Jitendra Malik
Arthur J. Chick Professor at UC Berkeley and Vice President at Amazon's Frontier AI and Robotics lab
A UC Berkeley professor and a leading figure in computer vision who also directed research at Meta and joined Amazon's frontier AI and robotics lab.
Biography
Jitendra Malik is an Indian-American academic and the Arthur J. Chick Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Mathura, India, in 1960, he received a BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1980 and a PhD in computer science from Stanford in 1985, and joined Berkeley in 1986.
He is known for his research in computer vision, which he has framed around the 3R's of recognition, reconstruction and re-organization, drawing on psychology and neuroscience. He has supervised more than eighty doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. He was a visiting research scientist at Google in 2015 and 2016, then joined Meta's Fundamental AI Research as research director and site lead in Menlo Park, becoming vice president for robotics research in 2025. In 2026 he joined Amazon as vice president and distinguished scientist at its Frontier AI and Robotics lab while remaining affiliated with Berkeley.
Notable contributions
Led computer vision research for decades
Steered the field of computer vision across multiple decades, framing its central problems as recognition, reconstruction and re-organization.
Received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
Awarded the 2019 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award.
Led robotics research at Meta FAIR
Served as research director and site lead for Meta's Fundamental AI Research in Menlo Park, and became vice president for robotics research in 2025.