PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

David Vázquez

David Vázquez is a computer-vision researcher and AI lab director whose work spans autonomous-driving perception, multimodal datasets, and enterprise web agents. He studied software engineering at Universidade da Coruña and computer science, computer vision, and AI at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where his 2013 PhD on pedestrian detection won four thesis awards. During postdoctoral work at MILA and UAB's Computer Vision Center, he coauthored the SYNTHIA dataset in 2016 and co-led the Elektra autonomous-driving project. After working at Element AI and leading low-data learning research at ServiceNow, he coauthored the WorkArena and BrowserGym web-agent benchmarks in 2024, coauthored the BigDocs dataset in 2025, and joined Polytechnique Montréal as an adjunct professor affiliated with MILA in 2025. As of October 2026, Vázquez is Research Director of ServiceNow's Foundational AI Research team, leading work on AI agents, AI security, multimodal learning, reasoning, and data analytics.

Works
184
Citations
9,150
h-index
36
Badges
Links
Website and Google Scholar

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2002–2014

    A PhD on pedestrian detection

    He starts software-engineering studies at Universidade da Coruña in 2002, earns a BSc there in 2006, and completes a BSc in computer science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2009 and an MSc in computer vision and AI at UAB in 2010. His 2013 computer-science PhD at UAB, advised by Antonio M. López, studies virtual-to-real domain adaptation for pedestrian detection. The thesis wins four best thesis awards in 2014 from the IEEE ITS Society, AERFAI, UAB, and PIONEER/CERCA.

  2. 2015–2017

    SYNTHIA and the Elektra vehicle

    With a 2015 Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship from the European Commission, he works as a postdoctoral researcher at MILA and UAB under Aaron Courville and Antonio M. López through 2017. In 2016, with German Ros, Laura Sellart, Joanna Materzynska, and Antonio M. López, he coauthors SYNTHIA, a synthetic-image dataset generated with a video game engine for urban-scene semantic segmentation at CVPR. At UAB's Computer Vision Center in 2017, he and Antonio López lead the Elektra project, applying computer vision and deep learning to urban autonomous driving.

  3. 2018–2021

    Research scientist at Element AI

    In October 2018, while working as an Element AI research scientist, he presents a poster on Pix2Scene for learning implicit 3D representations from images at an Element AI research showcase at MIT CSAIL. Vázquez becomes a team lead at Element AI in 2020. In May 2021, he gives a talk at CiTIUS on low-data learning methods for computer vision while working as an Element AI research scientist.

  4. 2021–2023

    Leading low-data research

    After ServiceNow acquires Element AI in 2021, he leads the Low Data Learning team at ServiceNow Research as a research manager and research lead through 2023. The team of 5 researchers and 15 interns studies self-supervised, semi-supervised, and weakly supervised learning.

  5. 2024

    WorkArena and BrowserGym at ICML

    In 2024, he coauthors WorkArena, a remote-hosted benchmark of 33 knowledge-work tasks on the ServiceNow platform, published at ICML 2024. The paper also introduces BrowserGym, an environment for designing and evaluating web agents.

  6. 2025

    The BigDocs dataset

    He coauthors BigDocs in 2025, an open-access dataset of 7.5 million multimodal documents across 30 document and code tasks. The paper is accepted at ICLR 2025.

  7. 2025

    Adjunct professor in Montréal

    In 2025, he joins Polytechnique Montréal as an adjunct professor affiliated with MILA and co-supervises doctoral students. There, he leads research on multimodal AI tools for preserving Indigenous languages.

  8. As of October 2026

    Directing ServiceNow AI research

    In September 2025, he speaks as the invited speaker at the Computer Vision Center's ACMCV 2025 event. As of October 2026, he is Research Director of ServiceNow's Foundational AI Research team, leading more than 20 researchers and 30 interns on AI agents, AI security, multimodal learning, reasoning, and data analytics. The team builds BrowserGym, WorkArena, BigDocs, and the Apriel family of open models.

Career

  1. Since 2021ServiceNowResearch Manager and Research Lead
  2. 2025–2026Polytechnique MontréalAdjunct Professor
  3. 2018–2021Element AIResearch Scientist
  4. 2018–2021Concordia University
  5. From 2017Autonomous University of BarcelonaElektra Project Lead
  6. 2016–2020Université de Montréal
  7. 2015–2017MilaPostdoctoral researcher
  8. 2010–2017Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  9. 2010–2017CERCA Institution

Education

  1. 2013Autonomous University of BarcelonaPhD
  2. 2010Autonomous University of BarcelonaMSc
  3. 2009Autonomous University of BarcelonaBSc
  4. 2006University of A CoruñaBSc

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

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Polytechnique Montréal. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Polytechnique Montréal. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Polytechnique Montréal. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Université de Montréal. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of David Vázquez yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Experience | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. SYNTHIA | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. CVPR 2016 Open Access Repository: The SYNTHIA Dataset openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Towards a no driver scenario: autonomous and connected cars at the Computer Vision Center cvc.uab.es. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Elektra Autonomous Vehicle | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Element AI (STL@CSAIL) Tech Talk and Research Showcase | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Lecture: Low Data Learning Methods for computer Vision | CiTIUS citius.gal. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. WorkArena: How Capable are Web Agents at Solving Common Knowledge Work Tasks? proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. BigDocs: An Open Dataset for Training Multimodal Models on Document and Code Tasks proceedings.iclr.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. BigDocs accepted at ICLR 2025 | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  11. Appointed Adjunct Professor at Polytechnique Montréal | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  12. ACMCV 2025 - CVC Computer Vision Center cvc.uab.es. Checked 22 October 2026.
  13. Bio | David Vázquez david-vazquez.com. Checked 22 October 2026.