PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman

Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman is a computer vision and graphics researcher whose work on generative models of people and clothing reached shoppers as virtual try-on in Google Shopping. She earned her doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2009, joined the University of Washington faculty in 2012, and was principal investigator of the MegaFace Challenge, which tested face recognition on a million photos, in 2016. Her startup Dreambit was acquired by Facebook in 2016, and in 2018 she co-led the launch of the UW Reality Lab. At Google, she coauthored TryOnDiffusion in 2023, when Google launched its generative AI try-on tool, and Fashion-VDM in 2024. The IEEE named her a Fellow in 2026, and she is a Distinguished Scientist at Google, where she leads Gen AI for Google Shopping, and a professor and director of the UW Reality Lab at the University of Washington.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2001–2012

    Weizmann doctorate and Face Movie

    She earns a B.Sc. with honors in computer science and mathematics at Bar-Ilan University in 2001, then an M.Sc. in 2004 and a Ph.D. in 2009 in computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. As a postdoctoral researcher in UW CSE and a consultant to Google, she turns her Exploring Photobios work into Face Movie, the signature feature of the latest Picasa release. In June 2012, UW CSE announces that she will join its faculty in fall 2012.

  2. 2016

    The MegaFace Challenge

    In 2016, she is principal investigator of the MegaFace Challenge, which tests face recognition on one million Flickr photos of more than 690,000 individuals. The MegaFace Benchmark paper, written with Steve Seitz, Daniel Miller and Evan Brossard, reports that testing at the million scale reveals big performance differences between algorithms that score similarly on smaller sets.

  3. 2016–2018

    Dreambit sold to Facebook

    In 2016, Facebook acquires her startup Dreambit, a personalized image search engine that synthesizes a user's face with online search results by hair style, age and historical period. She and Eli Shlizerman join Research at Facebook and split their time with the University of Washington, and she works there as a research scientist from 2016 to 2018, building products.

  4. January 2018

    Launching the UW Reality Lab

    In January 2018, the UW Reality Lab launches at the Allen School with $6 million in funding from Facebook, Google and Huawei. She co-leads the augmented and virtual reality center with Brian Curless and Steve Seitz and serves as its director of research and education.

  5. 2023

    TryOnDiffusion and Google try-on

    In 2023, she coauthors TryOnDiffusion, a diffusion-based method that unifies two UNets to warp a garment onto a person in a single network, presented at CVPR 2023. Google launches its generative AI virtual try-on for Shopping in June 2023, and she explains in a blog post that the model takes a pair of images and generates a photorealistic picture of the person wearing the garment. Her team invented and launched the Apparel Virtual Try-On feature on google.com.

  6. 2024

    Fashion-VDM and dress try-on

    In September 2024, she and Lilian Rincon announce on Google's blog that the virtual try-on tool now covers dresses. Fashion-VDM, a video diffusion model that generates try-on videos from a garment image and a person video, is accepted to SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 with her as coauthor.

  7. 2026

    Elevated to IEEE Fellow

    The IEEE names her a Fellow in its 2026 class, with a citation for contributions to face, body, and clothing modeling from large image collections.

  8. As of October 2026

    Distinguished Scientist at Google

    She begins a moonshot project at Google in 2019. She is a Distinguished Scientist at Google and leads Gen AI for Google Shopping. She is also a professor of computer science at the University of Washington's Allen School and director of the UW Reality Lab.

Career

  1. Since 2019GoogleDistinguished Scientist
  2. Since 2009University of WashingtonPostdoctoral Researcher, Director of Research and Education
  3. 2016–2018MetaResearch Scientist

Education

  1. 2009Weizmann Institute of SciencePh.D.
  2. 2004Weizmann Institute of ScienceM.Sc.
  3. 2001Bar-Ilan UniversityB.Sc.

From the biography.

  1. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. 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.
  2. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. 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.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. 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 Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman joins UW CSE news.cs.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Finding One Face In a Million spectrum.ieee.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. The MegaFace Benchmark: 1 Million Faces for Recognition at Scale arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. UW's Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman and Eli Shlizerman to timeshare with Facebook news.cs.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Ira Kemelmacher-Shilzerman iadas.net. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. How Professor Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman Built Dreambit & Sold it to Facebook ldv.co. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Allen School launches UW Reality Lab to advance augmented and virtual reality research news.cs.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. TryOnDiffusion: A Tale of Two UNets arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Google's new AI will show how clothes look on different body types popsci.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, Professor - Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering cs.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Fashion-VDM: Video Diffusion Model for Virtual Try-On arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. Virtually try on dresses with our AI shopping tool blog.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  13. Allen School professor Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman elevated to IEEE Fellow for breakthroughs in people modelling and virtual try-on technology news.cs.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  14. Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman - Google Research research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.