Josef Sivic
Also known as Josef Šivic
Josef Sivic is a computer vision researcher whose work applies text-retrieval methods to find objects in images and video. After study at CTU and Oxford and research at MIT and Inria, he returned to Prague to lead work in machine perception, robotics and life sciences. His visual-search papers won the 2017 Longuet-Higgins and Helmholtz prizes. His group works on embodied perception and molecular learning through projects such as FRONTIER and DreaMS. As of October 2026, he is a CTU professor, directs ELLIS Unit Czechia, and serves part-time as chief strategy officer at Tolion Health AI.
- Now at
- Czech Technical University in Prague, European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems and Tolion Health AI
- Works
- 314
- Citations
- 36,554
- h-index
- 81
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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2002–2017
From Prague to Paris
After a master's at CTU in 2002, he earned his Oxford PhD with Andrew Zisserman in 2006. With Zisserman, he published Video Google (2003), a text-retrieval approach to finding objects in video. Following a postdoc at MIT CSAIL, he spent more than a decade at Inria in Paris before joining CIIRC CTU in 2017.
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2007
Searching large image sets
At CVPR, he and four coauthors published Object Retrieval with Large Vocabularies and Fast Spatial Matching. It let users select an object in a query image and returned ranked images that contained the same object.
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2017
Two prizes for vision
His 2007 object-retrieval paper received the Longuet-Higgins Prize. The Helmholtz Prize recognized Video Google (2003) and his 2005 paper on finding objects and their locations in images.
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Since 2017
An AI group in Prague
At CIIRC CTU, he leads the IMPACT research group in computer vision, robotics and AI for life sciences. Its ERC-funded FRONTIER project will develop neural models for machines that learn and interact in dynamic 3D environments.
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Since 2019
Directing ELLIS Prague
He has directed ELLIS Unit Prague since 2019 and is an ELLIS Fellow in machine learning and computer vision.
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2023
A Czech AI award
He received the Czech AI Award for research and development.
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2025
Learning from molecular spectra
His group published DreaMS, a method for learning molecular representations from mass spectra, in Nature Biotechnology. France awarded him the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for contributions to education and scientific cooperation.
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As of October 2026
Professor and national director
He is a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at CTU Prague and directs ELLIS Unit Czechia. He also consults for Adobe Research and serves part-time as chief strategy officer at Tolion Health AI.
Sources and credits
Photo: people.ciirc.cvut.cz; Josef Sivic; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: people.ciirc.cvut.cz. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
- Josef Šivic from CIIRC CTU honored by France for contributions to artificial intelligence | CIIRC
- Josef Sivic
- Josef Šivic receives ERC Advanced Grant to investigate intelligent systems capable of learning in a dynamic 3D world | CIIRC
- Video Google: A Text Retrieval Approach to Object Matching in Videos
- Object Retrieval with Large Vocabularies and Fast Spatial Matching - Microsoft Research
- Two prizes awarded to Josef Šivic in 2017 | CIIRC
- Josef Sivic | European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems
- Seven New Units Join the ELLIS Network: Czechia, Denmark, Franconia, Grenoble, NRW, Slovenia & Sweden
- Josef Šivic was appointed Professor in the field of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence | CIIRC