Amnon Shashua

Amnon Shashua received his B.Sc in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and his M.Sc in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science[3] under the supervision of Shimon Ullman. His Ph.D in brain and cognitive sciences was received from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in 1993; and his postdoctoral training under Tomaso Poggio at the center for biological and computational learning at MIT.

Shashua has been on the computer science faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1996. In 1999 he was appointed as an associate professor and in 2003 received full professorship. From 2002 to 2005 he was the head of the engineering and computer science school at the Hebrew University.[4] Shashua currently has held the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University since 2007.[5] Over the years, he has published over 100 papers in the field of machine learning and computational vision.[6][7]

Shashua's work includes early visual processing of saliency and grouping mechanisms, visual recognition and learning, image synthesis for animation and graphics, theory of computer vision in the areas of multiple-view geometry and multi-view tensors, multilinear algebraic systems in vision and learning, primal/dual optimization for approximate inference in MRF and Graphical models, and (since 2014) deep layered networks.

Shashua’s work with Lior Wolfe on multiple-view geometry was one of three joint "best papers" at the 2000 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) and received the Marr Prize "honorable mention" at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).[8] His work with Tamir Hazan on graphical models was the "best paper" runner-up at the 2008 Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI).[9][10] Shashua received first prize in the 2004 Kaye Innovation award,[11] and the 2005 Mifal HaPayis Landau Prize for Science and Research in the area of Exact Sciences - Robotics.[12]

On Israeli Independence Day 2017, Shashua was chosen for one of the highest honors in Israeli society, to light a torch at the national ceremony on Mt. Herzl.[13] The committee that selects the torch-lighters decided to honor him for his contribution to the development of cutting edge technology that assists in the reduction of road accidents and assistance to the visually impaired.

In 2019 Shashua was recognized by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology as the Electronic Imaging (EI) Scientist of the Year, an annual award honoring a member of the electronic imaging community who demonstrates excellence and commands the respect of his/her peers by making significant and substantial contributions to the field of electronic imaging.[14] He was recognized for his contributions to computer vision and machine learning, and for advancing autonomous driving and wearable assistive devices for the blind and visually-impaired. Shashua and his team were also finalists in the European Inventor Awards of 2019, awarded by the European Patent Office, for their advanced driver assistance technology which is making roads safer worldwide.[15] In 2020 he was awarded the Dan David Prize for his work in Artificial Intelligence.[16]

In 1995 Shashua founded CogniTens, which was sold to Hexagon AB in 2007.[17] In 1999, Shashua co-founded Mobileye and currently serves as Senior Vice President at Intel Corporation and President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mobileye, an Intel company. Mobileye is a company that develops systems-on-chip and computer vision algorithms for detecting pedestrians, vehicles, traffic signs, lanes and more for driving assistance systems. Mobileye is also developing autonomous driving technology.[18] On August 1, 2014 Mobileye launched its IPO on the NYSE which was the biggest Israeli IPO ever in the US raising approximately $1 billion at a market cap of $5.3 billion.[19]

In 2010, Shashua co-founded OrCam, an Israeli company which launched an assistive device for the visually impaired based on computer vision capabilities.[20]

On March 13, 2017 Mobileye and Intel announced the intent for Intel to acquire Mobileye for $15.3 billion.[21] The deal, which was closed on August 8, 2017, was the largest acquisition of an Israeli tech company to date.[22] In May 2020, Intel announced it was acquiring mobility-as-a-services solutions company, Moovit, bringing Intel’s Mobileye closer to achieving its plan to become a complete mobility provider.[23]

• Amnon Shashua, academic page on Hebrew University of Jerusalem website.
• Amnon Shashua, One of the top 10 successful people of 2014, according to Calcalist.