Harvard launches Kempner Institute for intelligence research with $500 million gift

Harvard University on December 7, 2021 launched the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a university-wide initiative that links neuroscience with artificial intelligence research. The institute is funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, announced the same day by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

According to Harvard, the gift supports 10 new faculty appointments, substantial new computing infrastructure, and funding for undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The institute was expected to open by the end of 2022 in the university's Science and Engineering Complex in Allston. It is led by two co-directors, one from the neurobiology faculty at Harvard Medical School and one from computer science and statistics, and is guided by a faculty steering committee drawn from several schools. The name honors Zuckerberg's mother, Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, and her parents.

The institute's stated aim is to study the principles that underlie both human and machine intelligence, so that findings about the brain can inform AI systems and the reverse. It brings together specialists in computer science, applied mathematics, neuroscience, cognitive science, statistics and engineering. Harvard said that training researchers who are versed in both fields is a central purpose, and that the institute would actively recruit people from backgrounds underrepresented in science and technology fields.