PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Laszlo A. Jeni

Also known as László A. Jeni, Laszlo Attila Jeni

Laszlo A. Jeni is an Associate Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Computational Behavior (CUBE) Lab and builds machine learning methods that model, understand and synthesize human faces, motion and behavior. He earned a master's degree in computer science at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and a PhD at the University of Tokyo in 2012, and he won best paper awards at IEEE HSI in 2011 and IEEE FG in 2015. With Takeo Kanade and Jeffrey Cohn, he published a real-time method for dense 3D face alignment from 2D video in 2015, and he co-organized the 3D Face Alignment workshop in 2016 and the third FERA challenge in 2017. In 2024, he coauthored 3D-LFM, a transformer-based 3D Lifting Foundation Model, with Mosam Dabhi and Simon Lucey.

Timeline

  1. 2011–2012

    PhD at the University of Tokyo

    He earns a master's degree in computer science at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and a PhD in electrical engineering and information systems at the University of Tokyo in 2012. He receives a best paper award at the IEEE Conference on Human System Interaction in 2011.

  2. 2015

    Real-time dense 3D face alignment

    In May 2015, he, Jeffrey F. Cohn and Takeo Kanade publish "Dense 3D Face Alignment from 2D Videos in Real-Time" in the proceedings of the 11th IEEE FG conference. Their 3D cascade regression approach registers a dense 3D face shape in real time for each frame of 2D video, and the software is available at zface.org. He also receives a best paper award at IEEE FG in 2015.

  3. 2016–2017

    Co-organizing face analysis challenges

    He co-organizes the 3D Face Alignment workshop in 2016 and the third Facial Expression Recognition and Analysis Challenge (FERA 2017) in 2017. FERA 2017 extends FERA 2015 to the estimation of Action Unit occurrence and intensity under different camera views, and he is an Area Chair at IEEE FG 2018.

  4. 2017

    Project Scientist at Carnegie Mellon

    In October 2017, he is a Project Scientist at Carnegie Mellon, a post he takes up after working as a Senior Computer Vision Specialist at Realeyes. He develops methods for 2D and 3D automatic analysis and synthesis of facial expressions and applies them to research in human emotion, non-verbal communication and assistive technology.

  5. 2017–2019

    Outstanding reviewer awards

    He receives Outstanding Reviewer awards from CVPR in 2017 and from NeurIPS in 2019.

  6. 2024

    A 3D lifting foundation model

    In June 2024, he coauthors "3D-LFM: Lifting Foundation Model" with Mosam Dabhi and Simon Lucey at CVPR. The model uses the permutation equivariance of transformers to lift 3D structure and camera from 2D landmarks, handles a varying number of points per instance, and generalizes to unseen categories.

  7. As of October 2026

    Directing the CUBE Lab

    He is an Associate Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, where he directs the Computational Behavior (CUBE) Lab. His research covers computer vision and machine learning for behavior science and affective computing, with a focus on modeling, understanding and synthesizing human motion and behavior from diverse sensors.

Career

  1. Since 2017Carnegie Mellon UniversityProject Scientist
  2. RealeyesSenior Computer Vision Specialist

Education

  1. 2012University of TokyoPhD
  2. Eötvös Loránd UniversityMaster's degree

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Laszlo A. Jeni. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon 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.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Carnegie Mellon 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.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon 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. László A. Jeni - The 20th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition fg2026.ieee-biometrics.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Challenges Facing Computational Face - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Dense 3D Face Alignment from 2D Videos in Real-Time - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. FERA 2017 - Addressing Head Pose in the Third Facial Expression Recognition and Analysis Challenge arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. 3D-LFM: Lifting Foundation Model - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. 3D-LFM: Lifting Foundation Model arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Laszlo A. Jeni - The Robotics Institute - CMU ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Laszlo Jeni - Electrical and Computer Engineering - College of Engineering - Carnegie Mellon University ece.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.