Kempner Institute names scientific advisory board of visionary leaders in AI

The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University announced today the formation of its scientific advisory board (SAB), composed of visionaries in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computational biology.

The six members of the new board will meet with Kempner leadership, including Co-directors Bernardo Sabatini and Sham Kakade, to discuss the Institute’s scientific and engineering objectives.

Members of the Kempner’s scientific advisory board are:

• Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer, OpenAI
• Joelle Pineau, Vice President, AI Research, Meta;  Professor and William Dawson Scholar, School of Computer Science, McGill University
• Stephen Quake (ex officio), Head of Science, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering, Professor of Applied Physics, Professor of Physics (by courtesy), Stanford University
• Aviv Regev, Head, Executive Vice President, Genentech Research and Early Development
• Eero Simoncelli, Scientific Director, Center for Computational Neuroscience, Flatiron Institute; Silver Professor, Neural Science, Mathematics, Data Science, & Psychology, New York University
• Karel Svoboda, Vice President and Executive Director of the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics

The creation of the scientific advisory board marks an important step in the Kempner Institute’s development and expanding vision.

“We are grateful that this distinguished group of leaders will advise the Kempner Institute as it pushes the frontiers of knowledge while taking advantage of rapid advances in areas like generative AI,” said Alan M. Garber, Harvard University provost and chair of the Kempner Institute Oversight Committee. “The institute has already made rapid progress under Bernardo and Sham’s leadership. With the help of leading thinkers who have such deep and broad expertise, the Kempner will ensure that its research and teaching activities have the greatest impact.”

Members of the Kempner’s SAB will serve for an initial term of two years beginning in September 2024.

About the Kempner

The Kempner Institute seeks to understand the basis of intelligence in natural and artificial systems by recruiting and training future generations of researchers to study intelligence from biological, cognitive, engineering, and computational perspectives. Its bold premise is that the fields of natural and artificial intelligence are intimately interconnected; the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) will require the same principles that our brains use for fast, flexible natural reasoning, and understanding how our brains compute and reason can be elucidated by theories developed for AI. Join the Kempner mailing list to learn more, and to receive updates and news.