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 "excerpt": "Rob Fergus is a computer scientist and NYU professor known for spectral hashing and camera-shake removal, who co-founded Facebook AI Research and became its head in 2025.",
 "snippet": "Rob Fergus is a computer scientist and NYU professor known for spectral hashing and camera-shake removal, who co-founded Facebook AI Research and became its head in 2025.",
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 "markdown": "# Rob Fergus\n\n**Rob Fergus** is a computer scientist who works on computer vision and machine learning, known for single-image camera-shake removal, weakly supervised object recognition, and spectral hashing, and for co-founding Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He became Professor of Computer Science at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, with research interests spanning computer vision, computational photography, deep learning, and large-scale object recognition.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[2](https://cims.nyu.edu/people/profiles/FERGUS_Rob.html)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://cds.nyu.edu/team/rob-fergus-2/)</sup> According to Bloomberg, he became head of Meta's FAIR lab in May 2025.<sup>[4](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google)</sup> \n\n| Fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Position | Professor of Computer Science, Courant Institute, New York University (from 2007)<sup>[2](https://cims.nyu.edu/people/profiles/FERGUS_Rob.html)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[5](https://openreview.net/profile?id=%7ERob_Fergus1)</sup> |\n| Known for | Single-image deblurring (ACM TOG 2006), weakly supervised object recognition (IJCV), Spectral Hashing (NeurIPS 2008)<sup>[6](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1141911.1141956)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[7](https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2008/file/d58072be2820e8682c0a27c0518e805e-Paper.pdf)</sup> |\n| Training | M.Sc. Caltech (2002); D.Phil. Oxford (2005); MIT postdoc (2005-2007)<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup> |\n| Doctoral advisor | Andrew Zisserman, University of Oxford<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[8](https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/publications/2005/Fergus05b/fergus05b.pdf)</sup> |\n| Industry roles | Co-founder, Facebook AI Research (2014); research director, Google DeepMind (2020-2025); head of FAIR (2025-)<sup>[4](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[9](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/meta-taps-former-google-deepmind-director-to-lead-its-ai-research-lab/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[5](https://openreview.net/profile?id=%7ERob_Fergus1)</sup> |\n| Signature work | Spectral Hashing, NeurIPS 2008<sup>[7](https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2008/file/d58072be2820e8682c0a27c0518e805e-Paper.pdf)</sup> |\n| Early prizes | CVPR 2003 best paper prize; BCS and BMVA UK thesis prizes, 2006; Best Short Course Prize, ICCV 2005<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[10](https://people.csail.mit.edu/fergus/pub.htm)</sup> |\n\n## Education and career\n\nFergus studied Electrical and Information Engineering at [Pembroke College, Cambridge](https://www.edgepedia.org/pembroke-college-cambridge), from 1996 to 2000, taking a B.A. and M.Eng.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup> He then moved to the [California Institute of Technology](https://www.edgepedia.org/california-institute-of-technology), where he completed an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in June 2002 advised by [Pietro Perona](https://www.edgepedia.org/pietro-perona).<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup> He next moved to the University of Oxford, completing a D.Phil. in Electrical Engineering, awarded in October 2005.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[8](https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/publications/2005/Fergus05b/fergus05b.pdf)</sup> The 193-page thesis won two UK-wide prizes in 2006: the British Computer Society's Distinguished Dissertations award for the best computer science thesis in the UK, and the British Machine Vision Association's Sullivan prize for the best computer vision thesis in the UK.<sup>[10](https://people.csail.mit.edu/fergus/pub.htm)</sup> He also received the Best Short Course Prize at ICCV 2005.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup>\n\nAfter Oxford he spent two years as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at CSAIL, MIT (2005 to 2007), advised by [William T. Freeman](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-t-freeman).<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup> NYU's faculty and Center for Data Science pages list him as Professor of Computer Science, and of Computer Science and Data Science respectively.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[2](https://cims.nyu.edu/people/profiles/FERGUS_Rob.html)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://cds.nyu.edu/team/rob-fergus-2/)</sup> \n\n## Research\n\nFergus's early work addressed learning object categories from minimally labeled image collections. A 2006 paper in the *International Journal of Computer Vision* (Weakly Supervised Scale-Invariant Learning of Models for Visual Recognition) learned categories from images known only to contain the target category, with learning that is translation and scale invariant and requires no alignment or correspondence between training images.<sup>[11](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/papers/fergus_ijcv.pdf)</sup> Category models were probabilistic constellations of parts, demonstrated on six diverse categories ranging from geometrically constrained ones such as faces and cars to flexible objects such as animals.<sup>[11](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/papers/fergus_ijcv.pdf)</sup> An earlier conference version of this line of work won the best paper prize at CVPR 2003, selected from about 1,000 submissions.<sup>[1](https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf)</sup> His stated interests also include machine learning and statistical methods in astronomy.<sup>[3](https://cds.nyu.edu/team/rob-fergus-2/)</sup>\n\nHis best-known work in computational photography is the 2006 ACM Transactions on Graphics paper *Removing camera shake from a single photograph*, which appeared in volume 25, issue 3, pages 787 to 794.<sup>[6](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1141911.1141956)</sup> The method estimates the blur kernel introduced by camera shake from the blurred image itself and deconvolves it. Because real camera motions can follow convoluted paths, the method uses a spatial domain prior to better maintain visually salient image characteristics.<sup>[12](https://people.csail.mit.edu/billf/papers/deblur_fergus.pdf)</sup> It assumes the blur is uniform across the image and that in-plane camera rotation is negligible, and the user must specify an image region without saturation effects from which the blur is estimated.<sup>[6](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1141911.1141956)</sup>\n\n## Representative work\n\nSpectral Hashing, published at NeurIPS in 2008, addressed nearest-neighbor search in large datasets by learning compact binary codes. The paper shows that finding a best binary code for a given dataset is closely related to graph partitioning and is NP-hard, and derives a practical spectral method based on thresholded eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian; in the paper's experiments these codes outperform the state of the art.<sup>[7](https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2008/file/d58072be2820e8682c0a27c0518e805e-Paper.pdf)</sup>\n\n## Industry career: FAIR, Google DeepMind, and return to Meta\n\nIn 2014 Fergus co-founded the Facebook AI Research lab (FAIR).<sup>[4](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google)</sup> FAIR is tasked with Meta's longer-term AI research, including models that advance robotics, generate audio, and understand images.<sup>[4](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google)</sup>\n\nHe then moved to Google, where he served as a research director at [Google DeepMind](https://www.edgepedia.org/google-deepmind) for roughly five years.<sup>[9](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/meta-taps-former-google-deepmind-director-to-lead-its-ai-research-lab/)</sup> On May 8, 2025, Meta told staff that it had chosen him to lead FAIR on his return from Google.<sup>[4](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google)</sup>\n\n## Reinforcement learning and current work\n\nHis DeepMind-era research turned toward reinforcement learning from pixels. He has described a [model-free reinforcement learning](https://www.edgepedia.org/model-free-reinforcement-learning) algorithm for visual continuous control that relies on data augmentation to learn directly from pixels, yielding state-of-the-art results on the [DeepMind Control Suite](https://www.edgepedia.org/deepmind-control-suite).<sup>[13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny2CpgPrtB8)</sup> A seminar bio from this period lists him as Professor at NYU's Courant Institute and a Research Scientist at DeepMind New York.<sup>[13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny2CpgPrtB8)</sup>\n## References\n\n\n1. Rob Fergus CV, NYU. https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/cv_rob_fergus.pdf\n2. Rob Fergus, NYU Courant Faculty Profile. https://cims.nyu.edu/people/profiles/FERGUS_Rob.html\n3. Rob Fergus, NYU Center for Data Science. https://cds.nyu.edu/team/rob-fergus-2/\n4. Meta Taps New Head of AI Lab After Staffer's Return From Google, Bloomberg, 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/meta-taps-new-head-of-ai-lab-after-staffer-s-return-from-google\n5. Rob Fergus, OpenReview profile. https://openreview.net/profile?id=%7ERob_Fergus1\n6. Removing camera shake from a single photograph, ACM Transactions on Graphics. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1141911.1141956\n7. Spectral Hashing, NeurIPS 2008. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2008/file/d58072be2820e8682c0a27c0518e805e-Paper.pdf\n8. Visual Object Category Recognition, D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/publications/2005/Fergus05b/fergus05b.pdf\n9. Meta taps former Google DeepMind director to lead its AI research lab, TechCrunch, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/meta-taps-former-google-deepmind-director-to-lead-its-ai-research-lab/\n10. Rob Fergus publications page. https://people.csail.mit.edu/fergus/pub.htm\n11. Weakly Supervised Scale-Invariant Learning of Models for Visual Recognition, IJCV. https://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/papers/fergus_ijcv.pdf\n12. Removing Camera Shake from a Single Photograph, paper PDF. https://people.csail.mit.edu/billf/papers/deblur_fergus.pdf\n13. Data Augmentation for Image-Based Reinforcement Learning, seminar recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny2CpgPrtB8\n\n\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Technology and the built world › Engineers and computer scientists › Computer scientists and AI researchers › Researchers in artificial intelligence and machine learning › Reinforcement Learning*\n\n*Initially written Sep 21, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 25, 2026 · Last review: Sep 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n",
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