Profile | ‘Godmother of AI’, shy Chinese-American pioneer Fei-Fei Li seeks science chance for all
- Talented young immigrant from China worked her way out of poverty to become Stanford University professor and influential AI scientist
Chinese-American computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, who is widely hailed as the “Godmother of AI”, worked hard to go from poor immigrant girl to science leader and champion of gender equality and racial diversity.
The 48-year-old is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
She has also served as a vice-president at Google and chief scientist at Google Cloud.
Her main research areas are machine learning, computer vision and cognitive computational neuroscience.
Born in Beijing in 1976, Li grew up in Sichuan province, southwestern China, living a happy childhood as part of a prosperous family.
Her father, Li Shun, worked in the computer department of a chemical plant, and her mother, Kuang Ying, was a secondary school teacher.
