Surrey PhD graduate wins top UK vision award with Sullivan Thesis Prize

Interesting previous winners

The Sullivan Prize is widely regarded as the premier award for computer vision doctoral theses in the UK, and its past winners have gone on to shape the field – among them the co-founder and CEO of the London self-driving company Wayve, a Vice President of Research at Google DeepMind, and, with Yann LeCun, the co-founder of Meta's Fundamental AI Research lab (FAIR). 

Impressive Surrey history with the Prize

The award adds to an impressive history of accolades held by PAI and CVSSP, and reinforces their foundational philosophy that people must remain at the heart of artificial intelligence development. Over the 27 years of the Sullivan Prize's life, five of its winners have been from Surrey. Additionally, PAI and CVSSP scientists, Professor Richard Bowden and Dr Xiatian Zhu won it in 2000 and 2016 respectively (though studying from other universities).

A rare 'no corrections' thesis

Dr Koley successfully defended his thesis with no corrections earlier this year. In the UK, a PhD thesis defence with no corrections is extremely rare, especially in in such highly competitive and fast-moving fields as AI and computer vision. Dr Koley's research, titled Democratising Sketch-based Vision Applications via Foundation Models, was completed within the SketchX Lab, which sits in CVSSP and PAI, under the supervision of Professor Yi-Zhe Song.

Research has been made publicly accessible

Dr Koley's work explored how deep learning and foundational vision models can make intuitive, sketch-based digital applications more accessible to the layperson. The complete research findings have been made publicly accessible: openresearch.surrey.ac.uk.

Professor Song said: "Subhadeep's work exemplifies our mission at SketchX, CVSSP and PAI: creating artificial intelligence that understands and serves human creativity, keeping people firmly at the centre of technological innovation."

Dr Koley said: "I am deeply honoured to receive the 2026 BMVA Sullivan Prize and to join a distinguished lineage of researchers who have shaped the field of computer vision. This award is a testament to the research culture across CVSSP, PAI, and the SketchX Lab. I owe my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Song, for his mentorship in developing more creative, intuitive, and human-centric AI technologies."

Now a senior AI scientist at world’s largest medical device company** 

Following his doctoral success at Surrey, Dr Koley has taken up a role as a Senior AI Scientist at Medtronic in London, where he continues to apply his expertise to healthcare technology. The PAI and CVSSP community extends its warmest congratulations to Dr Koley on this outstanding achievement.

* Surrey has ranked continuously 1st in the UK for computer vision, based on metrics from elite peer-reviewed output: CSRankings.org.

** by revenue