PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Brian Funt

Brian Funt is a computer scientist whose research applies computational models to colour perception and colour constancy. He earned an artificial-intelligence doctorate at the University of British Columbia in 1976, completed postdoctoral work at Stanford, and joined Simon Fraser University in 1980. His research includes a neural network for estimating scene illumination, support-vector regression for illumination chromaticity, and the MIST test set for multi-illuminant colour constancy. He shared the 1988 ICCV Marr Prize with Jian Ho for “Color from Black and White,” received the 2021 Charles Ives Journal Award for a 2020 dataset paper with Aghaei, and won CIC31’s 2023 Cactus Award for Best Interactive Paper with Roshan. As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University and Lab Director of the Computational Vision Laboratory.

Born
1949
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1976

    An AI doctorate

    He earns a Ph.D. in computer science specializing in artificial intelligence at the University of British Columbia in 1976. He completes postdoctoral work at Stanford.

  2. 1980

    Joining Simon Fraser

    He joins Simon Fraser University in 1980; by 2018, he is Professor of Computing Science there.

  3. 1988

    The ICCV Marr Prize

    With Jian Ho, he wins the 1988 ICCV Marr Prize for ‘Color from Black and White.’

  4. 1996–2004

    Neural networks and SVR

    In 1996, he, Vlad Cardei, and Kobus Barnard publish a neural-network method that learns scene illumination from image data. In 2004, he and Weihua Xiong apply support-vector regression to estimate illumination chromaticity from an image color histogram.

  5. 2019

    Testing the MIST dataset

    In 2019, with Xiangpeng Hao and Hanxiao Jiang, he evaluates nine illumination-estimation methods on a synthetic, full-spectrum test set with pixelwise ground truth for colour constancy.

  6. 2020–2021

    A Charles E. Ives Award

    In 2020, he and Aghaei publish ‘A Flying Grey Ball Multi-illuminant Image Dataset for Colour Research.’ IS&T gives the paper its Charles E. Ives Journal Award in 2021.

  7. 2023

    A CIC31 Cactus Award

    With Roshan, he wins the CIC31 Cactus Award for Best Interactive Paper in 2023 for ‘What Underlies Focal Colours?’

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor Emeritus at SFU

    As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus in Simon Fraser University’s School of Computing Science and Lab Director of the Computational Vision Laboratory. His lab models colour perception with algorithms.

Career

  1. Since 1980Simon Fraser UniversityProfessor of Computing Science

Education

  1. 1976University of British ColumbiaPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Brian Funt. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Simon Fraser University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Simon Fraser University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Simon Fraser University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

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 Brian Funt yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. 照明環境と視知覚に関する国際シンポジウムのご案内 | 日本認知心理学会 cogpsy.jp. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. List of Marr Prize Papers cs.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Learning Color Constancy library.imaging.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Estimating Illumination Chromaticity via Support Vector Regression library.imaging.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Evaluating Colour Constancy on the new MIST dataset of Multi-Illuminant Scenes library.imaging.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Charles E. Ives Journal Award imaging.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Professor Emeritus Brian Funt cs.sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.