Ali Farhadi

2019 Early Career Academic Achievement Alumni Award

Ali Farhadi is an Associate Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is the Senior Research Manager leading the PRIOR team at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and is the Co-founder and Chief Xnor Officer of Xnor.ai. He is a 2011 PhD graduate of Illinois CS, who was advised by Professor David Forsyth. Farhadi’s research is focused on computer vision, machine learning, the intersection of natural language and vision, analysis of the role of semantics in visual understanding, and visual reasoning.

His company, Xnor.ai, brings highly efficient AI to edge devices such as cameras, cars, drones, wearables, and IoT devices. The Xnor platform allows product developers to run complex deep learning algorithms, which were previously restricted to the cloud, locally on a wide range of mobile and low energy devices. Throughout this year, Xnor.ai has launched several new projects including AI2GO, a self-serve platform with a set of ready-to-go applications and deep-learning models with which users can experiment; solar-powered AI, a battery-free, efficient AI technology that can operate independently of the cloud or a power source; and a partnership with Wyze, providing AI enabled person detection on Wyze home security cameras that automatically identifies when people appear in the camera’s field of view. Since it was spun out of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2017, Xnor.ai has raised over $14 million in funding and is continuing to grow.

In 2018, Forbes named Farhadi one of “5 Entrepreneurs on the Rise in AI.” He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2017), the Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), best paper awards from CVPR (2017; honorable mention, 2011) and AAAI (2016), and was Illinois Computer Science’s 2010 C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student.