PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Ramin Zabih

Ramin Zabih is a computer vision researcher whose work with graph cuts addressed problems such as motion, stereo and medical imaging. After earning degrees in computer science and mathematics at MIT and a PhD at Stanford in 1994, he joined Cornell's faculty and later took a joint role in Weill Cornell Radiology. His paper with Vladimir Kolmogorov, “What Energy Functions Can Be Minimized via Graph Cuts?”, received ECCV's 2012 Koenderink Prize; he also edited IEEE TPAMI and chaired its technical committee. He founded the Computer Vision Foundation, which provides open-access papers from CVPR, ICCV and WACV, and received the 2016 PAMI Mark Everingham Prize for service. As of October 2026, he is a professor at Cornell Tech and an ACM and IEEE fellow; he has worked as a Google research scientist since 2016, on leave from Cornell.

Works
195
Citations
24,926
h-index
42

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Photo of Ramin Zabih

Timeline

  1. By 1994

    Degrees in math and computing

    He earned bachelor's degrees in computer science and mathematics at MIT, then completed a PhD in computer science at Stanford in 1994.

  2. 1994

    Joining Cornell

    He joined Cornell's computer-science department in 1994.

  3. 2001

    Vision and medical imaging

    A joint appointment in radiology at Weill Cornell began in 2001. His research focused on computer vision and medical imaging, where his group applied combinatorial optimization such as graph cuts.

  4. 2009–2012

    Editing the PAMI journal

    From 2009 to 2012, he served as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

  5. 2012

    Graph cuts stand the test

    With Vladimir Kolmogorov, he coauthored “What Energy Functions Can Be Minimized via Graph Cuts?” His graph-cut methods addressed early-vision problems such as motion and stereo, and ECCV gave the paper the 2012 Koenderink Prize.

  6. 2013–2016

    A wider role in vision

    He joined Cornell Tech in 2013 and chaired the IEEE PAMI Technical Committee from 2013 to 2015. Since 2016, he has worked as a Google research scientist on leave from Cornell.

  7. 2016

    Opening vision papers to all

    He founded the Computer Vision Foundation to expand open access in computer vision; the foundation provides open-access versions of CVPR, ICCV and WACV papers. The PAMI Mark Everingham Prize recognized his service to the community in 2016.

  8. As of October 2026

    At Cornell Tech

    As of October 2026, he is a professor of computer science at Cornell Tech and a fellow of the ACM and IEEE.

Sources and credits

Photo: cs.cornell.edu; Ramin Zabih; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: cs.cornell.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. Cornell Tech - Ramin Zabih tech.cornell.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Cornell CS Annual Report 2003: Ramin Zabih cs.cornell.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Past Officers - IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence tc.computer.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Ramin Zabih cs.cornell.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Computer Vision Awards – The Computer Vision Foundation thecvf.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. PAMI Mark Everingham Prize - IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence tc.computer.org. Checked 14 October 2026.