All this is possible because of the unique phenomenon of the Center for Data Science, founded by Yann Lecun. Capitalizing on the longstanding computational bent of NYU’s neuroscience and psychology departments, over the past decade CDS has brought together some of the most notable names in the world across an impressive array of intelligence-related fields — from David Chalmers in philosophy to Gary Marcus and Sam Bowman in AI — to create a research environment unlike any other.
“The glue of computation is really the thing that brings people together to speak the same language together from disparate fields,” said Gureckis. “And when you combine that with all these engineering advances, it just makes it a really great time for science.”
NYU, in fact, is “becoming a place that rivals somewhere like MIT that’s always had a longstanding strength in these types of areas,” said Gureckis. “We have the same depth of outstanding faculty that work on these topics, such that a new PhD student would have lots of people to work with, collaborate with, and learn from, making it a really good place to build a career.”
The initiative isn’t only about driving research breakthroughs, either. It also places emphasis on community engagement, providing opportunities for students to engage with these exciting developments. The directors called for interested individuals to join the community, come to the events, and speak to the researchers.
One such opportunity is an upcoming NYU-only Summer Poster Conference on July 21. Hosted by CDS, the event will offer attendees a chance to interact with leading researchers in the field.
“This will bring together students and faculty working on these topics from multiple departments, have them present their work, learn about each other’s expertise, and maybe find collaborators,” said Lake.
Another thing MBM does to recognize the work of undergraduate students is The Glushko Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Honors Thesis in Minds, Brains, and Machines, which is awarded to an NYU student “who has conducted an Honors thesis in computational cognitive science or otherwise at the intersection of human and machine intelligence.” Last year, Alexa Tartaglini, working on the differences between human and machine vision, shared the prize with Siyue (Brenda) Qui and her thesis on visual crowding.