Fei-Fei Li
Born 1976 · Age 49
Chinese–American computer scientist known for pioneering work in computer vision and AI; inventor of ImageNet; Sequoia Capital Professor at Stanford; co-director of Stanford HAI; co-founder of AI4ALL and World Labs; former Google Cloud Chief Scientist of AI/ML; former Twitter board director.
Compare Your Trajectory
See how your career milestones stack up against Fei-Fei Li and other industry leaders.
Life & Career Timeline
Born in Beijing, China
Fei-Fei Li was born in Beijing, China (family name Lǐ).
Father immigrated to the United States
Her father emigrated to Parsippany, New Jersey when Fei-Fei Li was about 12.
Emigrated to the United States with her mother
At about age 16 Li and her mother joined her father in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Graduated Parsippany High School
Graduated from Parsippany High School; worked weekends in family dry-cleaning shop and part-time jobs during high school.
Awarded scholarship to Princeton University
Received a scholarship enabling study at Princeton; began undergraduate study.
Completed BA in Physics at Princeton University
Graduated Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in physics. Completed senior thesis on auditory binaural correlogram difference.
Awarded Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
Received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship to support graduate study.
Completed M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Caltech
Earned Master of Science in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology.
Published influential PNAS paper on rapid natural scene categorization (2002)
Co-authored a widely-cited Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper on human visual categorization mechanisms.
Completed Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Caltech); Dissertation
Received Ph.D.; dissertation 'Visual recognition: computational models and human psychophysics' under Pietro Perona and Christof Koch.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship / Graduate support (during PhD)
Graduate studies supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and Paul & Daisy Soros fellowship.
Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
Joined UIUC as an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (2005–2006).
Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship
Received Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship.
NSF CAREER Award (2009 listed as CAREER; Microsoft New Faculty earlier)
Received NSF CAREER award (award year listed 2009 in some sources; associated with early-career research support).
Began developing ImageNet
Initiated ImageNet project at Princeton to create a large-scale annotated visual database to advance object recognition research.
Joined Princeton University faculty (Assistant Professor)
Became assistant professor in Princeton University's Computer Science Department (2007–2009).
Published 'ImageNet' paper and dataset release
Published 'ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database' and released an initial large dataset (reported 3.2M images by some sources; later expanded).
Joined Stanford University faculty
Joined Stanford as an assistant professor in Computer Science (later promoted).
ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) established
ImageNet inspired the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, widely held from 2010 onward; catalyzed deep-learning progress.
Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
Awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (Sloan Research Fellowship).
Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure at Stanford
Granted tenure and promoted to associate professor at Stanford University.
Director, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL)
Named director of Stanford AI Lab; served as director from 2013 to 2018.
Launched SAILORS (precursor to AI4ALL)
Helped establish SAILORS, a Stanford AI outreach summer camp (starting 2015) targeting 9th-grade girls.
Delivered TED main-stage talk (TED2015)
Key TED talk on computer vision and human-centered AI; talk viewed more than 2 million times.
IAPR J.K. Aggarwal Prize & IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Prize
Recognized by international organizations for contributions to computer vision and datasets.
Named one of 'The Great Immigrants' by Carnegie Foundation (2016)
Recognized among notable immigrants to the U.S. by the Carnegie Foundation.
Inducted into Parsippany High School Hall of Fame (2017)
Her high school inducted her into its hall of fame in recognition of achievements.
Co-founded AI4ALL nonprofit
Co-founded AI4ALL to promote diversity and inclusion in AI education (collaboration with Melinda Gates and Jensen Huang noted).
Started sabbatical from Stanford; joined Google Cloud as Chief Scientist of AI/ML & VP (Jan 2017)
On sabbatical from Stanford (Jan 2017) to serve as Vice President and Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud; focused on democratizing AI and products like AutoML.
Grace Hopper Conference keynote & other major speaking engagements
Delivered keynote at Grace Hopper 2017 and spoke at World Economic Forum (Davos) and many other major conferences (dates across years).
Google won Project Maven contract (Sept 2017) — internal controversy
Project Maven contract with DoD to interpret drone imagery sparked employee protests; Li expressed cautious involvement and human-centered AI stance in internal communications.
Testified before U.S. Congressional subcommittees on AI (June 26, 2018)
Participated in congressional hearing on AI: 'Artificial Intelligence – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.'
Elected ACM Fellow
Named an ACM Fellow for contributions building large knowledge bases for machine learning and visual understanding.
Left Google and returned to Stanford (Fall 2018); promoted to Full Professor
Ended Google sabbatical in fall 2018 and resumed Stanford professorship; promoted to full professor in 2018.
CS231n course available online (Coursera) and continued teaching impact
Her Stanford course 'Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition' (CS231n) from 2015 was made available online; influential in educating many students in deep learning.
Google announced it would not renew Project Maven contract (June 2018)
Following internal protests and debate, Google decided not to seek renewal of the contract.
Co-founded/Launched HAI (Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI) — founding co-director
Became founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute alongside John Etchemendy; institute established to center human well-being in AI research and policy.
AI4ALL expansion — multiple university programs launched (2018–2019)
By 2018–2019 AI4ALL had launched summer programs beyond Stanford at Princeton, CMU, Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Simon Fraser University.
Won multiple awards including IEEE PAMI Longuet-Higgins Prize & National Geographic Society Further Award
Received various recognitions for technical leadership and contributions to vision research.
Elected to National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
Elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of contributions to computer vision and AI.
Elected to National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
Elected to the National Academy of Medicine (2020) for contributions intersecting AI and health.
Distinguished Alumni Award, Caltech and Member of Council on Foreign Relations
Received Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award and joined Council on Foreign Relations (both reported in/around 2020).
Joined Twitter board of directors
Appointed independent director on Twitter's board as the company sought AI expertise.
Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Elected to AAAS in recognition of scholarly and societal contributions.
Member of National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force (NAIRR) (2021–2022)
Served on the NAIRR task force to guide national AI research infrastructure policy.
Thomas S. Huang Memorial Prize, IEEE PAMI
Received the Thomas S. Huang Memorial Prize from IEEE PAMI for contributions to computer vision.
Removed from Twitter board after Musk takeover
Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, the board was dissolved and Li was removed (Oct 27, 2022).
Intel Lifetime Achievement Innovation Award
Received Intel's Lifetime Achievement Innovation Award for contributions to AI.
Named Time 100 AI Most Influential People (Time AI100)
Included among Time's AI100 list recognizing influential people in AI.
Appointed to United Nations Scientific Advisory Board
Named to the UN Secretary-General's Scientific Advisory Board to advise on science & technology trends (announced Aug 3, 2023).
Published memoir 'The Worlds I See'
Released a science memoir intertwining personal journey and views on AI: 'The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI.'
VinFuture Prize grand prize (2024)
Awarded the VinFuture grand prize in recognition of transformational contributions to deep learning.
Co-founded World Labs (spatial-intelligence AI startup)
Helped found World Labs with three colleagues to develop AI with 'spatial intelligence' enabling understanding of 3D physical environments.
Included on Gold House A100 list
Named among Gold House's A100 most influential Asians (2024).
Woodrow Wilson Award, Princeton
Received Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award (2024) honoring an alumnus whose career exemplifies service to humanity.
Reported by Reuters: World Labs seed funding earlier in 2024 (seed reported)
Reuters reported earlier seed funding rounds for World Labs in 2024 prior to larger raise; exact seed amount not publicly detailed in that report.
Stanford profile: named Sequoia Capital Professor in Computer Science (inaugural)
Named the inaugural Sequoia Capital Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford (date listed on Stanford profile; role ongoing).
Reported to have authored 300+ peer-reviewed publications (and >400 on Stanford profile)
Widely cited scholar with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications in CS and neuroscience venues; different sources cite 300+ and 400+ counts.
Continued advocacy for public-sector AI funding and governance
Published calls and public comments urging greater public funding for academic/government AI research and science-based governance (public statements in 2024).
On partial academic leave from Stanford to pursue entrepreneurship (Jan 2024–end 2025)
Stanford profile indicates partial academic leave beginning January 2024 through end of 2025 to focus on entrepreneurial ventures.
Financial Times: World Labs valuation reported >$1 billion
Financial Times reported that World Labs had raised two rounds and was valued at more than $1 billion (reported July 17, 2024).
World Labs raised $230 million (reported)
Reported by Reuters that Fei-Fei Li raised $230 million for World Labs to develop spatial-intelligence AI (reported Sept 13, 2024).
Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2025, joint award)
Awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering jointly with other pioneers for advancing deep learning.
Public emphasis on human-centered AI and AI in healthcare
Ongoing research and collaborations on ambient intelligence for healthcare delivery and bias mitigation in vision datasets (continuing work reported through 2024–2025).
Ongoing roles: Co-director Stanford HAI (on leave), CEO/Co-founder World Labs
Listed as Sequoia Professor and Denning Co-Director (on leave) of Stanford HAI and as Co-founder/CEO of World Labs (current as of 2025).
Spoke at Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris on AI governance (Feb 2025)
Urged science-based AI governance rather than science-fiction-based approaches at the summit.
Key Achievement Ages
Explore what Fei-Fei Li and others achieved at these notable ages:
Similar Trajectories
Lauren Goode
Born 1981 · Age 44
American technology journalist focused on consumer tech. Former video producer/reporter at The Wall Street Journal, managing editor at Re/code, senior technology editor at The Verge, and senior writer/senior correspondent at WIRED. Co-host of The Gadget Lab podcast and producer of the Verge video series Next Level.
Brian Chesky
Born 1981 · Age 44
American industrial designer and entrepreneur; co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, noted for design-driven leadership and philanthropy.
J. Wortham
Born 1981 · Age 44
American journalist, culture writer for The New York Times Magazine, podcaster, editor of Black Futures, and community care practitioner (sound healer, reiki, herbalist). Formerly known as Jenna Wortham.
MG Siegler
Born 1981 · Age 44
Writer, blogger turned venture investor. Partner at CrunchFund (founding partner) and later General Partner at Google Ventures (GV). Focused on seed and early-stage investments; also maintains a personal blog "500ish Words."
Cal Henderson
Born 1981 · Age 44
British computer programmer and author; co‑founder & CTO of Slack; early Flickr engineer; author of Building Scalable Web Sites. Based in San Francisco.
Jessica Alba
Born 1981 · Age 44
American actress and entrepreneur; rose to prominence as Max Guevara on Dark Angel; co-founder of consumer goods company The Honest Company.