Pascal Fua
Pascal Fua is a computer vision researcher whose work spans 3D shape recovery, motion analysis from images, and machine learning. He earns an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and a computer-science PhD at the University of Orsay, then works at SRI International and INRIA before joining EPFL in 1996. His papers include multicamera people tracking and BRIEF, a paper on binary visual features. IEEE names him a Fellow in 2012 for 3D shape recovery, and BRIEF receives ECCV’s 2020 Koenderink Prize. As of October 2026, he is a full professor and heads EPFL’s Computer Vision Laboratory; he is also an ELLIS Fellow in its Lausanne unit.
Timeline
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1984–1989
Training in engineering and computing
He earns an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1984 and a PhD in computer science from the University of Orsay in 1989.
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1989–1996
Across two research institutes
He works as a computer scientist at SRI International and INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, then joins EPFL in 1996.
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Since 1996
A computer vision program
He joined EPFL in 1996; his research covers shape modeling and motion recovery from images, microscopy image analysis, and machine learning.
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2008–2010
Tracking people and describing features
He coauthored Multicamera People Tracking with a Probabilistic Occupancy Map in 2008. In 2010, he coauthored BRIEF: Binary Robust Independent Elementary Features with Michael Calonder, Vincent Lepetit, and Christoph Strecha.
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2012
A fellowship for shape recovery
He is elected an IEEE Fellow for contributions to the theory and practice of three-dimensional shape recovery from images and video sequences.
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By 2012
Taking vision into a startup
He has founded Pix4D, a Swiss start-up active in 2D and 3D representations of the environment.
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2020
A computer vision prize
His coauthored BRIEF paper receives ECCV’s 2020 Koenderink Prize.
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As of October 2026
Leading an EPFL vision lab
He is a full professor and heads EPFL’s Computer Vision Laboratory. He is an ELLIS Fellow in its Lausanne unit.
Sources and credits
Photo: Krzysztof Lis, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
