Jeff Clune is an American computer scientist and researcher known for his contributions in artificial intelligence and deep learning. He completed a B.A. at the University of Michigan and received an M.A. and a PhD from Michigan State University, where he wrote his 2010 doctoral dissertation, "Evolving Artificial Neural Networks with Generative Encodings", advised by Charles Ofria and Hod Lipson.[1]
He currently works as a Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Canada, as a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute, and as a researcher at Google Deepmind. He previously worked at OpenAI, Uber, and the University of Wyoming.[2,3,4,5] His personal website is hosted at http://jeffclune.com/.
Education
Jeff Clune earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from University of Michigan. After completing graduation, Clune was in California and in the midst of the dot-com bubble he read an article on the work of Hod Lipson about the stimulation of robots at Cornell University. This sparked his interest towards the field of artificial intelligence, for which he pursued a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy and his PhD in computer science from Michigan State University in 2010.[1]
Research
After completing his PhD, Clune went for postdoctoral research at Cornell University under Hod Lipson, where they collaborated on several research projects together. One of those was their work to improve the results of evolutionary algorithms for designing elegant and natural robotic bodies, published in 2013 and winning the SIGEVO Impact Award.[7,8] His contributions are mostly centered around the field of robotics and deep learning within the broader spectrum of artificial intelligence.[6] As of early 2026, Clune is a well-cited AI researcher with an H-index number of 61 and more than 43,000 citations.
Recognition
On 2 July 2019, Jeff Clune received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers while serving as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Wyoming.[9] Prior to this, he was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2015.[10]