Jaakko Lehtinen
Jaakko Lehtinen is an associate professor at Aalto University and a distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA Research, working across computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He began as a graphics programmer at Remedy, completed a Ph.D. at Helsinki University of Technology in 2007, and joined NVIDIA Research in 2010 after postdoctoral work at MIT. His work included Progressive Growing of GANs and an adaptive augmentation method that stabilizes GAN training with limited data. In 2024, NeurIPS named his diffusion paper a Best Paper Runner-up.
- Now at
- NVIDIA and Aalto University
- Works
- 98
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.
Timeline
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1996–2005
Graphics programmer at Remedy
He works as a graphics programmer at Remedy Entertainment from 1996 to 2005 and contributes to the graphics technology behind Max Payne (2001) and Max Payne 2 (2003).
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2007–2010
Doctorate and MIT postdoc
He earns a Ph.D. from Helsinki University of Technology in 2007, then works as a postdoctoral associate with Frédo Durand in MIT's graphics group from 2007 to 2010.
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2010
Joining NVIDIA Research
He joins NVIDIA Research in June 2010. His interests span computer graphics, with a focus on physically based rendering.
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2017
Progressive Growing of GANs
He coauthors Progressive Growing of GANs, a method that progressively grows its generator and discriminator from low resolution to add finer image details.
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2020
Limited-data GAN training
He coauthors Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data. The paper proposes adaptive discriminator augmentation, which stabilizes GAN training with limited data.
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2024
NeurIPS Best Paper Runner-up
He coauthors Guiding a Diffusion Model with a Bad Version of Itself; NeurIPS names the paper a Best Paper Runner-up. The method guides image generation with a smaller, less-trained version of the model to improve image quality while preserving variation.
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As of October 2026
Associate professor and research scientist
He is an associate professor in Aalto University's Department of Computer Science and a distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA Research. His work spans computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Sources and credits
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- Jaakko Lehtinen | Research
- Jaakko Lehtinen
- Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation
- Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data | Research
- NeurIPS 2024 Awards
- Jaakko Lehtinen | Aalto University
- Plenary speakers | Physics Days 2024 | University of Helsinki