Zhangzhang (ZZ) Si is a co-founder of KUNGFU.AI, an AI development, implementation and consulting firm in Austin, Texas, where he is distinguished machine learning engineer. A computer vision specialist with a PhD in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, he is known for research on generative hierarchical models for object recognition, including a paper that won a Marr Prize honorable mention.
From Tsinghua and UCLA to Apple and Google
He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, before his doctorate at UCLA in Los Angeles, California, finished in 2011, and has published at ICCV, CVPR and PAMI (KUNGFU.AI). He then built algorithmic ad targeting at Apple, search ranking at Google, product search and matching at Impossible Ventures, generative models at Vicarious AI and deep learning for image understanding and a chatbot at HomeAway, part of Expedia. He joined KUNGFU.AI in August 2018 as principal machine learning engineer to lead its engineering team, completing the co-founder group with Stephen Straus, Steve Meier and Ron Green.