PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jianfei Cai

Jianfei Cai is a computer vision and multimedia researcher whose work includes RGB-D object recognition and image captioning. He earned electrical engineering degrees at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1994, Southeast University in 1997 and the University of Missouri Columbia in 2002. His 2018 image-captioning method used language pivoting; he became an IEEE Fellow in 2021 and served as a General Chair of ACM Multimedia in 2024. From March 2026 to March 2029, he leads an Australian Research Council project on personalized, interactive, and responsible avatar agents as its Primary Chief Investigator. After leading two divisions at NTU and the Data Science & AI Department at Monash, he is a Professor in Monash's Faculty of IT as of October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1994

    Electrical engineering in Nanjing

    He earns a Bachelor of Engineering in electrical engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1994.

  2. 1997–2002

    Southeast master's and Missouri PhD

    He earns a Master of Engineering at Southeast University in 1997 and completes a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Missouri Columbia in 2002.

  3. 2015

    Deep learning for RGB-D objects

    In 2015, he coauthors a paper on large-margin multimodal deep learning for RGB-D object recognition.

  4. 2018

    Image captions by language pivoting

    With Jiuxiang Gu, Shafiq Joty and Gang Wang, he presents a language-pivoting approach to unpaired image captioning in 2018. It uses Chinese as a pivot to align captioning with English through a Chinese-English parallel sentence corpus.

  5. 2021

    An IEEE Fellowship

    He becomes an IEEE Fellow in 2021.

  6. 2024

    ACM Multimedia General Chair

    In October 2024, he serves as one of ACM Multimedia's General Chairs in Melbourne and coauthors the conference welcome with Mohan Kankanhalli, Balakrishnan Prabhakaran and Susanne Boll.

  7. March 2026–March 2029

    Leading an ARC avatar project

    From March 2026 to March 2029, he serves as Primary Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council project “Towards Personalized, Interactive, and Responsible Avatar Agents.”

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Monash

    As of October 2026, he is a Professor at Monash's Faculty of IT, after serving as inaugural Head of its Department of Data Science & AI. Earlier, he heads the Visual and Interactive Computing and Computer Communications divisions at Nanyang Technological University. His research focuses on computer vision, multimedia and visual computing.

Career

  1. NowMonash UniversityInaugural Head
  2. Nanyang Technological UniversityHead of the Visual and Interactive Computing and Computer Communications divisions

Education

  1. 2002University of MissouriPhD in Electrical Engineering
  2. 1997Southeast UniversityMaster of Engineering
  3. 1994Nanjing University of Aeronautics and AstronauticsBachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Monash University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Monash University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. 5 of the 25 people with the most-cited recent papers also lead on career citationsIncludes Monash University. We compare citations to 2023–2025 papers with career citations and h-index, after correcting reviewed publication-date errors: who leads, when they started and where they work.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Nanyang Technological University. 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

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  1. Jianfei Cai - Monash University research.monash.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Welcome to Jianfei Cai’s Personal Homepage jianfei-cai.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Unpaired Image Captioning by Language Pivoting arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Jianfei Cai | IEEE CASS ieee-cas.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. ACM MM'24 General Chairs' Welcome - Monash University research.monash.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Reports from ACM Multimedia 2024 – ACM SIGMM Records records.sigmm.org. Checked 21 October 2026.