PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Charles R. Qi

Also known as Charles Qi, Charles Ruizhongtai Qi

Charles Qi is a computer vision researcher whose work applies deep learning to 3D point clouds. He earned an engineering degree from Tsinghua in 2013, coauthored PointNet and PointNet++ in 2017, and earned a doctorate from Stanford in 2018. From 2018 to 2019, he worked on VoteNet, ImVoteNet and PointContrast at Facebook AI Research, joined Waymo in 2019, and led a team building perception foundation models. In 2021, he coauthored the Waymo Open Motion Dataset, which introduced more than 100,000 interactive driving scenes for motion forecasting. In June 2025, he contributed to Tesla Autopilot's FSD program and the Austin Robotaxi launch, and as of October 2026, he is a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI.

Now at
OpenAI
Works
41
Citations
26,181
h-index
24
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2013

    A B.Eng. at Tsinghua

    At Tsinghua, he earns a B.Eng. in 2013.

  2. 2017

    PointNet and PointNet++

    His research covers deep learning, computer vision and 3D applications. In 2017, he coauthors PointNet, a neural network that directly consumes point clouds for object classification, part segmentation and scene parsing. He also coauthors PointNet++, which applies PointNet hierarchically to learn local features at increasing contextual scales.

  3. 2018

    A Ph.D. at Stanford

    At Stanford, he earns a Ph.D. in 2018 through the Stanford AI Lab and Geometric Computation Group, advised by Leonidas J. Guibas.

  4. 2018–2019

    Postdoctoral research at FAIR

    From 2018 to 2019, he is a postdoctoral researcher at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), where he works with Kaiming He, Saining Xie and Xinlei Chen on VoteNet, ImVoteNet and PointContrast.

  5. 2019–2022

    Waymo perception models

    In 2019, he joins Waymo. By April 2022, he is a Staff Research Scientist and Manager in its Research team. There, he leads a team building perception foundation models.

  6. 2021

    The Waymo Open Motion Dataset

    In 2021, he coauthors the Waymo Open Motion Dataset paper, which introduces more than 100,000 interactive driving scenes for motion forecasting.

  7. June 2025

    Tesla Autopilot and FSD

    In June 2025, he contributes to FSD development on Tesla's Autopilot team. His Tesla work includes FSD V12, V13 and V14, and the Robotaxi launch in Austin.

  8. As of October 2026

    Member of Technical Staff

    As of October 2026, he is a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI.

Career

  1. NowOpenAIMember of Technical Staff
  2. From 2025Tesla
  3. From 2019WaymoStaff Research Scientist and Manager
  4. 2018–2019FAIR (Meta)Postdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. 2018Stanford UniversityPh.D.
  2. 2013Tsinghua UniversityB.Eng.

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

  1. 22 of 133 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes Charles R. Qi. Our estimates of where OpenAI recruits came from and where 133 people with former OpenAI roles work now, including the companies and labs they founded.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Charles R. Qi. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Charles R. Qi. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Charles R. Qi. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Guest Lecture 1 - CS492(A) Machine Learning for 3D Data (KAIST, Spring 2022) mhsung.github.io. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Charles R. Qi charlesrqi.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Dataset waymo.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Tesla’s Robotaxi Launched, With a Notable Presence of Chinese Engineers on the Team | ChinaEVHome chinaevhome.com. Checked 22 October 2026.