Haithem Turki

I am a senior research scientist at NVIDIA in the Spatial Intelligence Lab working with Zan Gojcic and Sanja Fidler. My research focuses on reconstructing, simulating, and generating 3D worlds, with a particular interest in the intersection of reconstruction and generative modeling: using generative priors to improve 3D reconstruction, and using reconstruction to ground generative models in the physical world. Recent work spans scalable neural scene reconstruction, real-time sensor simulation, and 3D content generation.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University where I was advised by Deva Ramanan. During my PhD, I collaborated with Argo AI and Reality Labs Research where I worked with Christian Richardt and Michael Zollhoefer. Before my PhD, I spent seven years at Palantir Technologies in leadership roles across business and product development. I received my BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University where I worked with Alex Aiken and Daphne Koller.

Email  /  Google Scholar  /  Twitter  /  GitHub  /  Pro Bono

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Publications

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ArtiFixer: Enhancing and Extending 3D Reconstruction with Auto-Regressive Diffusion Models


Riccardo de Lutio*, Tobias Fischer, Yen-Yu Chang, Yuxuan Zhang, Jay Zhangjie Wu, Xuanchi Ren, Tianchang Shen, Katarina Tothova, Zan Gojcic, Haithem Turki*
SIGGRAPH 2026
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DiffusionHarmonizer: Bridging Neural Reconstruction and Photorealistic Simulation with Online Diffusion Enhancer


Yuxuan Zhang*, Katarina Tothova*, Zian Wang, Kangxue Yin, Haithem Turki, Riccardo de Lutio, Yen-Yu Chang, Or Litany, Sanja Fidler, Zan Gojcic
CVPR 2026
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SimULi: Real-Time LiDAR and Camera Simulation with Unscented Transforms


Haithem Turki*, Qi Wu*, Xin Kang, Janick Martinez Esturo, Shengyu Huang, Ruilong Li, Zan Gojcic, Riccardo de Lutio
ICLR 2026
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Lyra: Generative 3D Scene Reconstruction via Video Diffusion Model Self-Distillation


Sherwin Bahmani, Tianchang Shen, Jiawei Ren, Jiahui Huang, Yifeng Jiang, Haithem Turki, Andrea Tagliasacchi, David B. Lindell, Zan Gojcic, Sanja Fidler, Huan Ling, Jun Gao*, Xuanchi Ren*
ICLR 2026
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Difix3D+: Improving 3D Reconstructions with Single-Step Diffusion Models


Jay Zhangjie Wu*, Yuxuan Zhang*, Haithem Turki, Xuanchi Ren, Jun Gao, Mike Zheng Shou, Sanja Fidler, Zan Gojcic†, Huan Ling†
CVPR 2025 (Best Paper Award Candidate)
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HybridNeRF: Efficient Neural Rendering via Adaptive Volumetric Surfaces


Haithem Turki, Vasu Agrawal, Samuel Rota Bulò, Lorenzo Porzi, Peter Kontschieder, Deva Ramanan, Michael Zollhöfer, Christian Richardt
CVPR 2024 (Highlight)
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SpecNeRF: Gaussian Directional Encoding for Specular Reflections


Li Ma, Vasu Agrawal, Haithem Turki, Changil Kim, Chen Gao, Pedro V. Sander, Michael Zollhöfer, Christian Richardt
CVPR 2024 (Highlight)
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PyNeRF: Pyramidal Neural Radiance Fields


Haithem Turki, Michael Zollhöfer, Christian Richardt, Deva Ramanan
NeurIPS 2023
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Low-Bandwidth Self-Improving Transmission of Rare Training Data


Shilpa George, Haithem Turki, Ziqiang Feng, Deva Ramanan, Padmanabhan Pillai, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
MobiCom 2023
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SUDS: Scalable Urban Dynamic Scenes


Haithem Turki, Jason Y. Zhang, Francesco Ferroni, Deva Ramanan
CVPR 2023
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Accelerating Silent Witness Storage


Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Ziqiang Feng, Shilpa George, Jan Harkes, Roger Iyengar, Haithem Turki, Padmanabhan Pillai
IEEE Micro, November 2022
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Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs


Haithem Turki, Deva Ramanan, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
CVPR 2022
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OpenRTiST: End-to-End Benchmarking for Edge Computing


Shilpa George, Thomas Eiszler, Roger Iyengar, Haithem Turki, Ziqiang Feng, Junjue Wang, Padmanabhan Pillai, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
IEEE Pervasive Computing, October 2020
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Edge Computing for Legacy Applications


Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Thomas Eiszler, Jan Harkes, Haithem Turki, Ziqiang Feng
IEEE Pervasive Computing, October 2020
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Parameter Estimation and Energy Minimization for Region-Based Semantic Segmentation


M. Pawan Kumar, Haithem Turki, Dan Preston and Daphne Koller
TPAMI 2015
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Learning Specific-Class Segmentation from Diverse Data


M. Pawan Kumar, Haithem Turki, Dan Preston and Daphne Koller
ICCV 2011
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Open Mentoring

A lot of good advice in research is still passed informally through networks. That can make research directions, career transitions, and even basic next steps feel unnecessarily opaque. I try to reduce that gap by setting aside a small amount of time for open mentoring conversations.

Following the example set by Wei-Chiu Ma, Jun Gao, and others, I reserve 1–2 hours most weeks for pro bono mentoring conversations. These office hours are intended for students and early-career researchers who would benefit from candid, practical advice.

I especially encourage requests from:

  • people from backgrounds underrepresented in computing,
  • people transitioning from industry into research or academia,
  • people coming from non-traditional research paths who may have less access to informal advising networks.

Conversations are informal and usually 20–30 minutes. I may not be able to provide detailed feedback on full papers, codebases, or application materials in advance.

If a conversation would be helpful, please send me a brief email with a few lines about your background, goals, and the main question you'd like to discuss.