Lucas Theis

Lucas Theis is a senior research scientist at Google, specializing in machine learning and compression using neural networks. His career has been marked by significant contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and computer vision.

Professional Experience

Theis currently works at Google, where he has been employed since January 2020. Prior to joining Google, he held several notable positions:

• Senior Machine Learning Researcher at Twitter (June 2016 - July 2019)
• Machine Learning Researcher at Magic Pony Technology (January 2016 - June 2016)
• Intern at Adobe (July 2014 - October 2014)
• Intern at The Johns Hopkins University (August 2009 - December 2009)

Education and Research

Theis received his PhD in Neural Information Processing from the University of Tübingen, where he was part of the International Max Planck Research School. His doctoral thesis was titled "Advances in Probabilistic Modeling of Natural Images," completed under the supervision of Matthias Bethge.12

Research Interests

His research interests are broad and include:

• Compression using neural networks
• Probabilistic machine learning
• Applications of information theory
• Statistical machine learning
• Generative modeling
• Deep learning

Notable Achievements

Theis has made significant contributions to the field of machine learning and computer vision. Some of his most cited works include:

• A paper on photo-realistic single image super-resolution using generative adversarial networks, which has been cited over 13,000 times.4
• Research on the evaluation of generative models, which has received more than 1,300 citations.4
• Work on lossy image compression with compressive autoencoders, cited over 1,200 times.4

Current Focus

Recently, Theis left Google DeepMind to launch his own startup. His work at Google focused on compression using neural networks and information theory. More broadly, he is interested in applying probabilistic machine learning, information theory, and statistics to challenging real-world problems.3

Lucas Theis is recognized as a distinguished researcher in the field of machine learning, with a particular focus on image processing, compression, and generative modeling. His work has significantly impacted the development of advanced AI techniques in these areas.