[1][3] His dissertation was titled Finding Texture and Brightness Boundaries in Images, and his adviser was Jitendra Malik.

From 1990 to 1991, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.

[9] [10] Perona pioneered the study of visual categorization (including the publication of the Caltech 101 dataset) for which he was awarded the Longuet-Higgins Prize in 2013.

[11] He is also the recipient of the 2010 Koenderink Prize for Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision,[12] the 2003 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition best paper award,[13] and a 1996 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award.

[18] In 2003, Perona and Stephen Nowlin organized the NEURO art exhibition, which brought together contemporary artists and scientists to explore neuromorphic engineering.