MCB Professor Venkatesh Murthy is featured in a recent Harvard Crimson article examining the growth and impact of the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, which brings together researchers from neuroscience, computer science, cognitive science, psychology, and medicine to better understand intelligence in both biological and artificial systems. The Institute, founded at Harvard with a $500 million gift from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, made an early bet on building its own AI computing cluster rather than relying on cloud providers — a decision that has paid off, giving it one of the strongest academic AI clusters in the US.
Murthy noted that the institute creates opportunities for neuroscientists and AI researchers to exchange ideas, helping researchers gain new insights into how brains and intelligent machines learn, adapt, and process information. “Being exposed to this — even though it might not right now support direct neuroscience experiments in the lab — I think we gain a lot by the ideas and in the interactions,” Murthy said.
Murthy serves as an Associate Faculty member of the Kempner Institute and is a member of its Steering Committee. Fellow MCB faculty member Haim Sompolinsky is also an Associate Faculty member at the institute. The Kempner Institute was established to advance interdisciplinary research at the intersection of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and computation
