Fei-Fei Li Wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

Fei-Fei Li, founding co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) and a pioneering pc scientist whose work reworked trendy synthetic intelligence, was named a laureate of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and obtained the award this week in London. 

The QEPrize, broadly considered a number one award for engineers and engineering, acknowledges daring, groundbreaking innovation that delivers international profit. This 12 months’s honor, offered by His Majesty King Charles III at St James’s Palace, highlights the engineering foundations of recent machine studying and is shared by Li alongside a cohort of luminaries who helped propel AI from laboratory curiosity to a know-how shaping day by day life. Awardees embody Stanford HAI Distinguished Fellows Geoffrey Hinton, Professor Emeritus on the University of Toronto, and Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal professor, in addition to Nvidia Chief Scientist and former Stanford University Professor Bill Dally, Princeton Emeritus Professor John Hopfield, Nvidia President and CEO Jensen Huang, and Meta AI Chief Scientist Yann LeCun.

Awardees, from left: Yoshua Bengio, Bill Dally, Yann LeCun, Jensen Huang, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li. Not pictured: John Hopfield.

“Receiving the Queen Elizabeth Prize is an extraordinary honor,” Li mentioned. “I share this recognition with my esteemed colleagues, and countless students and collaborators across the world who have contributed to advancing AI technology, and for the benefit of humanity.”

Li is well-known for ImageNet, the large-scale visible database and benchmark she created with college students and collaborators within the late 2000s. At a time when progress in pc imaginative and prescient had stalled, ImageNet offered hundreds of thousands of fastidiously labeled photos in a wealthy, hierarchical taxonomy—providing each a rigorous testbed and a shared basis for researchers. Its annual problem galvanized the sector, enabling breakthroughs in deep studying that quickly improved AI’s means to acknowledge objects, interpret scenes, and perceive visible context. The outcomes reshaped AI analysis and business alike, catalyzing advances in autonomous techniques, medical imaging, accessibility instruments, and numerous on a regular basis functions.

“ImageNet was about building a common language and a reliable yardstick for the community,” Li mentioned. “We wanted to create a resource that could accelerate scientific discovery. The most gratifying part has been seeing how the work opened doors to innovations that make a real difference in people’s lives.”

Beyond technical management, Li has been a central voice in steering AI towards human values. In 2019, she co-founded Stanford HAI to focus analysis, schooling, and coverage on AI that’s accountable, inclusive, and aligned with societal wants. Under her steerage, HAI has helped form nationwide and worldwide dialogue on AI security, governance, and fairness, whereas fostering interdisciplinary collaborations throughout drugs, schooling, local weather science, regulation, and the humanities.

“Technology does not exist in a vacuum,” Li famous. “Human-centered AI is about bringing multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder perspectives to the table—engineers, social scientists, ethicists, communities—so we can build systems that are trustworthy and supportive of human flourishing.”

Li additionally continues to push the frontier from the startup world. Her new enterprise, World Labs, is a spatial intelligence firm launched to translate cutting-edge AI analysis into platforms and instruments designed for real-world affect.

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering champions engineering excellence and evokes future generations to contemplate engineering careers. Previous recipients embody the architects of the Internet and World Wide Web (Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin, Marc Andreessen, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 2013), innovators behind controlled-release drug supply (Robert Langer, 2015), the GPS innovators (Bradford Parkinson, James Spilker Jr, Hugo Fruehauf, Richard Schwartz, 2019), the developer of the world’s strongest magnet (Masato Sagawa, 2022), and leaders in trendy wind energy (Andrew Garrad and Henrik Stiesdal, 2024).

His Majesty King Charles III presents Fei-Fei Li with the QEPrize.

By recognizing trendy machine studying in 2025, the QEPrize underscores AI’s profound and multifaceted affect—on well being care, schooling, local weather resilience, accessibility, and financial productiveness—and the engineering achievements that made it potential: scalable algorithms, highly effective computing {hardware}, strong datasets and benchmarks, and open collaboration throughout disciplines and continents.

“We’re at a pivotal moment,” Li mentioned. “The next chapter of AI will depend on our ability to align innovation with human needs and values. I’m deeply grateful for this recognition, and I hope it inspires young people—especially those who don’t yet see themselves in technology—to join us in building AI that serves everyone.”