PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Sanja Fidler

Sanja Fidler is vice president of AI research at NVIDIA and leads its Spatial Intelligence Lab in Toronto. She earned a BSc in applied mathematics and a PhD in computer science at the University of Ljubljana, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Toronto, worked in Chicago, and returned to the University of Toronto in 2014. Her Polygon-RNN paper received a CVPR Best Paper Honorable Mention in 2017; she became director of NVIDIA's new Toronto lab and a founding member of the Vector Institute in 2018. She became a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in 2018 and received the Connaught Innovation Award in 2020 and the University of Toronto Innovation Award in 2021. GEN3C uses a 3D cache for consistent video generation and precise camera control; her coauthored Motion Attribution for Video Generation received an ICML 2026 Outstanding Paper Honorable Mention.

Now at
University of Toronto Mississauga and Veeda AI
Works
305
Citations
33,601
h-index
79

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Photo of Sanja Fidler

Timeline

  1. 2002–2014

    A computer science doctorate

    She earns a BSc in applied mathematics at the University of Ljubljana in 2002 and a PhD in computer science in 2010. She visits UC Berkeley, completes a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, works as a research assistant professor in Chicago in 2012/2013, and returns to Toronto in 2014.

  2. 2017

    Polygon-RNN at CVPR

    Her Polygon-RNN paper receives the Best Paper Honorable Mention at CVPR in 2017.

  3. 2018

    Directing NVIDIA's Toronto lab

    She becomes director of AI research at NVIDIA's new Toronto lab while remaining an assistant professor at U of T Mississauga. She is a founding member of the Vector Institute.

  4. 2018–2021

    A CIFAR chair and awards

    She becomes a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in 2018 and receives the Connaught New Researcher Award in 2018, Early Researcher Award in 2019, Connaught Innovation Award in 2020, and University of Toronto Innovation Award in 2021.

  5. 2025

    GEN3C for video generation

    In 2025, she coauthors GEN3C, a generative video model that uses a 3D cache to support temporal 3D consistency and precise camera control. It appears at CVPR 2025.

  6. 2025

    Nation Makers and an AI index

    In 2025, she appears on Maclean's Nation Makers list and the Observer A.I. Power Index.

  7. 2026

    An ICML paper honour

    She coauthors Motion Attribution for Video Generation, which receives an ICML 2026 Outstanding Paper Honorable Mention.

  8. As of October 2026

    Vice president of AI research

    She is vice president of AI research at NVIDIA and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. She leads NVIDIA's Spatial Intelligence Lab in Toronto.

Sources and credits

Photo: Gabriel Hutchinson, 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.

  1. Sanja Fidler en.wikipedia.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Sanja Fidler cs.toronto.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. AI, Spatial Intelligence, and 3D Content Creation With Sanja Fidler of NVIDIA - Ep. 269 nvidia.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. UTM computer vision expert to lead new Nvidia research lab in Toronto utm.utoronto.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. NVIDIA opening AI lab in Toronto led by Vector Faculty Member, Sanja Fidler - Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. [2503.03751] GEN3C: 3D-Informed World-Consistent Video Generation with Precise Camera Control arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Vector Institute 2025-26 Annual Report annual-report.vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. Announcing the ICML 2026 Awards – ICML Blog blog.icml.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. Xindi Wu xindiwu.github.io. Checked 14 October 2026.
  10. Speakers Sessions and Insights | NVIDIA GTC San Jose 2026 nvidia.com. Checked 14 October 2026.