Van den Herik studied mathematics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he obtained his MA in 1974, cum laude. In 1983 he obtained his PhD with the thesis, entitled "Computer Chess, chess and artificial intelligence", under supervision of Henk Lombaers, Adriaan de Groot and Joop Doorman. After his graduation in 1974 Van den Herik had started his academic career at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as researcher. In 1975 he became assistant professor at the Delft University of Technology. After serving at the School of Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada from 1987 to 2008, he was appointed professor at the University of Maastricht been. Since 1991 he is also affiliated with the University of Leiden. Since 2008 he is a professor at the University of Tilburg, where he also directs the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication. With a number of chess enthusiasts, including Max Euwe, Van den Herik in 1980 was co-founder of Computer Chess Association Netherlands. He is also co-founder of the NVKI, and was their chairman from 1990 to 1995. From 1991 to 1999 he was also president of the JURIX, the international Foundation for Legal Knowledge-Based Systems. From 1983 until 2015, Van den Herik was chief editor of the Journal of the International Computer Games Association.
Work
Van den Herik's research interests and expertise are in the areas of agents, computer networks, computer systems, information technology, knowledge management, artificial intelligence and game theory. Since the late 1970s Van den Herik had been researching computer chess and legal judgement by computers, which both showed hugh progress over the past decades. Computers can play better chess than many chess grandmaster, and the focus has shifted in the case vam cognition to perception. Since the new millennium he also conducted research with Eric Postma to develop expert systems for art experts. Over the years Van den Herik has published multiple books and over 50 articles. In 2018, he was part of the ACE 2018 conference which was attacked by numerous other academics. Springer Nature – a publisher of academic research – has dropped ACE as a client, citing "a number of irregularities reported regarding the paper reviewing and selection process and regarding the organization of the ACE 2018 conference".
Selected publications
Jaap van den Herik. Computerschaak, schaakwereld en kunstmatige intelligentie, 1983.
Jaap van den Herik. Kunnen Computers Rechtspreken? Gouda Quint, Arnhem, 1991.
Alexander Ollongren, Jaap van den Herik. Filosofie van de informatica. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Jaap van den Herik. Chips Challenging Champions. With J. Schaeffer, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2002.
Jaap van den Herik; Hiroyuki Iida; Ernst A. Heinz, eds.. Advances in Computer Games: Many Games, Many Challenges. Springer. p. 349..
