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mid-level diffusion model researchers in the US

completed22 qualified1 runApr 27, 12:05 PMmid-level-diffusion-model-researchers-in-the-us
Parsed1 topics · Mid · Researcher · US
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    Qualified Candidates (22)

    AK

    Anil Kag

    medium hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Research Assistant @ Boston University

    Los Angeles, US

    • Senior Research Scientist and lead of Efficient Generative AI team at Snap Research, with multiple directly relevant diffusion model papers: Snap Video (CVPR 2024 Highlight, 102 citations), BitsFusion diffusion model quantization (36 citations), SF-V single-forward video generation, SnapGen mobile text-to-image (CVPR 2025 Highlight), and DenseDPO video diffusion preference optimization. h-index 13, based in Los Angeles, US
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — team lead role at Snap with active 2024-2026 publication output suggests engagement, no explicit job-seeking signals or LinkedIn changes in pipeline; within career transition window (~3-5 years in role) but leadership position adds friction
    BH

    Benran Hu

    medium hireability

    Research Engineer@AMD

    Previously: Intern @ Snap

    • Research Engineer at AMD GenAI team working on diffusion/generative models
    • Published 'Improving the Diffusability of Autoencoders' (ICML 2025) on latent space alignment for diffusion models, and 'Instella-T2I' T2I generation (2025)
    • MS CMU, no PhD
    • US-based (AMD GenAI)
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — ~8 months at AMD (new hire territory), but updated resume twice in March 2026, signaling active career exploration
    GQ

    Guocheng Gordon Qian

    medium hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Research Intern @ Snap

    San Francisco, US

    • Senior Research Scientist at Snap specializing in diffusion models for video, image, and 3D generation
    • Published Magic123 (432 citations, 2D+3D diffusion priors), VD3D (video diffusion transformers for camera control), SPAD (multi-view diffusers); shipped 3+ innovations to 900M+ Snapchat users
    • H-index 18, 6 patents, 20+ top-tier papers
    • Based in Palo Alto/SF, CA
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — moderately recent website activity (48 changes, cv_updates + new_papers May–Sept 2025, last 61 days ago), within typical transition window at Snap, no explicit job-seeking signal but active community presence (ICLR 2026 Area Chair)
    IS

    Ivan Skorokhodov

    medium hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Research Scientist @ Snap

    San Francisco, US

    • Directly works on diffusion models at Snap Research SF — ICML 2025 paper on 'Improving the Diffusability of Autoencoders', CVPR 2024 'Hierarchical Patch Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Video Generation', and 'Snap Video' (CVPR 2024)
    • Research Scientist post-PhD (KAUST, March 2023), h-index 21
    • US location confirmed (SF)
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — ~2-3 years at Snap, within typical transition window; pipeline shows position_update on Jan 15 2026 suggesting active career motion
    JC

    Junli Cao

    medium hireability

    Research Engineer@Snap

    Previously: Machine Learning Engineer @ Snap

    Los Angeles, US

    • Research Engineer at Snap Research in LA, actively building diffusion models: 4Real (video diffusion for 4D scene generation, 48 citations), BitsFusion (NeurIPS 2024 diffusion quantization, 32 citations), SF-V (single-forward video generation), Snapgen (production text-to-image for mobile). h-index 10 with 14 papers since 2023 — strong mid-level diffusion researcher
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — no explicit job-seeking signals; concurrent PhD student byline at UCLA may indicate upcoming transition window, but no LinkedIn/website activity detected
    MH

    Mengjian Hua

    medium hireability

    PhD student@Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University

    New York, US

    • PhD student in Eric Vanden-Eijnden's group at NYU Courant, working directly on stochastic interpolants and flow/diffusion processes — the mathematical foundation of modern diffusion models
    • Papers at NeurIPS 2023 (EBM training), ICML 2024 (stochastic interpolants for probabilistic forecasting, 31 citations), UAI 2025 (simulation-free diffusion process training), and ICLR 2025 (SOC with diffusion fine-tuning)
    • H-index 5
    • New York, US
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — ~5 years into PhD (first paper 2021), likely nearing graduation, but no pipeline signals (no LinkedIn changes, no website activity) and no explicit job market indicators found
    RS

    Raghav Singhal

    medium hireability

    PhD Student - Deep Learning@New York University

    Previously: PhD Machine Learning Engineer intern @ Rad AI

    New York, US

    • PhD student at NYU Courant working directly on diffusion models and generative modeling
    • Top paper: 'A General Framework for Inference-time Scaling and Steering of Diffusion Models' (56 citations, 2025); also authored 'Where to Diffuse, How to Diffuse, and How to Get Back' (24 citations)
    • H-index 5
    • Based in New York, US
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — LinkedIn profile went completely empty in Feb 2026 (possible graduation or privacy change), website inactive 8+ months; likely nearing PhD completion but unclear if already placed
    SG

    Sharath Girish

    medium hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Research Intern @ NVIDIA

    College Park, US

    • Research Scientist at Snap working directly on diffusion model autoencoders — published 'Improving the Diffusability of Autoencoders' (ICLR 2025, 19 citations) and 'H3AE: High Compression, High Speed, and High Quality AutoEncoder for Video Diffusion Models' (2025)
    • UMD PhD, h-index 9
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — ~16 months at Snap (joined ~Oct 2024), within early transition window but no explicit job-seeking signals detected
    YL

    Yanyu Li

    medium hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: PhD student @ Northeastern University

    • Prolific diffusion model researcher at Snap Research: SnapFusion (252 cites), HyperHuman, BitsFusion, LazyDiT, SnapGen, SnapGen-V — 10+ diffusion papers covering T2I, video generation, and efficient diffusion transformers for mobile. h_index 19, PhD from Northeastern
    • Research Scientist (mid-level) in the US
    • Hireability: MEDIUM — estimated 3-4 years at Snap (joined ~2022), within typical transition window; no explicit job-seeking signals, but Snap has undergone layoffs and still active publishing through 2026
    AK

    Abhishek Kumar

    low hireability

    Director of Engineering@Moveworks

    Previously: Principal Engineer @ Moveworks

    San Francisco, US

    • Core diffusion model researcher: co-authored Song et al. 2020 SDE paper (10K+ citations), DiffuseVAE (2022), RB-Modulation (2024), and Beyond First-Order Tweedie (2024)
    • H-index 40; seniority is above 'mid-level' (Principal Scientist level)
    • SF-based, US ✓
    • Hireability: LOW — pipeline signals show recent LinkedIn change from Moveworks Director of Engineering → Amazon Principal Scientist (scraped Jan 2026), likely only ~4 months into new role
    AS

    Aliaksandr Siarohin

    low hireability

    Staff Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Research Intern @ Google

    Santa Monica, US

    • Staff Research Scientist leading video generation at Snap (Santa Monica); built SnapVideo powering all Snap video apps; recent papers at NeurIPS/CVPR/ICCV 2025 directly on video diffusion models (DenseDPO, AC3D, VD3D)
    • H-index 28
    • Hireability: LOW — website diff shows just promoted from Research Scientist to Staff RS in Jan 2026; no open-to-work signals
    CW

    Chaoyang Wang

    low hireability

    Research Scientist@Snap

    Previously: Graduate Research Assistant @ Carnegie Mellon University

    Los Angeles, US

    • Direct diffusion model researcher — VD3D (video diffusion transformers for 3D camera control, ICLR 2025, 82 citations), 4Real (photorealistic 4D scene generation via video diffusion, 2024), Autodecoding Latent 3D Diffusion (NeurIPS 2023)
    • PhD from CMU Robotics Institute
    • Was Senior Research Scientist at Snap leading 4D reconstruction/generation
    • H-index 19, very active 2024-2025
    • US (LA)
    • Hireability: LOW — recently joined Tesla AI (building world models for robotics); likely still in early months of new role
    CL

    Chieh Hubert Lin

    low hireability

    Research Scientist@Stealth AI Startup

    Previously: Intern @ RealityLabs - Surreal @ Meta

    US

    • Strong diffusion model researcher — published 'Motion-Conditioned Diffusion Model for Controllable Video Synthesis' (89 citations), 'Taming Latent Diffusion Model for NeRF Inpainting' (ECCV 2024), and 'InstaInpaint' (2025)
    • PhD UC Merced (completed May 2025), Research Scientist at Stealth AI Startup
    • H-index 10
    • Location: DB says US but GitHub shows Taiwan (ambiguous)
    • Hireability: LOW — ~10 months into new role at stealth startup, still within new-hire window; no open-to-work signals
    GB

    Guha Balakrishnan

    low hireability

    Applied Scientist@Amazon

    Previously: Postdoctoral Researcher @ MIT

    Houston, US

    • Assistant Professor at Rice University (ECE) running an active diffusion model research group
    • Published ElasticDiffusion (training-free arbitrary size generation, 2024, 27 citations), DDPM improvements (2023), latent diffusion for CT reconstruction (2024), and diffusion priors for sparse reconstruction (2025)
    • Strong technical fit for diffusion model research query
    • Note: DB lists 'Applied Scientist at Amazon' but current role per website and OpenReview is tenure-track faculty
    • Hireability: LOW — tenure-track assistant professor with no mobility signals (no LinkedIn changes, no website activity detected in pipeline)
    HL

    Hsin-Ying Lee

    low hireability

    Researcher@stealth mode startup

    Previously: Research Scientist @ Snap

    • Strong diffusion model researcher focused on 3D/video generation
    • Key papers: Magic123 (433 citations, 3D generation using 2D+3D diffusion priors), Text2Tex (diffusion-based texture synthesis, 234 citations), VD3D (video diffusion transformers for 3D camera control, 2025), and 4Real-Video (4D video diffusion, 2025)
    • H-index 34; 7 papers at CVPR+ICLR 2025
    • PhD UC Merced 2020; was at Snap Research (Santa Monica, CA) 2020–2025
    • May be slightly senior for mid-level filter (5-6 yrs post-PhD)
    • Hireability: LOW — recently left Snap Research in 2025 and joined stealth mode startup; likely <1 year in new role
    JR

    Jongha Jon Ryu

    low hireability

    Postdoctoral Associate@MIT

    Previously: PhD student @ University of California, San Diego

    Boston, US

    • Postdoc at MIT EECS/RLE working directly on score-based generative models; authored 'Score-of-Mixture Training' (ICML-adjacent, 2025) on one-step diffusion distillation and 'Lifted Residual Score Estimation' (2024) on improving score estimation for diffusion models
    • US-based (Boston)
    • Hireability: LOW — has accepted tenure-track Assistant Professor position at Penn State starting Fall 2026, committed to academic career path
    JZ

    Jun-Yan Zhu

    low hireability

    Michael B. Donohue Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Robotics@Carnegie Mellon University

    Previously: Research Scientist @ Adobe

    Pittsburgh, US

    • Pioneer of image-to-image translation (CycleGAN, pix2pix — 30K citations each) with direct diffusion model work: SDEdit (2.4K citations), Custom Diffusion CVPR 2023 (1.2K citations), img2img-turbo (Stable Diffusion one-step)
    • CMU assistant professor in Pittsburgh
    • Seniority likely exceeds 'mid-level' — h-index 59, endowed named chair
    • Hireability: LOW — stable named-chair assistant professor at CMU, no pipeline signals of transition or job-seeking
    KA

    Kfir Aberman

    low hireability

    Founding Member, US office@Decart

    Previously: Principal Research Scientist @ Snap

    San Francisco, US

    • DreamBooth co-author (3,844 citations) and core text-to-image diffusion researcher — Null-Text Inversion, HyperDreamBooth, Prompt-to-Prompt, Sketch-guided T2I
    • PhD Tel Aviv, ex-Google Research, ex-Snap Research; based in SF
    • Likely more senior than 'mid-level' (h-index 30)
    • Hireability: LOW — joined Decart as Founding Member ~3 months ago, still settling in
    KW

    Kuan-Chieh Jackson Wang

    low hireability

    Building Grok@xAI

    Previously: Sr. Research Scientist @ Snap

    San Francisco, US

    • Strong diffusion model researcher with multiple top-venue publications on image generation personalization: MoA (SIGGRAPH Asia 2024), Interpreting Weight Space of Customized Diffusion Models (NeurIPS 2024), Omni-id (CVPR 2025), I Think Therefore I Diffuse (ICML 2025)
    • Was Sr
    • Research Scientist at Snap leading the generative personalization team; now MTS at xAI in SF building Grok
    • H-index 19
    • Hireability: LOW — joined xAI ~5 months ago (Nov/Dec 2025 per website/LinkedIn diffs), likely still settling in
    MA

    Michael Samuel Albergo

    low hireability

    Junior Fellow@Harvard Society of Fellows

    Previously: Research Intern @ NVIDIA

    New York, US

    • Co-inventor of stochastic interpolants framework (unifying flows and diffusions, 503 citations) and lead author on SiT (330 citations)
    • Junior Fellow at Harvard Society of Fellows + IAIFI Fellow at MIT, h-index 20
    • Directly on-topic for diffusion model research
    • Hireability: LOW — website explicitly states he starts as Harvard Applied Mathematics assistant professor in July 2026 (~2 months away), already recruiting grad students and postdocs for his new lab
    NB

    Nicholas Matthew Boffi

    low hireability

    assistant professor@Carnegie Mellon University

    Previously: Instructor @ New York University

    • Creator of the stochastic interpolants framework (558 citations) and SiT scalable flow/diffusion transformers (387 citations) — foundational theory behind modern flow matching and diffusion models
    • CMU assistant professor in Pittsburgh, US (h-index 15)
    • Actively maintaining jax-interpolants (definitive stochastic interpolant implementation) and flow-maps repo (NeurIPS 2025, 111 stars); recently published 'Flow Map Language Models'
    • Hireability: LOW — started CMU tenure-track ~Aug 2024 (<2 years in role), actively building lab and publishing; pipeline shows a June 2025 position_update worth noting but no open-to-work signals
    WM

    Willi Menapace

    low hireability

    Senior Research Scientist@Snap Inc.

    Previously: Research Scientist @ Snap Inc.

    Los Angeles, US

    • Core video diffusion model researcher at Snap Inc. — led Snap Video (CVPR 2024 Highlight), VD3D, 4Real, and Hierarchical Patch Diffusion
    • Research expertise literally listed as 'Diffusion Models, Video Diffusion Models, Video Generation'
    • PhD from University of Trento, H-index 19, based in LA, US
    • Hireability: LOW — ~13 months as Senior Research Scientist at Snap with no open-to-work signals, no LinkedIn/website activity changes; likely still settling into the role

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