Kai Li
Also known as K. Li
Kai Li is a Princeton computer scientist whose work on ImageNet connected computer vision with the rise of deep learning. He earned degrees at Jilin University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and Yale, then joined Princeton's faculty in 1986. He co-founded Data Domain in 2001, served as its initial CEO, CTO, and consulting chief scientist, and his company was acquired by EMC in 2009; he also coauthored ImageNet's 2009 CVPR paper. The National Academy of Engineering elected him in 2012, the ImageNet paper received CVPR's Longuet-Higgins Prize in 2019, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him in 2025. As of October 2026, he is Princeton's Wythes Professor in Computer Science.
- Now at
- Princeton University
- Works
- 58
- Citations
- 63,038
- h-index
- 18
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1986
Degrees at three universities
He earns a bachelor's degree from Jilin University, a master's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, and a doctorate from Yale in 1986.
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1986–2009
A Princeton professorship
He joins Princeton's computer science faculty in 1986, proposes a shared-memory programming system for clusters, and becomes the Wythes Professor in Computer Science in 2009.
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2001–2009
Founding Data Domain
He co-founds Data Domain in 2001, when it sets out to create and deploy deduplication storage products to replace tapes in data centers; EMC acquires the company in 2009. He serves as its initial CEO, CTO, and consulting chief scientist.
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2009
Co-authoring ImageNet
In 2009, he coauthors “ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database” with Jia Deng, Wei Dong, Richard Socher, Li-Jia Li, and Li Fei-Fei. The computer-vision database sparks a revolution in deep learning.
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2012
Academy election and SIGOPS award
In 2012, he is elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to data storage and distributed computer systems and wins the ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award; he is also an ACM and IEEE Fellow.
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2019
A Longuet-Higgins Prize
In 2019, CVPR awards its PAMI Longuet-Higgins Prize to ImageNet as the retrospective most impactful paper from CVPR 2009.
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2025
An arts and sciences election
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects him to its class of 2025.
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As of October 2026
Professor at Princeton
As of October 2026, he is Princeton's Wythes Professor in Computer Science.
Sources and credits
Photo: cs.princeton.edu; Kai Li; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: cs.princeton.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.