Serge Belongie is a professor of Computer Science at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

, where he also serves as the head of th
Danish Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence
Previously, he was the Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech, where he also served as Associate Dean. He has also been a member of the Visiting Faculty program at

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. He is known for his contributions to the fields of

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, specifically object recognition and image segmentation, with his scientific research in these areas cited over 50,000 times according to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

. Along with

Jitendra Malik Jitendra Malik is an Indian-American academic who is the Arthur J. Chick Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his research in computer vision. Academic biography ...

, Belongie proposed the concept of

shape context A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie on ...

, a widely used feature descriptor in object recognition. He has co-founded several startups in the areas of computer vision and object recognition.

Career

Belongie received a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, in 2000, where he was advised by computer scientist

. While an undergraduate student at California Institute of Technology, Belongie co-founded Digital Persona, Inc., which created what has been called "the world's first mass-market fingerprint identification device". Digital Persona was acquired by biometric identification company Crossmatch, Inc in 2014. He has also been the co-founder of image recognition startup Anchovi Labs (acquired by Dropbox, Inc. in 2012), and computer vision/video analysis company Orpix, Inc. He is also an Expert in Residence at LDV Capital. Belongie is the creator, along with

Pietro Perona Pietro Perona (born 3 September 1961) is an Italian-American educator and computer scientist. He is the Allan E. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology and direc ...

, of Visipedia, an image recognition platform that promises to combine computer and human capabilities to allow users to identify and annotate images. Belongie was a professor of Computer Science at

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

between 2001 and 2013, where he was the director of the SO(3) Computer Vision Group. He joined Cornell Tech as a professor in 2014. At Cornell, he is the director of the SE(3) Computer Vision Group, and a member of the Connected Experiences Laboratory. While in San Diego, Belongie was the lead singer/bass player in a band named SO3, which achieved some local success at various clubs and bars. From 2013 to 2021, Belongie was full professor of computer science at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. In 2021, he moved to Europe to become the director of the Danish Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and professor in the Department of Computer Science at the

Awards

The MIT Technology Review named Belongie to their list of Innovators under 35 for 2004. In 2007, Belongie and his co-authors received a Marr Prize Honorable mention for a paper presented at

International Conference on Computer Vision The International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is a research conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held every other year. It is considered to be one of the top conferences in computer vision, ...

. In 2015, he was the recipient of the ICCV

Helmholtz Prize The International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is a research conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held every other year. It is considered to be one of the top conferences in computer vision, ...

, awarded to authors of papers that have made fundamental contributions to the field of computer vision. Belongie also received an

NSF Career Award The National Science Foundation CAREER awards, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors i ...

and a Sloan Research Fellowship to support his research.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Belongie, Serge Living people Computer scientists Computer vision researchers Cornell University faculty Cornell Tech faculty UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni California Institute of Technology alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American expatriates in Denmark