PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Maneesh Agrawala

Also known as M. Agrawala

Maneesh Agrawala is a Stanford computer science professor whose work connects visual communication, computer graphics, and generative AI. He earned mathematics and computer science degrees at Stanford, built the LineDrive route-map system, and held a research affiliation with Microsoft Research before joining UC Berkeley's faculty. His ControlNet paper adds spatial controls to text-to-image diffusion models and wins ICCV's 2023 Marr Prize. As of October 2026, he is the Forest Baskett Professor at Stanford, directs the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and serves as a consulting AI Scientist at Roblox.

Works
394
Citations
22,360
h-index
74

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Photo of Maneesh Agrawala

Timeline

  1. 1994–2002

    Stanford training and LineDrive

    He earns a Stanford BS in mathematics in 1994 and a PhD in computer science there in 2002. His 2001 SIGGRAPH paper with Chris Stolte introduces LineDrive, an automatic route-map system that uses cognitive and cartographic techniques.

  2. 2002–2006

    Microsoft Research affiliation

    He holds a research affiliation with Microsoft Research from 2002 to 2006.

  3. 2005–2015

    Professor at Berkeley

    At UC Berkeley, he serves on the electrical engineering and computer science faculty from 2005 to 2015. His research spans computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and visualization.

  4. 2009

    A MacArthur Fellowship

    In 2009, he receives a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. His work designs visual interfaces that help people understand complex information.

  5. Since 2015

    Leading the Brown Institute

    He joins Stanford as a computer science professor in 2015 and becomes director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.

  6. 2023

    ControlNet and the Marr Prize

    With Lvmin Zhang and Anyi Rao, he presents ControlNet, an architecture that adds spatial conditioning to pretrained text-to-image diffusion models. The paper wins the 2023 ICCV Marr Prize.

  7. 2025–2026

    3D models and creative tools

    In 2025, he coauthors Cube, a Roblox paper that outlines a foundation model for 3D intelligence and applications for text-to-shape and text-to-scene generation. In 2026, he co-leads a Stanford project to help artists direct generative AI; the team also works with Roblox on creating 3D game objects from text prompts under game restrictions.

  8. As of October 2026

    Stanford and Roblox roles

    As of October 2026, he is the Forest Baskett Professor of Computer Science and director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Stanford. He is also a consulting AI Scientist at Roblox.

Sources and credits

Photo: graphics.stanford.edu; Maneesh Agrawala; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: graphics.stanford.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. Maneesh Agrawala - MacArthur Foundation macfound.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Rendering Effective Route Maps: Improving Usability Through Generalization graphics.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Maneesh Agrawala's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. UC-Berkeley Professor Named Next Director of Brown Institute | Stanford University School of Engineering engineering.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. Computer Vision Awards – The Computer Vision Foundation thecvf.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Cube: A Roblox View of 3D Intelligence arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. Stanford scholars train AI to better augment human creativity | Stanford Report hai.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. Maneesh Agrawala graphics.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.