Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun is one of the most influential voices in artificial intelligence and deep learning. As Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at New York University, he bridges the worlds of cutting-edge research and real-world innovation. Yann is celebrated as one of the ‘Godfathers of AI’, having spent more than three decades shaping the technologies that underpin modern computing. His virtual keynote sessions captivate audiences around the world, offering sharp insight into the systems driving AI’s next evolution and the ethical, social, and economic implications that follow.

Yann was born near Paris and earned an Engineering Diploma from ESIEE Paris before completing his PhD in Computer Science at Université Pierre et Marie Curie. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto with Geoffrey Hinton, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988. There, he pioneered convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which transformed the fields of computer vision and machine learning. Yann’s research was instrumental in developing optical character recognition systems that became widely adopted across the banking industry. In 1996, he became Head of the Image Processing Research Department at AT&T Labs Research, where he helped create DjVu, an image compression technology still used for digital archiving.

In 2003, Yann joined New York University, where he continues to hold multiple professorial roles across computer science, neural science, data science, and electrical engineering. He founded the NYU Center for Data Science and co-founded the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), now one of the world’s leading AI research gatherings. Alongside his academic work, Yann joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2013 as Director of AI Research, before being appointed Vice President and Chief AI Scientist in 2018. At Meta, he leads the company’s long-term AI research strategy, overseeing the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) division, which focuses on self-supervised learning, world modelling, and open-source AI systems.

A decorated scientist, Yann has received the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, and the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the French Académie des Sciences, and the US National Academy of Engineering. As a virtual keynote speaker, Yann inspires global audiences with his ability to explain complex ideas with clarity and conviction. Whether addressing the future of deep learning, the potential of open-source AI, or how machines can learn like humans, he challenges organisations to think bigger about the role of intelligence in technology and society.