Yann André LeCun (born 8 July 1960) is a prominent French-American computer scientist recognized as one of the pioneers of deep learning and artificial intelligence. He is widely known for his groundbreaking work in computer vision, robotics, and image compression. Throughout his distinguished career, LeCun has held leadership positions in both academia and industry, most notably at New York University (NYU) and Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). In 2018, he was co-awarded the Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, for their conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that established deep neural networks as a fundamental component of modern computing. Born in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, in the suburbs of Paris, France, LeCun developed an early interest in science and electronics, which he often attributes to his father, an engineer. He pursued his higher education in France, earning a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the École Supérieure d'Ingénieurs en Électrotechnique et Électronique (ESIEE) in Paris in 1983. He subsequently obtained a PhD in computer science from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (now Sorbonne University) in 1987. During his doctoral studies, he developed an early form of the back-propagation learning algorithm, a foundational technique for training neural networks. LeCun's professional career began in earnest after he completed a postdoctoral research position under Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto in 1987. In 1988, he joined the Adaptive Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. During his tenure at Bell Labs, which lasted until 1996, LeCun made significant contributions to machine learning, including the development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which he utilized for handwriting and optical character recognition (OCR) systems used in bank checks. These networks became a cornerstone of modern computer vision. He also contributed to the "Optimal Brain Damage" regularization methods and the creation of the DjVu image compression technology. In 2003, LeCun joined the faculty of New York University, where he became a Silver Professor of Computer Science and Neural Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. At NYU, he continued his research into energy-based models for supervised and unsupervised learning, feature learning for object recognition, and mobile robotics. He served as the founding director of the NYU Center for Data Science from 2012 to 2014. In December 2013, LeCun joined Facebook (later Meta Platforms) as the first director of its newly formed AI Research (FAIR) division in New York City. As Chief AI Scientist at Meta, he led long-term research efforts, advocating for open-source AI and developing self-supervised learning architectures. In late 2025, reports confirmed that LeCun was transitioning from his long-term role at Meta to focus on his own venture, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs), which aims to pursue research into world-model architectures and human-like artificial intelligence. LeCun’s scientific legacy is defined by his persistence in championing neural network research during periods when the field was largely unfashionable. His contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the 2018 Turing Award, membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the French Académie des Sciences. He has also received the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour, the Princess of Asturias Award, and several honorary doctorates. As a public figure, LeCun is a frequent commentator on the trajectory of artificial intelligence, often emphasizing the potential of "world models" to advance machine intelligence beyond current large language model capabilities.