Amnon Shashua (Hebrew: אמנון שעשוע; born May 26, 1960) is an Israeli computer scientist, businessman and philanthropist. He is the Sachs Professor of Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the autonomous driving and driver-assistance technology company Mobileye, Co-founder of the artificial vision devices company OrCam, Founder and owner of ONE ZERO digital bank,[1] and chairman of artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs.[2]

Amnon Shashua
Amnon Shashua in 2018
Born (1960-05-26) May 26, 1960 (age 64)
Ramat Gan, Israel
NationalityIsraeli
Alma materTel-Aviv University (BS)

Weizmann Institute of Science (MS)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Known forCo-founding Mobileye and OrCam, advancements in AI and computer vision, philanthropy through the Shashua Family Foundation
AwardsKaye Innovation Award, Mifal HaPayis Landau Prize, Israeli Independence Day torch lighter, Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year, Dan David Prize, Mobility Innovator Award, The Automotive Hall of Fame, MotorTrend's Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator Award, Israel Prize
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Autonomous vehicles
InstitutionsHebrew University of Jerusalem
ThesisGeometry and photometry in 3D visual recognition (1993)
Doctoral advisorShimon Ullman

He was ranked 20th among the top wealthiest people in Israel, in 2024.[3]

Biography

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Amnon Shashua was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, to parents of Iraqi origin.[4] From a young age, he was fascinated with computers, a field that was in its early stages of development. He attended the ORT school in Givatayim for his early education in computer engineering.[4]

Amnon Shashua received his B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and his M.Sc. in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science[5] under the supervision of Shimon Ullman titled "Structural Saliency". His Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences was received from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in 1993; and his postdoctoral training under Tomaso Poggio at the center for biological and computational learning at MIT.

Career

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Academic

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Shashua has been on the computer science faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1996. In 1999 he was appointed as an associate professor and in 2003 received full professorship. From 2002 to 2005 he was the head of the engineering and computer science school at the Hebrew University.[6] Shashua has held the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University since 2007.[7]

Shashua's work includes early visual processing of saliency and grouping mechanisms, visual recognition and learning, image synthesis for animation and graphics, theory of computer vision in the areas of multiple-view geometry and multi-view tensors, multilinear algebraic systems in vision and learning, primal/dual optimization for approximate inference in MRF and Graphical models, and (since 2014) deep layered networks.[citation needed]

Business

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In 1995, Shashua founded CogniTens, which was sold to Hexagon AB in 2007.[8] In 1999, Shashua co-founded Mobileye, a company that develops systems-on-chip and computer vision algorithms for driving assistance systems, as well as autonomous driving technology.[9] On August 1, 2014, Mobileye launched its IPO on the NYSE which was the biggest Israeli IPO ever in the US raising approximately $1 billion at a market cap of $5.3 billion.[10]

In 2010, Shashua co-founded OrCam, an Israeli company which launched an assistive device for the visually impaired based on computer vision capabilities.[11]

In August 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for approximately $15.3 billion.[12][13] Shashua became a senior vice president at Intel, in addition to his title of President and CEO of Mobileye. In 2017, he also co-founded AI21 Labs.[14]

In October 2022, Mobileye went public again, trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange with Shashua as its CEO.[15]

Awards and recognition

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Shashua received his first prize in the 2004 Kaye Innovation award,[16] and the 2005 Mifal HaPayis Landau Prize for Science and Research in the area of Exact Sciences - Robotics.[17][18]

On Israeli Independence Day 2017, Shashua was chosen to light a torch at the national ceremony on Mt. Herzl.[19]

In 2019, Shashua was recognized by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology as the Electronic Imaging (EI) Scientist of the Year.[20][21]

In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize for his work in Artificial Intelligence.[22][23]

In 2022, he was awarded the Mobility Innovator Award and was inducted into The Automotive Hall of Fame.[24][25]

In 2023, he was awarded MotorTrend's first Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator (SDVI) Award.[26]

In 2023, he was awarded Israel Prize in the category lifetime achievement and exceptional contribution to the nation.[27]

In 2023, Prof. Shashua was appointed as an honorary professor at the Global Institute of Future Technology of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.[28]

Philanthropy

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Shashua, along with his family, has engaged in various philanthropic activities through the Shashua Family Foundation.[29]

Shashua's wife, Anat Ramaty Shashua, is president of the Foundation as well as chairwoman of the Orr Shalom organization for children and youth at risk.[29] Together, they also founded The Social Solidarity Foundation, a public benefit organization that assists in the development and growth of small businesses in Israel.[30] Their daughter, Inbar Shashua Bar-Nir, serves as chairwoman of the board.[31]

As of 2024, Shashua and his family have donated approximately $60 million to various charitable causes, focusing on promoting economic opportunities and supporting underrepresented populations in Israel. These populations include ultra-Orthodox communities, Israeli-Arabs, women in STEM fields, and peripheral communities.[32]

The Shashua Family Foundation has also funded scholarships at Tel Aviv University (TAU), his alma mater.[32]

In response to the economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the family established the WE-19 program, a $35 million fund designed to support approximately 2,000 small businesses affected by the pandemic.[32]

Selected publications

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  • Shalev-Shwartz, S; Shammah, S; Shashua, A (2016). "Safe, multi-agent, reinforcement learning for autonomous driving". arXiv:1610.03295 [cs.AI].
  • Shalev-Shwartz, S; Shammah, S; Shashua, A (2017). "On a formal model of safe and scalable self-driving cars". arXiv:1708.06374 [cs.RO].
  • Shashua, A; Riklin-Raviv, T (2001). "The quotient image: Class-based re-rendering and recognition with varying illuminations". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. 23 (2): 129–139. doi:10.1109/34.908962. PMC 4157835. PMID 25210210.
  • Ullman, S; Sha'ashua, A (1988). "Structural saliency: The detection of globally salient structures using a locally connected network". Proceedings of the IEEE.
  • Shashua, A; Hazan, T (2005). "Expectation maximization algorithms for conditional likelihoods". Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Machine learning - ICML '05. pp. 792–799. doi:10.1145/1102351.1102446. ISBN 1-59593-180-5.
  • Shashua, A; Gdalyahu, Y; Hayun, G (2004). "Pedestrian detection for driving assistance systems: Single-frame classification and system level performance". IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium: 1–6. doi:10.1109/IVS.2004.1336388.
  • Cohen, N; Sharir, O; Shashua, A (2015). "On the Expressive Power of Deep Learning: A Tensor Analysis". arXiv:1509.05009 [cs.NE].
  • Shashua, A; Levin, A (2002). "Ranking with large margin principle: Two approaches". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 15.
  • Zass, R; Shashua, A (2008). "Real-time global localization with a pre-built visual landmark database". 2008 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. pp. 1–8. doi:10.1109/CVPR.2008.4587711. ISBN 978-1-4244-2242-5.
  • Dagan, E; Mano, O; Stein, GP; Shashua, A (2004). "Forward collision warning with a single camera". IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium: 37–42. doi:10.1109/IVS.2004.1336388.
  • Wolf, L; Shashua, A (2003). "Learning over sets using kernel principal angles". Journal of Machine Learning Research. 4: 913–931.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "One Zero, Israel's first digital bank, secures full license, opens for business". Israel Hayom. January 11, 2022.
  2. ^ "Amnon Shashua's AI21 Labs raises $35m to reinvent writing". Globes. November 22, 2020.
  3. ^ "Wealthiest People in Israel (January 22, 2024)". CEOWORLD magazine. 23 January 2024.
  4. ^ a b Horovitz, Isaac (March 6, 2019). "Developing Driverless Cars in Jerusalem: High-tech taps into chareidim to make the future a reality". Ami Magazine.
  5. ^ "Weizmann Institute of Science".
  6. ^ "The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering". Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved 2014-12-11.
  7. ^ "Amnon Shashua - School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem - VideoLectures.NET".
  8. ^ Batya Feldman, "Hexagon buys Israeli 3D optics start-up CogniTens," Globes, September 4, 2007.
  9. ^ John Markoff, "At High Speed, on the Road to a Driverless Future," The New York Times, May 27, 2013.
  10. ^ Gabrielle Coppola and Leslie Picker, "Mobileye Raises $890 Million as Largest Israeli IPO in the U.S.," Bloomberg Businessweek, July 31, 2014.
  11. ^ John Markoff, "Device From Israeli Start-Up Gives the Visually Impaired a Way to Read," The New York Times, June 3, 2013.
  12. ^ "Intel acquisition of Mobileye". intelandmobileye.transactionannouncement.com. Archived from the original on 2020-10-27. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  13. ^ CNBC (2017-03-13). "Intel to buy Mobileye for $14 billion to $15 billion: Israeli media report". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  14. ^ "Amnon Shashua's AI21 Labs raises $35m to reinvent writing". Globes. 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2023-02-14.
  15. ^ "Mobileye Is Once Again a Public Company". mobileye.com. Retrieved 2022-10-26.
  16. ^ "Computer technology developed by Hebrew University professor can save lives". EurekAlert! (Press release). Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  17. ^ "האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים - אגף שיווק ותקשורת". www.huji.ac.il. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  18. ^ "קול קורא: פרס מפעל הפיס לאמנויות ולמדעים". www.pais.co.il. March 12, 2018.
  19. ^ "Meet this year's Independence Day torch lighters - Israel News - Jerusalem Post". www.jpost.com. May 2017. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  20. ^ "EI Scientist of the Year". www.imaging.org. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  21. ^ "Start Up Visionaries, VCs, Political Leaders and Cultural Icons: 17 Israelis Who Shaped the Decade". www.nocamels.com. January 1, 2020.
  22. ^ Dan David Prize 2020
  23. ^ "הזוכה הישראלי בפרס דן דוד: פרופ' שעשוע". Israel Hayom. February 2, 2020.
  24. ^ "פרופ' אמנון שעשוע זכה בפרס החדשנות בניידות לשנת 2022". Walla. April 3, 2022.
  25. ^ "Amnon Shashua wins 2022 Mobility Innovation Award". 4 April 2022.
  26. ^ "Announcing the Winners of the MotorTrend Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator Awards!". MotorTrend. 2023-01-08. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  27. ^ Batya Feldman. מייסד מובילאיי פרופ' אמנון שעשוע יקבל פרס ישראל על מפעל חיים. // Calcalist, March 22, 2023.
  28. ^ "Shanghai Jiaotong University Names Prof. Amnon Shashua Honorary Professor". October 2, 2023.
  29. ^ a b "About Shashua Family Foundation". Shashua Family Foundation. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  30. ^ "1Point 8 – Israeli high-tech industry's unique new initiative for investment in Israeli society". Startup Nation Central. 30 January 2022. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  31. ^ Jerusalem Post Staff (15 September 2023). "50 Influential Jews: Two Generations of Philanthropists - No. 12". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  32. ^ a b c "The Tel Aviv University Alumnus Super-Driving the Future". Tel Aviv University. 14 June 2023. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
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