PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Adrien Gaidon

Adrien Gaidon is a computer vision researcher, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Walden Robotics, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. After completing a computer science PhD with Microsoft Research–Inria and Inria Grenoble’s LEAR team in 2012, he worked on video understanding at Xerox and machine learning for automated driving at Toyota Research Institute. His research included the Virtual KITTI synthetic video dataset in 2016, PackNet for depth estimation in 2020, and tracking objects through occlusion in 2021. In February 2024, he joined Calibrate Ventures as a partner, and in January 2026 he co-founded Walden Robotics.

Works
123
Citations
9,165
h-index
41
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2005–2012

    Degrees in Grenoble and Paris

    He earns an engineering diploma in computer science and applied mathematics at ENSIMAG and an MSc in artificial intelligence at Grenoble’s Institut Polytechnique in 2008. In 2012, he completes a computer science PhD with Microsoft Research–Inria in Paris and Inria Grenoble’s LEAR team, supervised by Cordelia Schmid and Zaid Harchaoui. His thesis studies structured models for action recognition in real-world videos.

  2. 2013–2016

    Video understanding at Xerox

    From 2013 to 2016, he works as a computer vision research scientist at Xerox Research Center Europe in Meylan, France. He serves as technical lead for deep learning for video understanding.

  3. 2016

    The Virtual KITTI dataset

    In 2016, he coauthors “Virtual Worlds as Proxy for Multi-Object Tracking Analysis” with Qiao Wang, Yohann Cabon, and Eleonora Vig. The work introduces Virtual KITTI, a synthetic video dataset with automatic labels for object detection, tracking, segmentation, depth, and optical flow.

  4. 2018

    Machine learning at Toyota

    In 2018, he is Machine Learning Lead at Toyota Research Institute, which develops computer vision models for automated driving. His team uses Amazon EC2 P3 instances to reduce model training time by 75%, allowing faster experiments and tests in cars and simulations.

  5. 2020

    PackNet learns depth from video

    He coauthors “3D Packing for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation” at CVPR in 2020. The work introduces PackNet, a neural network that learns to estimate depth from unlabeled video taken with a single camera, and releases the DDAD urban driving dataset.

  6. 2021

    Tracking with object permanence

    In 2021, he coauthors “Learning to Track with Object Permanence” with Pavel Tokmakov, Jie Li, and Wolfram Burgard. The model uses memory from earlier video frames to track objects through full occlusion, and learns from synthetic and real data.

  7. June 2023

    L4DC best paper award

    His iDBF paper on self-supervised policy filters receives the best paper award at L4DC in June 2023.

  8. February 2024

    Partner at Calibrate Ventures

    After seven years leading machine learning at Toyota Research Institute, he joins Calibrate Ventures as a partner in February 2024 to invest in embodied intelligence startups. He continues as an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and a technical advisor at Toyota Research Institute.

  9. As of October 2026

    Walden Robotics and Stanford

    He co-founds Walden Robotics in January 2026. As of October 2026, he is its Chief Strategy Officer and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. His Stanford projects include human action recognition and prediction, visual representation learning with MIT, and safe autonomous driving.

Career

  1. Since 2026Walden RoboticsCo-founder
  2. Since 2023Stanford UniversityAdjunct Professor of Computer Science
  3. NowWalden RoboticsChief Strategy Officer
  4. From 2024Calibrate VenturesPartner
  5. 2021–2022Stanford UniversityAdjunct Lecturer
  6. 2020–2024Toyota Research InstituteHead of Machine Learning
  7. 2018–2021Toyota Motor Corporation
  8. 2017–2019Toyota Research InstituteManager and Senior Research Scientist, Machine Learning
  9. 2013–2016XeroxComputer Vision Research Scientist and Technical Lead for Deep Learning for Video Understanding
  10. Toyota Research InstituteTechnical advisor

Education

  1. 2012Microsoft Research–Inria Joint CentrePhD studies in Computer Science
  2. 2012InriaPhD studies in Computer Science
  3. 2008Institut polytechnique de GrenobleEngineering diploma in computer science and applied mathematics
  4. 2008Institut polytechnique de GrenobleMSc in artificial intelligence

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

Checked career sources: adriengaidon.com, adriengaidon.com.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. CV - Adrien Gaidon’s website adriengaidon.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Virtual Worlds as Proxy for Multi-Object Tracking Analysis arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Toyota Research Institute accelerates safe automated driving with deep learning at a global scale on AWS aws.amazon.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. 3D Packing for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Learning to Track with Object Permanence arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Adrien Gaidon, PhD - Adrien Gaidon’s website adriengaidon.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. My next step: joining Calibrate Ventures to invest in Embodied Intelligence adriengaidon.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Adrien Gaidon | Computer Science cs.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.