Timo Aila ![](/sites/default/files/person/timoweb2.jpg) Timo Aila joined NVIDIA Research in 2007 from Helsinki University of Technology, where he led the computer graphics research group. His expertise ranges from real-time rendering in computer games to to high-quality image synthesis, with contributions to the PantaRay rendering system used in Avatar, Tintin, and Hobbit. He also gained expertise in mobile graphics as the chief scientist of Hybrid Graphics, which was acquired by NVIDIA in 2006. Timo is currently working on machine learning, with a special focus on generative models such as StyleGAN. Previously he had a central role in NVIDIA's research efforts on ray tracing, including the design of the RTX hardware units. Research Area(s) [Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ](/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence) [Computer Graphics](/research-area/computer-graphics) [Computer Vision](/research-area/computer-vision) [Generative AI](/research-area/generative-ai) Main Field of Interest [Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ](/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence) Google Scholar ### Publications ### 2022 [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](/index.php/publication/2022-11_elucidating-design-space-diffusion-based-generative-models) [Tero Karras](/index.php/person/tero-karras), [Miika Aittala](/index.php/person/miika-aittala), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine) [NeurIPS 2022 (oral)](https://nips.cc/Conferences/2022) NeurIPS Outstanding Paper ### 2021 [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](/publication/2021-12_alias-free-generative-adversarial-networks) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Miika Aittala](/person/miika-aittala), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Erik Härkönen, [Janne Hellsten](/person/janne-hellsten), Jaakko Lehtinen, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [NeurIPS 2021](https://nips.cc/Conferences/2021) ### 2020 [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](/publication/2020-12_training-generative-adversarial-networks-limited-data) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Miika Aittala](/person/miika-aittala), [Janne Hellsten](/person/janne-hellsten), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [NeurIPS 2020](https://nips.cc/Conferences/2020) [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](/index.php/publication/2020-11_modular-primitives-high-performance-differentiable-rendering) [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [Janne Hellsten](/index.php/person/janne-hellsten), [Tero Karras](/index.php/person/tero-karras), Yeongho Seol, [Jaakko Lehtinen](/index.php/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [ACM Transactions on Graphics 39(6) (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia 2020)](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3414685.3417861) [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](/publication/2020-06_analyzing-and-improving-image-quality-stylegan) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Miika Aittala](/person/miika-aittala), [Janne Hellsten](/person/janne-hellsten), Jaakko Lehtinen, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [CVPR 2020](http://cvpr2020.thecvf.com/) ### 2019 [High-Quality Self-Supervised Deep Image Denoising](/publication/2019-12_high-quality-self-supervised-deep-image-denoising) [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), Jaakko Lehtinen, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) NeurIPS 2019 [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](/publication/2019-12_improved-precision-and-recall-metric-assessing-generative-models) Tuomas Kynkäänniemi, [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Jaakko Lehtinen, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) NeurIPS 2019 [Few-Shot Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](/publication/2019-10_few-shot-unsupervised-image-image-translation) [Ming-Yu Liu](/person/ming-yu-liu), Xun Huang, Arun Mallya, [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Jan Kautz](/person/jan-kautz) [ICCV](http://iccv2019.thecvf.com/) [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](/index.php/publication/2019-06_style-based-generator-architecture-generative-adversarial-networks) [Tero Karras](/index.php/person/tero-karras), [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [IEEE CVPR 2019](http://cvpr2019.thecvf.com/) ### 2018 [Noise2Noise: Learning Image Restoration without Clean Data](/index.php/publication/2018-07_noise2noise-learning-image-restoration-without-clean-data) Jaakko Lehtinen, [Jacob Munkberg](/index.php/person/jacob-munkberg), [Jon Hasselgren](/index.php/person/jon-hasselgren), [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [Tero Karras](/index.php/person/tero-karras), Miika Aittala, [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [Proc. ICML 2018](https://icml.cc/) [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](/publication/2018-04_progressive-growing-gans-improved-quality-stability-and-variation) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Jaakko Lehtinen [ICLR 2018](https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2018) ### 2017 [Audio-Driven Facial Animation by Joint End-to-End Learning of Pose and Emotion](/publication/2017-07_audio-driven-facial-animation-joint-end-end-learning-pose-and-emotion) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Antti Herva, Jaakko Lehtinen [SIGGRAPH 2017](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3072959&picked=prox) [Production-Level Facial Performance Capture Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](/publication/2017-07_production-level-facial-performance-capture-using-deep-convolutional-neural) [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), Antti Herva, Shunsuke Saito, Ronald Yu, Hao Li, Jaakko Lehtinen [Symposium on Computer Animation 2017](http://sca17.cs.columbia.edu/index.html) [Interactive Reconstruction of Monte Carlo Image Sequences using a Recurrent Denoising Autoencoder](/index.php/publication/2017-07_interactive-reconstruction-monte-carlo-image-sequences-using-recurrent) Chakravarty R. Alla Chaitanya, Anton Kaplanyan, Christoph Schied, Marco Salvi, [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn), Derek Nowrouzezahrai, [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [SIGGRAPH 2017](http://s2017.siggraph.org/) [Reconstructing Intensity Images from Binary Spatial Gradient Cameras](/publication/2017-07_reconstructing-intensity-images-binary-spatial-gradient-cameras) Suren Jayasuriya, Orazio Gallo, [Jinwei Gu](/person/jinwei-gu), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Jan Kautz](/person/jan-kautz) [IEEE Workshop on Embedded Vision (CVPR)](http://cvisioncentral.com/promotion/evw2017/) [Pruning Convolutional Neural Networks for Resource Efficient Inference](/publication/2017-04_pruning-convolutional-neural-networks-resource-efficient-inference) [Pavlo Molchanov](/person/pavlo-molchanov), [Stephen Tyree](/person/stephen-tyree), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Jan Kautz](/person/jan-kautz) [International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2017)](https://openreview.net/forum?id=SJGCiw5gl¬eId=SJGCiw5gl) ### 2016 [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](/index.php/publication/2016-10_temporal-ensembling-semi-supervised-learning) [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [ICLR 2017](http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2017:main) [Reflectance Modeling by Neural Texture Synthesis](/publication/2016-07_reflectance-modeling-neural-texture-synthesis) Miika Aittala, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen) [ACM Transactions on Graphics 35(4) (proc. SIGGRAPH 2016)](http://dl.acm.org/sig.cfm?id=SP932) ### 2013 [On Quality Metrics of Bounding Volume Hierarchies](/publication/2013-09_quality-metrics-bounding-volume-hierarchies) [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine) [Proc. High-Performance Graphics](http://highperformancegraphics.org) [Fast Parallel Construction of High-Quality Bounding Volume Hierarchies](/publication/2013-07_fast-parallel-construction-high-quality-bounding-volume-hierarchies) [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [High Performance Graphics 2013](http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/) [Gradient-Domain Metropolis Light Transport](/publication/2013-07_gradient-domain-metropolis-light-transport) [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Miika Aittala, Frédo Durand, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2013)](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2461912.2461943) [Megakernels Considered Harmful: Wavefront Path Tracing on GPUs](/index.php/publication/2013-07_megakernels-considered-harmful-wavefront-path-tracing-gpus) [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [Tero Karras](/index.php/person/tero-karras), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [High-Performance Graphics 2013](http://highperformancegraphics.org/) ### 2012 [Reconstructing the Indirect Light Field for Global Illumination](/publication/2012-08_reconstructing-indirect-light-field-global-illumination) [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Frédo Durand [ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2012)](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2185520.2185547) [Understanding the Efficiency of Ray Traversal on GPUs - Kepler and Fermi Addendum](/publication/2012-06_understanding-efficiency-ray-traversal-gpus-kepler-and-fermi-addendum) [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras) [NVIDIA Technical Report NVR-2012-002](http://research.nvidia.com/publication/understanding-efficiency-ray-traversal-gpus-kepler-and-fermi-addendum) ### 2011 [Temporal Light Field Reconstruction for Rendering Distribution Effects](/index.php/publication/2011-08_temporal-light-field-reconstruction-rendering-distribution-effects) [Jaakko Lehtinen](/index.php/person/jaakko-lehtinen), [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila), Jiawen Chen, [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), Frédo Durand [ACM Transactions in Graphics 30(4) (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2011)](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1964950) [Clipless Dual-Space Bounds for Faster Stochastic Rasterization](/publication/2011-08_clipless-dual-space-bounds-faster-stochastic-rasterization) [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras), [Jaakko Lehtinen](/person/jaakko-lehtinen) [ACM Transactions in Graphics 30(4) (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2011)](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1965001) [A Local Image Reconstruction Algorithm for Stochastic Rendering](/index.php/publication/2011-02_local-image-reconstruction-algorithm-stochastic-rendering) Peter Shirley, [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila), Jonathan Cohen, Eric Enderton, [Samuli Laine](/index.php/person/samuli-laine), [David Luebke](/index.php/person/david-luebke), Morgan McGuire [i3D](http://graphics.cs.umass.edu/i3d2011/) ### 2010 [Architecture Considerations for Tracing Incoherent Rays](/publication/2010-06_architecture-considerations-tracing-incoherent-rays) [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Tero Karras](/person/tero-karras) [Proc. High-Performance Graphics 2010](http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/) ### 2009 [Understanding the Efficiency of Ray Traversal on GPUs](/publication/2009-08_understanding-efficiency-ray-traversal-gpus) [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine) [Proc. High-Performance Graphics](http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/) ### 2008 [A Meshless Hierarchical Representation for Light Transport](/publication/2008-08_meshless-hierarchical-representation-light-transport) Jaakko Lehtinen, Matthias Zwicker, Emmanuel Turquin, Janne Kontkanen, François Sillion, Fredo Durand, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)](http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/) ### 2007 [A Hardware Architecture for Surface Splatting](/publication/2007-08_hardware-architecture-surface-splatting) Tim Weyrich, Simon Heinzle, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila), Daniel B. Fasnacht, Stephan Oetiker, Mario Botsch, Cyril Flaig, Simon Mall, Kaspar Rohrer, Norbert Felber, Hubert Kaeslin, Markus Gross [ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)](http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/) [Incremental Instant Radiosity for Real-Time Indirect Illumination](/publication/2007-06_incremental-instant-radiosity-real-time-indirect-illumination) [Samuli Laine](/person/samuli-laine), Hannu Saransaari, Janne Kontkanen, Jaakko Lehtinen, [Timo Aila](/person/timo-aila) [Eurographics Symposium on Rendering](http://www.inrialpes.fr/1187685533478/1/fiche___actualite/)