Sofien Bouaziz

Sofien Bouaziz is a highly experienced leader in the fields of research and engineering, currently serving as Senior Director of Research & Engineering at Meta since May 2021, where the focus is on advancing photorealistic avatars, real-time embodied AI agents, and multimodal generative video models within the XR People organization. Prior to Meta, Sofien held various roles at Google from May 2018 to April 2021, including Director of Research & Engineering and Senior Staff Research Scientist, leading a perception research team that integrated computer vision and machine learning for next-generation AR products. At Apple, from October 2015 to April 2018, significant contributions were made to real-time face tracking and 3D sensing technologies, including the development of Animoji & Memoji and Face ID. Sofien's entrepreneurial spirit is evident as a co-founder of faceshift AG, a startup responsible for pioneering markerless facial motion capture, which was later acquired by Apple. Educational qualifications include a PhD in Computer Science from EPFL, complemented by a Master’s and Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Electronics, and Embedded Systems from EPFL and ESIEE Paris.