PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

David Kriegman

Also known as David J. Kriegman

David Kriegman is a computer vision researcher at UC San Diego whose work includes the 2001 illumination cone paper on face recognition under variable lighting and pose. After a Princeton degree and a Stanford PhD in 1989, he taught at Yale and Illinois, then joined UC San Diego in 2002. He edited the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence from 2005 to 2008 and took leave from 2007 to 2009 to work at TAAZ, the virtual makeover company. Dropbox hired him and Peter Belhumeur, the founders of the face-recognition company KBVT, in 2014, and he led a machine learning team there. Named an IEEE Fellow in 2015, he joined Two Sigma Investments in 2019 as an AI researcher, and he is a professor of computer science and engineering at UC San Diego.

Now at
University of California, San Diego and Two Sigma Investments
Badges

Timeline

  1. 1983–1989

    Princeton and a Stanford PhD

    He earns a BSE in electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton in 1983. At Stanford, he completes an MS in 1984 and a PhD in 1989, both in electrical engineering.

  2. 1990–2002

    Yale, Illinois and illumination cones

    He teaches at Yale from 1990 to 1998 and wins an NSF Young Investigator Award in 1992. From 1998 to 2002, he is on the Computer Science faculty and at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2001, he coauthors "From Few to Many: Illumination Cone Models for Face Recognition under Variable lighting and Pose" with Athinodoros Georghiades and Peter Belhumeur in IEEE PAMI.

  3. 2002

    Joining UC San Diego

    In September 2002, he joins the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego, after faculty posts at Illinois and Yale.

  4. 2005–2008

    Editor-in-Chief of TPAMI

    From 2005 to 2008, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

  5. 2007–2009

    TAAZ virtual makeovers

    From September 2007 to August 2009, he takes leave from UC San Diego to work at TAAZ, Inc., where the team creates the virtual makeover website taaz.com. In 2008, Photometria, the company he co-founded, wins a CONNECT Most Innovative New Product award in the software and information technology category for taaz.com.

  6. 2014

    KBVT and Dropbox

    In September 2014, Dropbox hires him and Peter Belhumeur, the professors who founded the face-recognition company Kriegman-Belhumeur Vision Technologies (KBVT). At Dropbox, he leads a machine learning team that works on content understanding, computer vision and search quality.

  7. 2015

    An IEEE Fellowship

    He is named an IEEE Fellow in the class of 2015 for contributions to computer vision.

  8. Since 2019

    AI researcher at Two Sigma

    He joins Two Sigma Investments in 2019 as an AI researcher. In 2021, Two Sigma describes him as a professor of computer science and engineering at UC San Diego and presents his webinar on how researchers apply deep learning to sequences in quantitative investing. In March 2025, he is a coauthor of "Quantifying coral reef carbonate budgets: a comparison between ReefBudget and CoralNet" in Coral Reefs.

Career

  1. Since 2019Two Sigma InvestmentsAI researcher
  2. Since 2002University of California, San DiegoProfessor
  3. From 2014DropboxMachine learning team lead
  4. 2007–2009TAAZ, Inc.
  5. 1998–2002University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignComputer Science faculty
  6. 1990–1998Yale University
  7. PhotometriaCo-founder
  8. Kriegman-Belhumeur Vision TechnologiesCo-founder

Education

  1. 1989Stanford UniversityMS and PhD
  2. 1983Princeton UniversityBSE in electrical engineering and computer science

From the biography.

  1. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes David Kriegman. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of California, San Diego. 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.
  3. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of California, San Diego. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, San Diego. 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. David Kriegman - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Two UC San Diego Computer Scientists, One Electrical Engineer Named IEEE Fellows today.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. From Few to Many: Illumination Cone Models for Face Recognition under Variable lighting and Pose | Vision vision.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. David Kriegman, UCSD Professor of Computer Science & Engineering cseweb.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Technologies Developed by UC San Diego Engineers Take Top Honors at Most Innovative New Product Awards jacobsschool.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Dropbox Acqui-Hires KBVT's Computer Vision Geniuses To Mine Its Photos techcrunch.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. David Kriegman, PhD - Hertz Foundation hertzfoundation.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Webinar: Deep Learning for Sequences in Quantitative Finance - Two Sigma twosigma.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. David J. Kriegman | Vision vision.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.