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yaelvink@mit.edu | yaelvi116@gmail.com
Office: 45-733D

I am a postdoctoral researcher at MIT CSAIL, working with Prof. Antonio Torralba. I completed my PhD at Tel Aviv University, advised by Prof. Daniel Cohen-Or and Prof. Ariel Shamir. My research lies at the intersection of computer graphics, AI, and art. I develop computational systems that model and support visual thinking, visual communication, and creative expression. A core focus of my work is leveraging the rich priors of large vision-language models to generate visuals that are abstract, expressive, structured, and editable.
I also enjoy drawing and sculpting in my free time.


My work has been recognized with two Best Paper Awards for CLIPasso (SIGGRAPH'22) and Inspiration Tree (SIGGRAPH Asia'23), and an Honorable Mention Award for Word-as-Image (SIGGRAPH'23).
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Selected Works

CLIPasso

CLIPasso: Semantically-Aware Object Sketching

🏆 Best Paper [SIGGRAPH'22]
>Project Page
word-as-image

Word-as-Image for Semantic Typography

🎖️ Honorable Mention [SIGGRAPH'23]
>Project Page
Inspiration Tree

Concept Decomposition for Visual Exploration and Inspiration

🏆 Best Paper [SIGGRAPH Asia'23]
>Project Page
SketchAgent

SketchAgent: Language-Driven Sequential Sketch Generation

CVPR'25
>Project Page

News

  • [April 2026] I'm co-organizing a very exciting workshop at SIGGRAPH 2026: Lines and Minds: Visual Abstraction in Art, Psychology, and Computer Graphics. We are hosting a very special lineup of speakers this year! More details in the link.
  • [April 2026] Our paper Inspiration Seeds has been accepted to SIGGRAPH 2026! Big congrats to the team!
  • [Upcoming - December 12, 2025] I will be visiting Brown University and giving a talk at the BVC (Brown Visual Computing) seminar on “Bridging Generative Models and Visual Communication.”
  • [December 2025] I presented my work on parametric generation and control in generative models at the University of Toronto Graphics Seminar - thanks to the UofT graphics community for the interesting discussions!
  • [November 2025] I visited TTIC and gave an invited talk at the Young Researcher Seminar on “Bridging Generative Models and Visual Communication”.
  • [November 2025] I gave an invited talk at Adobe’s AI Safety & Quality Seminar on “Text-to-Image Personalization for Visual Design.”
  • [October 2025] I gave an invited talk on “Computational Models of Line Drawings: From Perception to Synthesis” in the TTIC graduate course on Generative Models, Art, and Perception.
  • [August 2025] I will be giving three invited talks at ICCV 2025 in the following workshops: AI4VA: The 2nd AI for Visual Arts Workshop, P13N: Personalization in Generative AI Workshop, and CoMIQ: Comic Intelligence Quotient. See you in Hawaii this October!
  • [July 2025] I am co-organizing the SIGGRAPH 2025 workshop Drawing & Sketching: Art, Psychology, and Computer Graphics. Join us for interdisciplinary discussions at the intersection of computation, cognition, and creativity!
  • [June 2025] I gave an invited talk at the SynData4CV Workshop at CVPR 2025, about "Synthetic Data in Creative Applications".
  • [June 2025] MIT CSAIL News featured our work SketchAgent: "Teaching AI models the broad strokes to sketch more like humans do". Thanks to CSAIL and Alex Shipps for the lovely article!
  • [June 2025] Our paper NeuralSVG has been accepted to ICCV 2025! Big congrats to the team!
  • [May 2025] Two papers have been accepted to SIGGRAPH 2025! Check out InkLayer and SwiftSketch.