John F. Canny is the Paul and Stacy Jacobs Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in Computer Science. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1987 and served as Chair of the Computer Science Division starting July 1, 2019. Canny received his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Theoretical Physics from the University of Adelaide in 1979, B.E. (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Adelaide in 1980, M.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1983, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1987. His doctoral dissertation, "The Complexity of Robot Motion Planning," earned the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1987, along with the FOCS Machtey Award that year.

Canny's research interests encompass artificial intelligence, control and intelligent systems, robotics, graphics, human-computer interaction, and security. He created the widely used Canny edge detector, detailed in his paper "A Computational Approach to Edge Detection" (1986), which received the AAAI Classic Paper Award in 2002. Key publications include "MultiView: Improving trust in group video conferencing through spatial faithfulness" (2007, Best Paper Prize at CHI), "Camera phone based motion sensing: Interaction techniques, applications and performance study" (2006), "Collaborative filtering with privacy" (2002), the edited book "Nonholonomic Motion Planning" (1993), and "Generalized characteristic polynomials" (1990). His work extends to projects such as the Berkeley Institute of Design, Livenotes for collaborative learning, Flexonics mechatronic devices fabricated via inkjet printing, Multiview display systems, ubicomp privacy tools, activity-based computing, Glaze for location-based services, and the Virtual Development Center. Canny has been honored with the ACM Fellowship (2020), Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (1988), NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989), and Okawa Research Grant (2003). He is affiliated with the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab, Berkeley Institute of Design, CITRIS People and Robots, Berkeley Deep Drive, and Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.

Professional Email: canny@berkeley.edu