Carl Vondrick

Brief Bio

I am a professor in the computer science department at Columbia. My research studies computer vision, machine learning, and their applications.

Previously, I have been a research scientist at Google and a visiting researcher at Cruise. I completed my PhD at MIT in 2017 advised by Antonio Torralba and my BS at UC Irvine in 2011, where I got my start working with Deva Ramanan.

I received the 2024 PAMI Young Researcher Award and the 2021 NSF CAREER Award. I am also the Senior Program Chair for ICLR 2025, and General Chair for ICLR 2026.

Research

By training machines to observe and interact with their surroundings, our research aims to create robust and versatile models for perception. Our lab often investigates visual models that capitalize on large amounts of unlabeled data and transfer across tasks and modalities. Other interests include scene dynamics, sound and language and beyond, interpretable models, and perception for robotics.

The lab recruits one or two PhD students each year. Prospective PhD students should apply to the PhD program. Due to the volume of email we receive, we unfortunately cannot respond to emails about applications.

PhD Students and Postdocs

Graduated PhD Students

Ruoshi Liu, Assistant Professor at UMD
PhD Thesis: Generative Computer Vision for Physical Intelligence (2025)

Basile Van Hoorick, Research Scientist at TRI
PhD Thesis: Spatial Reasoning in Dynamic Scenes (2024)

Didac Suris, Research Scientist at Meta
PhD Thesis: Multimodal Representations for Video (2024)

Chengzhi Mao, Research Scientist at Google
PhD Thesis: Robust Machine Learning by Integrating Context (2023)

Representative Papers

Our research creates perception systems with diverse skills, including spatial, physical, logical, and reasoning abilities, for flexibly analyzing visual data. Our multimodal approach provides versatile representations for tasks like 3D reconstruction, visual question answering, and robot manipulation, while offering inherent explainability and excellent zero-shot generalization. The below papers highlight key examples of these capabilities.

Machine perception is challenging because most knowledge about our world, such as physical commonsense, is not written down. Through large amounts of unlabeled video and interaction with the natural world, we create algorithms that learn perceptual skills without manual supervision.

We create interpretable machine learning methods for perception that allow people to audit decisions and reprogram representations. Unlike black-box neural networks, we develop methods that are explainable by construction while still offering excellent performance.

Central to our research is forming an integrative perspective on perception to build accurate and robust models. Our research exploits the natural synchronization between vision, sound, and other modalities to learn cross-modal representations for tasks like recognition, source localization, and artistic correspondence.

We create new representations for spatial awareness, allowing vision systems to reconstruct scenes in 3D and anticipate object dynamics in the future. We often tightly integrate geometry, physics, and generative models in order to equip 3D vision systems with intuitive, and sometimes un-intuitive, physical skills.

We develop multi-modal learning methods for robotics, integrating vision, sound, interaction, and other modalities together in order to learn representations for perception, design, and action.

We leverage visual data to accelerate scientific discovery, developing methods that can identify patterns, make hypotheses, and generate insights across diverse scientific domains.

Our research creates visual representations that learn the human behavior continuum, capturing the goals underlying human action. We aim to create computer vision systems that can assist people at their activities, thereby enabling new opportunities for human-computer interaction.

We harness language to learn neuro-symbolic methods for computer vision, establishing methods that rapidly generalize to open world tasks while offering inherent explainability too.

The ubiquity of machine perception creates exciting possibilities for applications, but simultaneously exposes significant potential risks. Our research is exploring methods that prevent computer vision methods from solving potentially harmful problems.

Critical applications require systems that are trustworthy and reliable. Our research demonstrates that predictive models have intrinsic empirical and theoretical advantages for improving robustness and generalization.

2025

Teaching Humans Subtle Differences with DIFF-usion
Mia Chiquier, Orr Avrech, Yossi Gandelsman, Berthy Feng, Katherine Bouman, Carl Vondrick
arXiv 2025
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Generative Data Mining with Longtail-Guided Diffusion
David S. Hayden, Mao Ye, Timur Garipov, Gregory P. Meyer, Carl Vondrick, Zhao Chen, Yuning Chai, Eric Wolff, Siddhartha S. Srinivasa
ICML 2025
Paper BibTeX

Teaser for DiSciPLE: Learning Interpretable Programs for Scientific Visual Discovery

DiSciPLE: Learning Interpretable Programs for Scientific Visual Discovery
Utkarsh Mall, Cheng Perng Phoo, Mia Chiquier, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2025
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Self-Improving Autonomous Underwater Manipulation
Ruoshi Liu, Huy Ha, Mengxue Hou, Shuran Song, Carl Vondrick
ICRA 2025
Paper Project Page BibTeX

2024

Teaser for Differentiable Robot Rendering

Differentiable Robot Rendering
Ruoshi Liu, Alper Canberk, Shuran Song, Carl Vondrick
CoRL 2024 (Oral)
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Dreamitate: Real-World Visuomotor Policy Learning via Video Generation
Junbang Liang, Ruoshi Liu, Ege Ozguroglu, Sruthi Sudhakar, Achal Dave, Pavel Tokmakov, Shuran Song, Carl Vondrick
CoRL 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Teaser for Whiteboard-of-Thought: Thinking Step-by-Step Across Modalities

Whiteboard-of-Thought: Thinking Step-by-Step Across Modalities
Sachit Menon, Richard Zemel, Carl Vondrick
EMNLP 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

See It from My Perspective: Diagnosing the Western Cultural Bias of Large Vision-Language Models in Image Understanding
Amith Ananthram, Elias Stengel-Eskin, Carl Vondrick, Mohit Bansal, Kathleen McKeown
EMNLP 2024
Paper Code BibTeX

EraseDraw: Learning to Draw Step-by-Step via Erasing Objects from Images
Alper Canberk, Maksym Bondarenko, Ege Ozguroglu, Ruoshi Liu, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

How Video Meetings Change Your Expression
Sumit Sarin, Utkarsh Mall, Purva Tendulkar, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Controlling the World by Sleight of Hand
Sruthi Sudhakar, Ruoshi Liu, Basile Van Hoorick, Carl Vondrick, and Richard Zemel
ECCV 2024 (Oral)
Paper BibTeX

Generative Camera Dolly: Extreme Monocular Dynamic Novel View Synthesis
Basile Van Hoorick, Rundi Wu, Ege Ozguroglu, Kyle Sargent, Ruoshi Liu, Pavel Tokmakov, Achal Dave, Changxi Zheng, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2024 (Oral)
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Evolving Interpretable Visual Classifiers with Large Language Models
Mia Chiquier, Utkarsh Mall, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Teaser for SelfIE: Self-Interpretation of Large Language Model Embeddings

SelfIE: Self-Interpretation of Large Language Model Embeddings
Haozhe Chen, Carl Vondrick, Chengzhi Mao
ICML 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

PaperBot: Learning to Design Real-World Tools Using Paper
Ruoshi Liu, Junbang Liang, Sruthi Sudhakar, Huy Ha, Cheng Chi, Shuran Song, Carl Vondrick
arXiv 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

pix2gestalt: Amodal Segmentation by Synthesizing Wholes
Ege Ozguroglu, Ruoshi Liu, Dídac Surís, Dian Chen, Achal Dave, Pavel Tokmakov, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Teaser for Raidar: geneRative AI Detection viA Rewriting

Raidar: geneRative AI Detection viA Rewriting
Chengzhi Mao, Carl Vondrick, Hao Wang, Junfeng Yang
ICLR 2024
Paper BibTeX

Interpreting and Controlling Vision Foundation Models via Text Explanations
Haozhe Chen, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick, Chengzhi Mao
ICLR 2024
Paper BibTeX

Sin3DM: Learning a Diffusion Model from a Single 3D Textured Shape
Rundi Wu, Ruoshi Liu, Carl Vondrick, Changxi Zheng
ICLR 2024
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Remote Sensing Vision-Language Foundation Models without Annotations via Ground Remote Alignment
Utkarsh Mall, Cheng Perng Phoo, Meilin Liu, Carl Vondrick, Bharath Hariharan, Kavita Bala
ICLR 2024
Paper BibTeX

2023

Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects
Matt Deitke, et al.
NeurIPS 2023
Paper BibTeX

ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoning
Dídac Surís, Sachit Menon, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2023 (Oral)
Paper Project Page Code BibTeX

Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object
Ruoshi Liu, Rundi Wu, Basile Van Hoorick, Pavel Tokmakov, Sergey Zakharov, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2023 (Oral)
Paper Project Page Code Demo BibTeX

Muscles in Action
Mia Chiquier, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

SurfsUp: Learning Fluid Simulation for Novel Surfaces
Arjun Mani, Ishaan Preetam Chandratreya, Elliot Creager, Carl Vondrick, Richard Zemel
ICCV 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Landscape Learning for Neural Network Inversion
Ruoshi Liu, Chengzhi Mao, Purva Tendulkar, Hao Wang, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2023
Paper Blog Post BibTeX

SHIFT3D: Synthesizing Hard Inputs For Tricking 3D Detectors
Hongge Chen, Zhao Chen, Greg Meyer, Dennis Park, Carl Vondrick, Ashish Shrivastava, Yuning Chai
ICCV 2023
Paper BibTeX

Robust Perception through Equivariance
Chengzhi Mao, Lingyu Zhang, Abhishek Joshi, Junfeng Yang, Hao Wang, Carl Vondrick
ICML 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Teaser for Humans as Light Bulbs: 3D Human Reconstruction from Thermal Reflection

Humans as Light Bulbs: 3D Human Reconstruction from Thermal Reflection
Ruoshi Liu, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

What You Can Reconstruct from a Shadow
Ruoshi Liu, Sachit Menon, Chengzhi Mao, Dennis Park, Simon Stent, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2023
Paper Blog Post BibTeX

Tracking through Containers and Occluders in the Wild
Basile Van Hoorick, Pavel Tokmakov, Simon Stent, Jie Li, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2023
Paper Project Page Datasets Code BibTeX

FLEX: Full-Body Grasping Without Full-Body Grasps
Purva Tendulkar, Dídac Surís, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Doubly Right Object Recognition: A Why Prompt for Visual Rationales
Chengzhi Mao, Revant Teotia, Amrutha Sundar, Sachit Menon, Junfeng Yang, Xin Wang, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2023
Paper BibTeX

Affective Faces for Goal-Driven Dyadic Communication
Scott Geng, Revant Teotia, Purva Tendulkar, Sachit Menon, Carl Vondrick
arXiv 2023
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Teaser for Visual Classification via Description from Large Language Models

Visual Classification via Description from Large Language Models
Sachit Menon, Carl Vondrick
ICLR 2023 (Oral)
Paper Project Page Code Demo BibTeX

Understanding Zero-Shot Adversarial Robustness for Large-Scale Models
Chengzhi Mao, Scott Geng, Junfeng Yang, Xin Wang, Carl Vondrick
ICLR 2023
Paper BibTeX

2022

Adversarially Robust Video Perception by Seeing Motion
Lingyu Zhang, Chengzhi Mao, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick
arXiv 2022
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Task Bias in Vision-Language Models
Sachit Menon, Ishaan Preetam Chandratreya, Carl Vondrick
arXiv 2022
Paper BibTeX

Teaser for Private Multiparty Perception for Navigation

Private Multiparty Perception for Navigation
Hui Lu, Mia Chiquier, Carl Vondrick
NeurIPS 2022
Paper Project Page Code BibTeX

Representing Spatial Trajectories as Distributions
Dídac Surís, Carl Vondrick
NeurIPS 2022
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Forget-me-not! Contrastive Critics for Mitigating Posterior Collapse
Sachit Menon, David Blei, Carl Vondrick
UAI 2022
Paper BibTeX

Revealing Occlusions with 4D Neural Fields
Basile Van Hoorick, Purva Tendulkar, Dídac Surís, Dennis Park, Simon Stent, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2022
Paper Project Page Talk BibTeX

Teaser for Globetrotter: Connecting Languages by Connecting Images

Globetrotter: Connecting Languages by Connecting Images
Dídac Surís, Dave Epstein, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2022 (Oral)
Paper Project Page Code BibTeX

Causal Transportability for Visual Recognition
Chengzhi Mao, Kevin Xia, James Wang, Hao Wang, Junfeng Yang, Elias Bareinboim, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2022
Paper BibTeX

It's Time for Artistic Correspondence in Music and Video
Dídac Surís, Carl Vondrick, Bryan Russell, Justin Salamon
CVPR 2022
Paper Project Page BibTeX

UnweaveNet: Unweaving Activity Stories
Will Price, Carl Vondrick, Dima Damen
CVPR 2022
Paper BibTeX

There is a Time and Place for Reasoning Beyond the Image
Xingyu Fu, Ben Zhou, Ishaan Preetam Chandratreya, Carl Vondrick, Dan Roth
ACL 2022 (Oral)
Paper Code + Data BibTeX

Real-Time Neural Voice Camouflage
Mia Chiquier, Chengzhi Mao, Carl Vondrick
ICLR 2022 (Oral)
Paper Project Page Science BibTeX

Discrete Representations Strengthen Vision Transformer Robustness
Chengzhi Mao, Lu Jiang, Mostafa Dehghani, Carl Vondrick, Rahul Sukthankar, Irfan Essa
ICLR 2022
Paper BibTeX

2021

Full-Body Visual Self-Modeling of Robot Morphologies
Boyuan Chen, Robert Kwiatkowski, Carl Vondrick, Hod Lipson
Science Robotics 2022
Paper Project Page Code BibTeX

The Boombox: Visual Reconstruction from Acoustic Vibrations
Boyuan Chen, Mia Chiquier, Hod Lipson, Carl Vondrick
CoRL 2021
Paper Project Page Video Overview BibTeX

Teaser for Adversarial Attacks are Reversible with Natural Supervision

Adversarial Attacks are Reversible with Natural Supervision
Chengzhi Mao, Mia Chiquier, Hao Wang, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2021
Paper Code BibTeX

Dissecting Image Crops
Basile Van Hoorick, Carl Vondrick
ICCV 2021
Paper Code BibTeX

Learning the Predictability of the Future
Dídac Surís, Ruoshi Liu, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2021
Paper Project Page Code Models Talk BibTeX

Generative Interventions for Causal Learning
Chengzhi Mao, Amogh Gupta, Augustine Cha, Hao Wang, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2021
Paper Code BibTeX

Learning Goals from Failure
Dave Epstein, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2021
Paper Project Page Data Code Talk BibTeX

Visual Behavior Modelling for Robotic Theory of Mind
Boyuan Chen, Carl Vondrick, Hod Lipson
Scientific Reports 2021
Paper Project Page BibTeX

2020

Listening to Sounds of Silence for Speech Denoising
Ruilin Xu, Rundi Wu, Yuko Ishiwaka, Carl Vondrick, Changxi Zheng
NeurIPS 2020
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Multitask Learning Strengthens Adversarial Robustness
Chengzhi Mao, Amogh Gupta, Vikram Nitin, Baishakhi Ray, Shuran Song, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2020
Paper BibTeX

We Have So Much In Common: Modeling Semantic Relational Set Abstractions in Videos
Alex Andonian, Camilo Fosco, Mathew Monfort, Allen Lee, Carl Vondrick, Rogerio Feris
ECCV 2020
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Learning to Learn Words from Visual Scenes
Dídac Surís, Dave Epstein, Heng Ji, Shih-Fu Chang, Carl Vondrick
ECCV 2020
Paper Project Page Code Talk BibTeX

Oops! Predicting Unintentional Action in Video
Dave Epstein, Boyuan Chen, Carl Vondrick
CVPR 2020
Paper Project Page Data Code Talk BibTeX

2019

Metric Learning for Adversarial Robustness
Chengzhi Mao, Ziyuan Zhong, Junfeng Yang, Carl Vondrick, Baishakhi Ray
NeurIPS 2019
Paper Code BibTeX

Teaser for VideoBERT: A Joint Model for Video and Language Representation Learning

VideoBERT: A Joint Model for Video and Language Representation Learning
Chen Sun, Austin Myers, Carl Vondrick, Kevin Murphy, Cordelia Schmid
ICCV 2019
Paper Blog BibTeX

Multi-level Multimodal Common Semantic Space for Image-Phrase Grounding
Hassan Akbari, Svebor Karaman, Surabhi Bhargava, Brian Chen, Carl Vondrick, Shih-Fu Chang
CVPR 2019
Paper Code BibTeX

Relational Action Forecasting
Chen Sun, Abhinav Shrivastava, Carl Vondrick, Rahul Sukthankar, Kevin Murphy, Cordelia Schmid
CVPR 2019
Paper BibTeX

Moments in Time Dataset: one million videos for event understanding
Mathew Monfort et al
PAMI 2019
Paper Project Page BibTeX

2018

Tracking Emerges by Colorizing Videos
Carl Vondrick, Abhinav Shrivastava, Alireza Fathi, Sergio Guadarrama, Kevin Murphy
ECCV 2018
Paper Blog BibTeX

The Sound of Pixels
Hang Zhao, Chuang Gan, Andrew Rouditchenko, Carl Vondrick, Josh McDermott, Antonio Torralba
ECCV 2018
Paper Project Page BibTeX

Actor-centric Relation Network
Chen Sun, Abhinav Shrivastava, Carl Vondrick, Kevin Murphy, Rahul Sukthankar, Cordelia Schmid
ECCV 2018
Paper BibTeX