PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Adam Finkelstein

Adam Finkelstein is a Princeton computer scientist whose research uses computing to help people create digital media. He studied physics and computer science at Swarthmore, joined Princeton's computer science department in 1997, and became a full professor in 2001. His work spans non-photorealistic 3D drawing, text-based talking-head video editing, and diffusion-based voice conversion. He is the Phillip Y. Goldman ’86 Professor in Computer Science and head of Rockefeller College, where he began a four-year term in July 2026.

Works
181
Citations
14,471
h-index
58
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. Late 1980s

    Software engineering at Tibco

    In the late 1980s, he works as a software engineer at Tibco.

  2. 1996

    A University of Washington doctorate

    He earns a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1996.

  3. 1997–2001

    Princeton faculty appointment

    At Princeton, he joins the Department of Computer Science in 1997 as an assistant and then associate professor, becoming a full professor in 2001.

  4. 2003

    Suggestive contours for 3D shape

    In 2003, he coauthors Suggestive Contours for Conveying Shape, a non-photorealistic rendering method that adds lines to make 3D forms easier to interpret.

  5. 2003–2004

    Lighting tools at Pixar

    At Pixar Animation Studios, he works on lighting tools during a 2003–04 sabbatical.

  6. 2010–2011

    Visiting researcher at Adobe

    At Adobe Creative Technologies Lab, he is a visiting researcher during the 2010–11 academic year.

  7. 2014

    An ACM Fellowship

    In 2014, he becomes an ACM Fellow for contributions to non-photorealistic rendering, multi-resolution representations, and computer graphics.

  8. 2019

    Text-based talking-head video

    In 2019, he coauthors Text-based Editing of Talking-head Video, in which a recurrent video-generation network produces a photorealistic video matching an edited transcript.

  9. 2025

    Diffusion voice conversion

    In 2025, he coauthors DiTVC, a one-shot voice-conversion framework built on diffusion transformers to replicate voice timbre and acoustic properties.

  10. Since July 2026

    Head of Rockefeller College

    He begins a four-year term as head of Rockefeller College in July 2026 while serving as the Phillip Y. Goldman ’86 Professor in Computer Science. His research spans computer graphics, computer vision, and human-computer interaction, with a focus on tools for creating and manipulating photos, video, and audio.

Career

  1. Since 2026Princeton UniversityHead
  2. NowPrinceton UniversityPhillip Y. Goldman ’86 Professor in Computer Science
  3. 2010–2011AdobeVisiting Researcher
  4. 2003–2004Pixar Animation Studios
  5. Until 2001Princeton UniversityAssociate Professor
  6. From 2001Princeton UniversityFull Professor
  7. 1999–2004Office of Science
  8. From 1997Princeton UniversityAssistant Professor
  9. TIBCO SoftwareSoftware Engineer

Education

  1. 1996University of WashingtonPhD
  2. Swarthmore College

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: cs.princeton.edu.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Adam Finkelstein yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Adam Finkelstein cs.princeton.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Adam Finkelstein appointed head of Rockefeller College cs.princeton.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Suggestive Contours gfx.cs.princeton.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. ACM SIGGRAPH congratulates ACM Fellow Adam Finkelstein blog.siggraph.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Text-based Editing of Talking-head Video arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. DiTVC: One-Shot Voice Conversion via Diffusion Transformer with Environment and Speaking Rate Cloning gfx.cs.princeton.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.