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Tübingen, Germany — Michael J. Black, one of the world’s leading scientists in computer vision and Director of the Perceiving Systems Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) – one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to engineers.
Election to the NAE recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, business, and academia. With this honor, Black joins the ranks of an elite group of innovators including Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Geoffrey Hinton, or Steve Wozniak, to name a few.
The NAE cited Black’s pioneering contributions to computer vision and human modeling, particularly his groundbreaking work on optical flow as well as on 3D human body modeling and tracking. His research has shaped how machines perceive and understand human movement, enabling computers to interpret human behavior from video at scale.
Black leads a multidisciplinary team combining computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning to build digital humans that move and behave like real people. Among his team’s most influential contributions are the widely adopted SMPL human body model and methods for estimating 3D humans from video – technologies now foundational across academia and industry. These innovations also led to the creation of two successful start-ups, Body Labs and Meshcapade.
“I am deeply honored to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering,” said Black. “This recognition reflects the work of my outstanding colleagues, students, and collaborators over the years, and our shared passion for pairing foundational research with technology development that benefits society.”
Founded in 1964, the National Academy of Engineering is a private, independent, nonprofit institution that provides engineering leadership in service to the nation. The NAE has more than 2,800 peer-elected national and international members from business, academia, and government.
Black received his B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 1985, his M.S. from Stanford University in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1992. After post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto, he worked at Xerox PARC as a member of research staff and area manager. From 2000 to 2010 he was on the faculty of Brown University in the Department of Computer Science (Assoc. Prof. 2000-2004, Prof. 2004-2010).
Black is one of the founding Directors of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems where he leads the Perceiving Systems Department and is an honorary professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Tübingen. He also initiated Cyber Valley, Europe’s largest AI ecosystem, and has served as its speaker since its inception in 2016. From 2017 to 2021, he was a Distinguished Amazon Scholar.
Black is a recipient of numerous awards, including the 2023 PAMI Distinguished Researcher Award. His work on optical flow received the IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Paper Award (1991), Honorable Mention for the Marr Prize (1999 and 2005), the Helmholtz Prize for work that has stood the test of time (2013), the Longuet-Higgins Prize (2020), and the Koenderink Prize for Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision (2022). His work on 3D human motion and shape estimation has been recognized with the Koenderink Prize for Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision (2010), the ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Test-of-Time Award (2024 and 2025), and the Mark Everingham Prize (2025).
Michael J. Black is a member of the German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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