Cees Snoek
Also known as Cees G.M. Snoek
Cees Snoek is a University of Amsterdam computer scientist who studies how AI can search and interpret images and video. He earned a master's degree in business information systems in 2000 and a computer-science doctorate in 2005, then led research on MediaMill, a semantic video search engine that was the most consistent top performer in yearly NIST TRECVID evaluations. His career includes Euvision and Qualcomm, the 2012 Netherlands Prize for ICT Research and an NWO Vidi grant, and a 2018 professorship in Intelligent Sensory Information Systems. As of October 2026, he heads UvA's Video & Image Sense and Human-Aligned Video AI labs; in April 2026, the Netherlands AI Factory lists him among its supervisory board members.
- Now at
- University of Amsterdam, Netherlands AI Factory and Amsterdam AI
- Works
- 512
- Citations
- 15,640
- h-index
- 59
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.
Timeline
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2000–2005
An Amsterdam multimedia doctorate
He earns a master's degree in business information systems in 2000 and a doctorate in computer science in 2005, both from the University of Amsterdam; his doctoral thesis is titled The Authoring Metaphor to Machine Understanding of Multimedia.
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2011–2014
MediaMill and Euvision
His work includes MediaMill, a semantic video search engine that is the most consistent top performer in yearly NIST TRECVID evaluations. From 2011 to 2014, he heads R&D at UvA spin-off Euvision Technologies and works with fellow UvA professor Arnold Smeulders on its applications.
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2012
An ICT prize and Vidi grant
In 2012, he wins the Netherlands Prize for ICT Research and receives an NWO Vidi grant for STORY, a project called Searching for the Events Told by Video Content.
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2013–2014
Associate professor and Qualcomm engineer
He becomes a UvA associate professor of artificial intelligence in 2013 and a managing principal engineer at Qualcomm Research Europe in 2014.
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2018
Professor of intelligent sensory systems
In 2018, he becomes professor of Intelligent Sensory Information Systems at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on semantic image understanding, image and video search, and interactive image analysis. He also heads QUVA Lab, the joint UvA–Qualcomm lab for deep learning and computer vision.
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2025
Commonsense video question answering
In 2025, he co-authors a CVPR paper that proposes video-grounded entailment-tree reasoning for commonsense video question answering.
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As of October 2026
AI labs and a supervisory board
He is a full professor of computer science at the University of Amsterdam and heads its Video & Image Sense and Human-Aligned Video AI labs. In April 2026, the Netherlands AI Factory lists him among its supervisory board members as Amsterdam AI's scientific director and a UvA professor.
Career
- Since 2026Netherlands AI FactorySupervisory Board Member
- Since 2026Amsterdam AIScientific Director
- Since 2013University of AmsterdamAssociate Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Professor of Intelligent Sensory Information Systems
- From 2018QUVA LabHead
- 2014–2018QualcommManaging Principal Engineer
- 2011–2014Euvision TechnologiesHead of R&D
Education
- 2005University of AmsterdamDoctorate in computer science
- 2000University of AmsterdamMaster’s degree in business information systems
Most-cited works
- Evaluating Color Descriptors for Object and Scene Recognition
- Early versus late fusion in semantic video analysisWith Arnold W. M. Smeulders and Marcel Worring
- The challenge problem for automated detection of 101 semantic concepts in multimediaWith Arnold W. M. Smeulders and Marcel Worring
- Multimodal Video Indexing: A Review of the State-of-the-artWith Marcel Worring
- VideoLSTM convolves, attends and flows for action recognition
Colleagues
Sources and credits
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