PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Aude Oliva

Aude Oliva is a researcher in computer vision and cognitive science whose work helps machines interpret images and events. She completed a PhD in Grenoble in 1995, then joined MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty in 2004 and CSAIL in 2012. Her work includes scene recognition with the Places database and the Moments in Time video dataset; she coauthored ChartNet, a multimodal dataset for chart interpretation. She received an NSF CAREER Award in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014, then led the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and strategic industry engagement in October 2025. Forbes included her in its 50 Over 50 list for innovation in 2026; as of October 2026, she co-directs the MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab.

Now at
MIT CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and IBM and IBM Research
Works
435
Citations
59,593
h-index
76
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1995–2004

    Grenoble doctorate, MIT faculty post

    She completes a PhD at Institut National Polytechnique in Grenoble in 1995 after master's study in experimental psychology and cognitive science. She joins MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty in 2004.

  2. 2006

    An NSF CAREER Award

    She receives an NSF CAREER Award in cognitive neuroscience in 2006.

  3. 2012

    Joining CSAIL

    She joins CSAIL in 2012 and heads its Computational Perception and Cognition group. Her research links computer vision and neuroscience with human perception and cognition.

  4. 2014

    A Guggenheim Fellowship

    She becomes a Guggenheim Fellow in computer science in 2014.

  5. 2015–2017

    Places and Moments datasets

    In 2015, a CSAIL team that includes her reports that a deep scene classifier trained on the Places database also learns to recognize objects. In 2017, she and collaborators release Moments in Time, a dataset of more than one million labeled three-second videos for training AI to recognize actions and events.

  6. October 2025

    Directing MIT-IBM research

    In October 2025, she serves as MIT director of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and director of strategic industry engagement at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

  7. 2026

    ChartNet and Forbes 50 Over 50

    In March 2026, she coauthors the ChartNet paper, which introduces a high-quality multimodal dataset for chart interpretation. In August 2026, Forbes includes her in its 50 Over 50 list for innovation.

  8. As of October 2026

    MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab director

    She is the MIT director of the MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab and a senior research scientist at CSAIL. She co-directs the lab with IBM Research's David Cox.

Career

  1. Since 2012MIT CSAILHead, Computational Perception and Cognition group
  2. NowMassachusetts Institute of Technology and IBMCo-Director
  3. From 2025IBM ResearchMIT Director
  4. 2020–2026IBM
  5. 2004–2012Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDirector of Strategic Industry Engagement
  6. 2002–2004Michigan State University
  7. 1999–2002Harvard University
  8. 1997–2000University of Glasgow

Education

  1. 1995National Polytechnic Institute of GrenoblePhD

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

Most-cited works

  1. Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization2016 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 11,303 citationsWith Aditya Khosla and Antonio Torralba
  2. Modeling the Shape of the Scene: A Holistic Representation of the Spatial Envelope2001 · International Journal of Computer Vision · 6,322 citationsWith Antonio Torralba
  3. Places: A 10 Million Image Database for Scene Recognition2017 · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 3,973 citationsWith Aditya Khosla and Antonio Torralba
  4. SUN database: Large-scale scene recognition from abbey to zoo2010 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 3,277 citationsWith Antonio Torralba and James Hays
  5. Learning Deep Features for Scene Recognition using Places Database2014 · 2,533 citationsWith Antonio Torralba

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. Universities had a net outflow of 805 moves in AI careersIncludes Aude Oliva. Our estimates of university and company career flows and median h-index, with institutional examples.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. Biography – Aude Oliva audeoliva.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. Aude Oliva en.wikipedia.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. Aude Oliva named 2014 Guggenheim Fellow csail.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. Aude Oliva | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. Could a scene-recognition system help robots detect individual objects, too? csail.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Using videos to help AI understand events and actions csail.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. Creating AI that matters news.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. ChartNet: A Million-Scale, High-Quality Multimodal Dataset for Robust Chart Understanding arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  9. Clip Forbes 50 Over 50: Innovation news.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  10. The MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab launches to shape the future of AI and quantum computing news.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  11. Aude Oliva mitibm.mit.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.