Fei-Fei Li (Chinese: 李飞飞; pinyin: Lǐ Fēifēi; born July 3, 1976) is a Chinese-born American computer scientist best known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is a professor of computer science at Stanford University, with research expertise in Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Deep learning, computer vision, and cognitive neuroscience. Li has earned the title of "The Godmother of AI".
Li is a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a co-director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud and director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 2013 to 2018. In 2017, she co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization working to increase diversity in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2023, Li was named one of the Time 100 AI Most Influential People.
Early life and education
Li was born in Beijing, China, in 1976 and grew up in Chengdu, Sichuan. She studied at Sichuan Chengdu No.7 High School. When she was 12, her father immigrated to Parsippany, New Jersey. When she was 16, Li and her mother joined him in the United States. While attending Parsippany High School, Li worked weekends at her family's dry-cleaning shop. She graduated from Parsippany High School in 1995 and was inducted into its hall of fame in 2017.
Li pursued undergraduate study at Princeton University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in physics in 1999. Her senior thesis, "Auditory binaural correlogram difference: a new computational model for Huggins dichotic pitch", was supervised by Bradley Dickinson, professor of electrical engineering. During her Princeton years, Li returned home most weekends to help run the family dry cleaning business and worked as a dishwasher to supplement income.
Li pursued graduate study at the California Institute of Technology, where she received a Master of Science in electrical engineering in 2001 and a Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering in 2005. Her dissertation, "Visual Recognition: Computational Models and Human Psychophysics", was supervised by Pietro Perona and Christof Koch. Her graduate studies were supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
Career and research
From 2005 to 2006, Li was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and from 2007 to 2009, she was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012, and then full professor in 2018. At Stanford, Li served as director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018. Her research has focused on computer vision, deep learning, and cognitive neuroscience, with over 300 peer-reviewed publications. She became founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, along with Dr. John Etchemendy, aligning with her aims to advance AI research, education, policy, and practice.
While at Princeton in 2007, Li led the development of ImageNet, a massive visual database designed to advance object recognition in AI. The project involved labeling over 14 million images using Amazon Mechanical Turk and inspired the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), which catalyzed progress in Deep learning and led to dramatic improvements in image classification performance. The database addressed a key bottleneck in computer vision: the lack of large, annotated datasets for training neural networks. Today, ImageNet is credited as a cornerstone innovation underpinning advancements in autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, and medical imaging.
Industry roles and initiatives
On sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to fall 2018, Li joined Google Cloud as Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. At Google, her team focused on democratizing AI technology and lowering barriers for businesses and developers, including developing products like AutoML. In September 2017, Google secured a Department of Defense contract called Project Maven, which aimed to use AI techniques to interpret drone camera images. Google told protesting employees their role was "specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes". In June 2018, Google said it would not renew the contract. In leaked internal emails, Li expressed enthusiasm for the Google Cloud role in Project Maven but warned against mentioning its AI component, noting public association with autonomous weapons. Asked about those emails, Li told The New York Times, "I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI." In fall 2018, Li left Google and returned to Stanford.
In 2023, Li co-led the launch of RAISE-Health (Responsible AI for Safe and Equitable Health) at Stanford, in collaboration with Stanford Medicine, to develop frameworks for responsible AI use in healthcare, including clinical care, biomedical research, and patient safety. According to her Stanford profile, she has been on partial academic leave from January 2024 through end of 2025 to focus on entrepreneurial ventures.
Recognition and entrepreneurship
Li received the Intel Lifetime Achievements Innovation Award in 2017 for contributions to artificial intelligence. She was elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine in 2020, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. In 2023, she was appointed to the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board, established by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. In 2024, Li was included on the Gold House's most influential Asian A100 list. In 2025, she was named one of the "Architects of AI" for Time's Person of the Year.
In 2024, Li raised $230 million for a startup called World Labs, which she and three colleagues founded to develop "spatial intelligence" AI technology that understands how the three-dimensional physical world works. In 2026, World Labs raised $1 billion. Li has also highlighted disparities between private-sector AI investment and academic support, advocating for stronger public research funding.