Matthijs Pontier was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and went to the VU University of Amsterdam. He studied Artificial Intelligence as well as (Cognitive) Psychology, and obtained his Masters degree in the direction of Cognitive Science in 2007.
In 2011, he obtained his PhD project 'Virtual Agents for Human Communication', in which he developed models of human emotional intelligence, which were validated by letting virtual agents interact with humans.
He was employed as a postdoc at CAMeRA@VU University under the SELEMCA project. During the final year he additionally took a seat in the employee council.
Currently he is among others an elected representative in Waterschap AGV