Adrian Kaehler


Adrian Kaehler is an American scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and author. He is best known for his work on the OpenCV Computer Vision library, as well as two books on that library.

Early life

Adrian Kaehler was born in 1973. At the age of 14, he enrolled in UC Santa Cruz, studying mathematics, computer science, and Physics, graduating at 18 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics. He received his Ph.D at Columbia University in 1998 under professor Norman Christ for his work in lattice gauge theory and on the QCDSP supercomputer project.

QCDSP supercomputer

During the time from 1994 through 1998, Dr. Kaehler worked on the QCDSP supercomputer project. This was one of the first Teraflop scale supercomputers ever built. For this, Kaehler, along with Norman Christ, Robert Mawhinney, and Pavlos Vranas were awarded the Gordon Bell Prize in 1998.

2005 DARPA Grand Challenge

In the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, Kaehler was on Stanford's winning team with Sebastian Thrun, Mike Montemerolo, Gary Bradski and others. Kaehler designed the computer vision system that contributed to winning the race. Since 2012, the winning vehicle, called "Stanley", has been on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

''Learning OpenCV''

Originally published in 2006, Kaehler's book Learning OpenCV serves as an introduction to the library and its use. The book continues to be heavily used by both professionals and students. An updated version of the book, which covers OpenCV 3, was published by O'Reilly Media in 2016.

Magic Leap

Kaehler was Vice President of Special Projects at Magic Leap, Inc., a startup company that raised over $1.4Bn in venture funding from 2014 to 2016. Kaehler left the company in 2016.

Notable publications

Kaehler has publications and patents in a variety of fields: