Mackenzie Leake

Mackenzie Leake is a Research Scientist at Adobe. Her research focuses on building computational design tools for various creative domains, including textiles and video. Previously she was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT CSAIL and received a PhD in computer science at Stanford University. More information about her research can be found on her website.

Computer Vision, Imaging & Video Graphics (2D & 3D) Human Computer Interaction

Publications

November 5, 2026 UIST 2026

Micro-Edits: Computational Support for Fine-Scale Edits in Film

Mackenzie Leake, Hijung Valentina Shin, Nhân Trần, Abe Davis

Honorable Mention for Best Paper Award

November 2, 2026 UIST 2026

HueRistic: Optimizing Lighting for Live Video Color Design

Mackenzie Leake, Stephen DiVerdi, Ticha Sethapakdi

Honorable Mention for Best Paper Award

November 1, 2026 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2026)

CARVid: Content-Aware Retargeting of Videos with On-Screen Graphics

Aditya Gunturu, Mackenzie Leake, Ryo Suzuki, Stephen DiVerdi

November 1, 2026 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2026)

Precise Duration Control for Video Editing via LLM Scoring and Constrained Optimization

Mackenzie Leake, Stephen DiVerdi, Mira Dontcheva

April 26, 2025 CHI 2025

VidSTR: Automatic SpatioTemporal Retargeting of Speech-Driven Video Compositions

Joshua Kong Yang, Mackenzie Leake, Jeff Huang, Stephen DiVerdi

October 13, 2024 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

ScrapMap: Interactive Color Layout for Scrap Quilting

Mackenzie Leake, Ross Daly

October 13, 2024 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

WasteBanned: Supporting Zero Waste Fashion Design with Linked Edits

Ruowang Zhang, Stefanie Mueller, Gilbert Bernstein, Adriana Schulz, Mackenzie Leake

June 23, 2024 ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition

How do video content creation goals impact which concepts people prioritize for generating B-roll imagery?

Holly Huey, Mackenzie Leake, Deepali Aneja, Matt Fisher, Judith E. Fan

May 11, 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)

ChunkyEdit: Text-first Video Interview Editing Via Chunking

Mackenzie Leake, Wilmot Li

April 20, 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)

Generating Audio-Visual Slideshows from Text Articles Using Word Concreteness

Mackenzie Leake, Joy Kim, Hijung Valentina Shin, Maneesh Agrawala

News

Women in graphics: How Adobe Researchers are helping bring diversity to the field

We talked to a few Adobe Researchers involved with WiGRAPH, a vibrant community dedicated to increasing the number of women pursuing cutting-edge research in computer graphics. Discover how their inspiring work and support are shaping the future of the computer graphics community!

August 2, 2024