PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Antonio M. López Peña

Also known as Antonio Manuel López Peña, Antonio López Peña, Antonio M. López, Antonio López

Antonio M. López Peña is a computer-science researcher whose AI work supports autonomous driving. He studied informatics and artificial intelligence at UPC and UAB, then became principal investigator of CVC's autonomous-driving group. His research includes the SYNTHIA dataset and CARLA simulator, and he received ICREA Acadèmia in 2018. He leads HAMILTON and co-authored a 2025 study on pedestrian-intention prediction; as of October 2026, he is a UAB professor and an ELLIS Fellow.

Works
277
Citations
17,290
h-index
51
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1992–1994

    Computer science and AI

    He earns an informatics degree at UPC in 1992 and a master's in graphics, digital images, and artificial intelligence at UAB in 1994.

  2. Since 2002

    Leading autonomous-driving research

    Since 2002, he leads CVC's ADAS and Autonomous Driving group as principal investigator. He is a founding member of the Computer Vision Center.

  3. 2016

    SYNTHIA for urban scenes

    In 2016, he helps create SYNTHIA, which generates synthetic urban images with pixel-level class annotations for semantic segmentation.

  4. 2017

    CARLA for autonomous driving

    In 2017, he co-authors CARLA, an open-source urban-driving simulator for training and validating autonomous-driving systems.

  5. 2018

    ICREA Acadèmia

    He receives the ICREA Acadèmia award in Engineering Sciences in 2018.

  6. September 2025–August 2028

    Machine imitation learning

    In September 2025, he leads HAMILTON as principal investigator; the project applies machine imitation learning to orchestrated navigation through August 2028. In 2025, he co-authors a study on reducing human-labeling needs in deep models for pedestrian-intention prediction.

  7. As of October 2026

    Professor and ELLIS Fellow

    He is a full professor in UAB's Department of Computer Science, an ELLIS Fellow, and a principal investigator at CVC. For the 2026–2027 academic year, he is the contact lecturer for UAB's Autonomous Navigation course.

Career

  1. Since 2026Autonomous University of BarcelonaFull Professor
  2. Since 2002CERCA InstitutionPrincipal Investigator, Founding Member
  3. 1996–2002Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Education

  1. 1994Autonomous University of BarcelonaMaster's degree
  2. 1992Polytechnic University of CataloniaInformatics degree

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator2017 · 3,720 citationsWith Vladlen Koltun
  2. The SYNTHIA Dataset: A Large Collection of Synthetic Images for Semantic Segmentation of Urban Scenes2016 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 2,312 citations
  3. End-to-end driving via conditional imitation learning1,116 citationsWith Vladlen Koltun
  4. Survey of Pedestrian Detection for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems2009 · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 974 citations
  5. A Benchmark for Endoluminal Scene Segmentation of Colonoscopy Images2017 · Journal of Healthcare Engineering · 866 citationsWith Aaron C. Courville

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Autonomous University of Barcelona. Our estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers rose from 3% to 32%Includes CERCA Institution. We estimate where leading AI researchers worked when their most-cited papers appeared. The company share rose from 3% in 1975–1979 to 32% in 2020–2024.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  4. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Antonio Manuel Lopez Peña - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Research Portal portalrecerca.uab.cat. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. 2018-2019 – IAeticaBCN pages.cvc.uab.es. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. CVPR 2016 Open Access Repository openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. 2019 ICREA Acadèmia - ICREA Memoir 2019 memoir.icrea.cat. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Pre doctoral Fellowship linked to the project Heterogeneous Advances in Machine Imitation Learning for Training Orchestrated Navigation (Hamilton) cvc.uab.es. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. Minimizing Human Labeling in Training Deep Models for Pedestrian Intention Prediction - Portal de Recerca de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona portalrecerca.uab.cat. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. Doctorat en Informàtica - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona uab.cat. Checked 18 October 2026.
  9. ELLIS Summer School on Autonomous Driving — Barcelona 2026 pages.cvc.uab.es. Checked 18 October 2026.
  10. Autonomous Navigation apps.uab.cat. Checked 18 October 2026.