Michael J. Black is an influential figure in computer science, focusing on computer vision, machine learning, and graphics.

As a director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and an Honorary Professor at the University of Tübingen, Black's renowned for seminal work in optical flow, receiving top honors like the Koenderink, Helmholtz, and Longuet-Higgins prizes.

His statistical approaches have refined motion analysis, contributing to robust statistics in vision and the popular SMPL 3D body model.

A pioneer in neural decoding, Black's also contributed significantly to neural prosthetics with the BrainGate technology.

His entrepreneurial spirit led to founding Body Labs, later acquired by Amazon.

In 2020, he was elected as member of the European Academy of Engineering.