PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

David Nistér

Also known as David Nister

David Nistér is a computer-vision researcher whose work connects image recognition with autonomous driving. He earned a doctorate at KTH and held a faculty post at the University of Kentucky. With Henrik Stewénius, he published the 2006 CVPR paper “Scalable Recognition with a Vocabulary Tree,” which received the 2016 Longuet-Higgins Prize. His later work included NVIDIA’s PredictionNet traffic-prediction network, and he is a vice president at NVIDIA as of October 2026.

Now at
NVIDIA
Works
84
Citations
14,974
h-index
38
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 2005

    A KTH doctorate

    By 2005, he holds a PhD in computer vision, numerical analysis and computing science from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).

  2. March 2005

    A Kentucky faculty role

    In March 2005, he serves as an assistant professor in Kentucky’s Computer Science Department and Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments. Before joining Kentucky, he researches at Sarnoff’s Vision Technologies Laboratory.

  3. March 2005

    Real-time camera motion

    At a March 2005 seminar, he presents a real-time system that tracks video features to estimate camera motion.

  4. 2006

    A vocabulary tree for vision

    In 2006, he and Henrik Stewénius publish the CVPR paper “Scalable Recognition with a Vocabulary Tree.” It hierarchically quantizes local image descriptors in a vocabulary tree to improve retrieval.

  5. 2016

    A Longuet-Higgins Prize

    In 2016, the Longuet-Higgins Prize recognizes the CVPR paper “Scalable Recognition with a Vocabulary Tree.”

  6. 2017

    Tesla to NVIDIA

    In 2017, he leaves Tesla’s Autopilot Vision leadership role to join NVIDIA.

  7. 2022

    Predicting traffic motion

    In 2022, he coauthors PredictionNet, a deep neural network that predicts motion for surrounding traffic agents and the ego vehicle.

  8. As of October 2026

    Vice president at NVIDIA

    He is a vice president at NVIDIA.

Career

  1. Since 2017NVIDIAVice President
  2. Until 2017TeslaAutopilot Vision leader
  3. 2007–2011Microsoft
  4. 2005–2010University of KentuckyAssistant Professor
  5. 1998–2002Ericsson
  6. SarnoffResearcher

Education

  1. KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyPhD

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

Most-cited works

  1. Scalable Recognition with a Vocabulary Tree2006 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 3,621 citations
  2. An efficient solution to the five-point relative pose problem2004 · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 2,001 citations
  3. Visual odometry2004 · 1,169 citations
  4. Spatial-Depth Super Resolution for Range Images2007 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 752 citations
  5. Detailed Real-Time Urban 3D Reconstruction from Video2007 · International Journal of Computer Vision · 717 citationsWith Marc Pollefeys

From OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

  1. Google alumni founded or led 87 other organizations, the most among the labs we compareIncludes NVIDIA. We trace 212 organizations founded or led by AI lab alumni, and 223 career moves between the labs.
  2. 44% of AI career moves go from one university to anotherIncludes NVIDIA. We estimate how 14,272 AI career moves link universities, companies, labs and government research centers, with net flows and the most common paths.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes NVIDIA. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes NVIDIA. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. Robotics Institute Seminar, March 18 cs.cmu.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Scalable Recognition with a Vocabulary Tree | Sciweavers sciweavers.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. CVPR 2016 & Research at Google research.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Tesla’s VP of Autopilot Vision leaves to join Nvidia electrek.co. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. PredictionNet: Real-Time Joint Probabilistic Traffic Prediction for Planning, Control, and Simulation research.nvidia.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. NVIDIA Top Management | Leadership Team Contacts | SignalHire signalhire.com. Checked 19 October 2026.