - including anisotropic diffusion, normalized cuts, high dynamic range (HDR) imaging, shape contexts, and R-CNN - that have had a transformative impact on the fields of computer vision and artificial intelligence.
In 2026, Prof. Jitendra Malik was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), one of the world's most prestigious scientific honours, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to computer vision and artificial intelligence.


In 2026, Prof. Jitendra Malik was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), one of the world's most prestigious scientific honours, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Honors and Awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), 2026
• IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award (2019)
• IJCAI Award for Research Excellence in AI (2018)
• ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award (2016)
• Helmholtz Prize, ICCV - awarded twice in 2015
• K.S. Fu Prize, International Association for Pattern Recognition (2014)
• IEEE PAMI-TC Distinguished Researcher in Computer Vision Award (2013)
• Elected Member, National Academy of Engineering (2011)
• Distinguished Alumnus Award, IIT Kanpur (2008)
• Longuet-Higgins Prize, CVPR - awarded 2007 and 2008
• Miller Research Professorship, UC Berkeley (2001)
• Diane S. McEntyre Award for Excellence in Teaching, UC Berkeley (2000)
• Rosenbaum Fellowship, Computer Vision Programme, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge (1993)
• Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989)
• Gold Medal, Best Graduating Student in Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur (1980)
• Member, National Academy of Sciences
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Contributions to IIT Kanpur

• 1980 Class Fund
• Annual Gift Programme
• Prof. R. N. Biswas Faculty Chair
• Annual Gift Programme