PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Chinmay Hegde

Chinmay Hegde is a researcher in machine learning and algorithms whose work spans imaging, computer vision, graph-structured sparsity, and generative AI. He earned a PhD at Rice University in 2012 under Rich Baraniuk, won the Budd Award for Best Engineering PhD Thesis in 2013, and worked with Piotr Indyk at MIT through July 2015. His 2015 paper on graph-structured sparsity won an ICML Best Paper Award, and after an assistant professorship at Iowa State he joined NYU Tandon as an assistant professor in 2019. In 2024, he coauthored a paper showing how concept-erasure methods for text-to-image models can be bypassed with concept-inversion attacks. As of October 2026, he is an associate professor at NYU Tandon and a co-founder and Chief Scientist of Xcelsa Labs.

Now at
New York University and Xcelsa Labs
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2012

    A PhD at Rice

    A native of India, he earns a PhD at Rice University in 2012 under Rich Baraniuk.

  2. 2013–July 2015

    A Budd Award and MIT postdoc

    He wins the Budd Award for Best Engineering PhD Thesis in 2013. At MIT, he works with Piotr Indyk as a postdoctoral associate in the Theory of Computation group until July 2015.

  3. 2015

    ICML Best Paper Award

    His paper “A Nearly-Linear Time Framework for Graph-Structured Sparsity” wins an ICML Best Paper Award in 2015.

  4. 2015–2019

    Assistant professor at Iowa State

    From Fall 2015 until Fall 2019, he is an assistant professor in Iowa State’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His work develops fast, robust algorithms for machine learning and statistical signal processing, with applications in imaging, transportation analytics, and materials informatics.

  5. 2019

    Joining NYU Tandon

    He joins NYU Tandon in 2019 as an assistant professor in its Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments.

  6. 2024

    Testing text-to-image safeguards

    In 2024, he coauthors “Circumventing Concept Erasure Methods for Text-to-Image Generative Models,” showing that seven concept-erasure methods can be bypassed with “concept inversion” attacks against Stable Diffusion.

  7. July 2026

    Semiconductor AI partnership award

    In July 2026, he wins the Si2 Power of Partnerships Award as one of the leaders of the LLM Benchmarking Coalition, which works on high-quality LLMs for semiconductor design.

  8. As of October 2026

    NYU and Xcelsa roles

    As of October 2026, he is an associate professor with joint appointments in computer science and electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon. He is also a co-founder and Chief Scientist of Xcelsa Labs.

Career

  1. Since 2019New York UniversityAssistant professor
  2. NowXcelsa LabsCo-founder and Chief Scientist
  3. 2015–2019Iowa State UniversityAssistant professor
  4. 2013–2015Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral associate

Education

  1. 2012Rice UniversityPhD

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 Chinmay Hegde. 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. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. 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. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  4. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes New York University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.

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 Chinmay Hegde yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Chinmay Hegde chinmayhegde.github.io. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. People richb.rice.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. New Faculty 2019 engineering.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Spring 2019 Seminars engineering.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Chinmay Hegde people.csail.mit.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Awards | ICML Lille icml.cc. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Chinmay Hegde | NYU Tandon School of Engineering engineering.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. VIDA Prof. Chinmay Hegde Wins 2026 Si2 Power of Partnerships (POP) Award vida.engineering.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.