Jian Sun
Also known as Sun Jian
Jian Sun was a computer-vision researcher who coauthored papers on deep residual learning and Faster R-CNN object detection. He earned three degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University between 1997 and 2003, spent 13 years at Microsoft Research Asia, joined MEGVII in 2016, and became dean of his alma mater’s College of Artificial Intelligence in 2019. His coauthored work spans single-image haze removal, deep residual learning, Faster R-CNN, and the mobile CNN ShuffleNet. He died in June 2022. The 2023 Future Science Prize recognized him and his coauthors for deep residual learning; Faster R-CNN received NeurIPS’s 2025 Test of Time Paper Award, and Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition received the 2026 Longuet-Higgins Prize.
- Works
- 120
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 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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1997–2009
A CVPR haze-removal award
He earns B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1997, 2000, and 2003, then joins Microsoft Research Asia. With Kaiming He and Xiaoou Tang, he coauthors single-image haze removal with a dark-channel prior in 2009; CVPR gives the paper its Best Paper Award.
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2015–2016
ResNet earns CVPR’s award
Microsoft Research identifies him as a principal researcher. In 2015, he coauthors Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition, which evaluates residual networks up to 152 layers; CVPR gives it the 2016 Best Paper Award. He also coauthors Faster R-CNN with Shaoqing Ren, Kaiming He, and Ross Girshick in 2015, a system for real-time object detection.
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2016–2017
Chief scientist at MEGVII
After 13 years at Microsoft Research, he joins MEGVII Technology in July 2016 as chief scientist and managing director of research. In 2017, he coauthors ShuffleNet, an efficient CNN for mobile devices.
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January 2019
Dean of an AI college
He becomes dean of Xi’an Jiaotong University’s College of Artificial Intelligence in January 2019.
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2022
Death at MEGVII
He dies in June 2022 as MEGVII’s chief scientist.
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2023
A Future Science Prize
The Future Science Prize awards its mathematics and computer science prize to Jian Sun, Kaiming He, Shaoqing Ren, and Xiangyu Zhang for introducing deep residual learning.
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2025
A NeurIPS award
NeurIPS gives the 2025 Test of Time Paper Award to Faster R-CNN and lists Sun among its authors.
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2026
A Longuet-Higgins Prize
The 2026 Longuet-Higgins Prize goes to Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition, coauthored by Jian Sun, Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, and Shaoqing Ren.
Sources and credits
Photo: jiansun.org; Homepage of Jian Sun; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: jiansun.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
- Homepage of Jian Sun
- Jian Sun - Publications
- Microsoft Researchers’ Algorithm Sets ImageNet Challenge Milestone - Microsoft Research
- Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition
- Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks
- ShuffleNet: An Extremely Efficient Convolutional Neural Network for Mobile Devices
- Chinese AI giant Megvii's chief scientist Sun Jian dies at age 45 of sudden illness
- Announcement of 2023 Future Science Prize Laureates: Jijie Chai, Jian-Min Zhou, Zhongxian Zhao, Xianhui Chen, Kaiming He, Jian Sun, Shaoqing Ren, Xiangyu Zhang - Home-Future Science Prize
- Announcing the Test of Time Paper Award for NeurIPS 2025 – NeurIPS Blog
- Kaiming He