Alexander Kolesnikov
Alexander Kolesnikov is a computer vision researcher who helps develop the Vision Transformer, a model for image recognition. He received his doctorate from ISTA in 2018, and ISTA presented him with its 2023 Alumni Award. In May 2020, he and Lucas Beyer wrote about open-sourcing BiT, a large-scale pre-training approach for computer vision. In December 2024, OpenAI set up a Zurich subsidiary that he, Lucas Beyer and Xiaohua Zhai were to lead. He works on Meta's superintelligence initiatives after Meta hired him in June 2025.
Timeline
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2018
A doctorate from ISTA
He receives his doctorate from ISTA in 2018.
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May 2020
Open-sourcing BiT
In May 2020, he and Lucas Beyer, research engineers at Google Research in Zürich, publish a post on open-sourcing BiT, a large-scale pre-training approach for computer vision.
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October 2020
The Vision Transformer
He helps develop the Vision Transformer, a model for image recognition, and its paper is posted to arXiv in October 2020.
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2023
An ISTA alumni award
ISTA presents him with its 2023 Alumni Award, given to excellent former researchers.
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December 2024
A Zurich office for OpenAI
In December 2024, OpenAI sets up a Zurich subsidiary that he, Lucas Beyer and Xiaohua Zhai will lead, all three from Google DeepMind.
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Since 2025
Joining Meta's superintelligence work
Meta hires him, Lucas Beyer and Xiaohua Zhai from OpenAI in June 2025 to work on its superintelligence initiatives.
Sources and credits
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- ISTA Alumni Award for Alexander Kolesnikov
- Open-Sourcing BiT: Exploring Large-Scale Pre-training for Computer Vision
- An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale
- OpenAI hires three Google DeepMind researchers for multimodal AI work
- OpenAI sets up office in Zurich
- Meta recruits 3 OpenAI researchers amid Sam Altman's poaching claims