Priscilla Chan, AB ’07, MD, and Mark Zuckerberg

The new Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University was established on the premise that intelligence in natural and artificial systems is intimately interconnected: the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) requires adopting principles that our brains use for fast, flexible, and natural reasoning, while understanding how our brains compute and reason requires theories developed for AI.Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg

Guided by this premise, the institute is enlisting and training future generations of researchers to study intelligence from biological, cognitive, engineering, and computational perspectives. Its broad goal, which it will pursue within ethical frameworks and with a desire to improve the world, is to discover and increase scientific knowledge.

The institute will live in the recently completed Science & Engineering Complex in Allston, a 500,000-square-foot space that houses classrooms, cutting-edge teaching and research labs, and areas for innovation and collaboration. Bernardo Sabatini, SB ’91, MD ’99,PhD ’99, the Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III

Sham KakadeProfessor of Neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, will co-lead the Kempner Institute with Sham Kakade, PhD, the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and of Statistics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 

Established with a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan, AB ’07, MD, and Mark Zuckerberg—co-founders and co-CEOs of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which aims to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone—the institute is committed to recruiting people from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, new computing infrastructure, and resources that will allow University students at all levels to study natural and artificial intelligence. Bernardo Sabatini 

The institute’s steering committee comprises faculty across Harvard schools and disciplines, including HMS faculty members Robert Gentleman, PhD, executive director of the Center for Computational Biomedicine at HMS, and Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, the Marion V. Nelson Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.  

Learn more about the new Kempner Institute from its co-leaders, Sham Kakade and Bernardo Sabatini »