Kempner Institute at Harvard University

Massive Increase of Computing Power for Kempner Institute at Harvard - Kempner Institute Cambridge, MA – The most powerful supercomputer at Harvard is about to get larger and faster. Much faster. The Kempner Institute’s AI cluster, already one of the fastest AI supercomputers […]

🚀 Kempner Institute's AI cluster gets a big upgrade! We're adding 424 H200s & 192 RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, creating a 1,144-GPU supercomputer delivering 1.79 exaFLOPS for AI, neuroscience & robotics research.

Read more: bit.ly/4cHmQZs
@shamkakade.bsky.social @blsabatini.bsky.social

Kempner Researchers Harness Generative AI to Reveal What Neurons "Want" - Kempner Institute How can scientists figure out what visual information a neuron really responds to? For decades, neuroscientists have tried to answer this question by showing animals pictures — of faces, trees, […]

🧠What do neurons “want”?✨

Kempner researchers @binxuwang.bsky.social and Carlos Ponce have developed a way for neurons to train AI image models to match their “preferences.”

Read more about the research, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, here: bit.ly/4bz47hw

#neuroscience #NeuroAI

Generalization in Attention-Based Models with Lenka Zdeborová YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

Thanks to Lenka Zdeborová (@zdeborova.bsky.social) from @epfl-ai-center.bsky.social for a great talk discussing attention-based architectures that operate on sequences, and analytical insights into generalization obtained using solvable high-dimensional models.

Watch the talk ➡️ youtu.be/hECIITnOGho

InputDSA: Demixing then comparing recurrent and externally driven dynamics in complex systems - Kempner Institute We explored how to measure the similarity between two complex systems when they are driven by external inputs, like biological neural circuits or reinforcement learning agents. Our novel method, calle...

NEW from the #KempnerInstitute: InputDSA, a tool to separate intrinsic dynamics from input-driven effects—enabling accurate, efficient comparisons of complex systems with external inputs.

Read the #DeeperLearning blog post by @annhuang42.bsky.social & @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social: bit.ly/4bkrvy9

Kempner Institute Undergraduate Summer Internship Program in AI/ML Research & Engineering  - Kempner Institute The Undergraduate Summer Internship Program in AI/ML Research & Engineering at the Kempner Institute offers a structured opportunity for current undergraduates (interns) and recent graduates to furthe...

Applications for the 2026 #KempnerInstitute Undergraduate Summer #Internship Program in AI/ML Research & Engineering are now open! 👀

This 10-week program offers a structured opportunity to further your experience in AI/ML engineering.

Learn more 🔗 bit.ly/4cxbS8K

📣 Excited to announce the 2nd edition of our workshop
“Agent-Based Models in Neuroscience: Theory, Autonomy, Embodiment & Environment”
at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social #CoSyNe2026!!
🧠🤖🌍🪰🐟🐭💪🧘🏃

🗓️ March 17, 2026
📍 Cascais, Portugal
🔗 Speaker lineup and schedule: neuro-agent-models.github.io

Authors: David Clark (@david-g-clark.bsky.social),* Blake Bordelon (@frostedblakess.bsky.social),* Jacob Zavatone-Veth (@jzv.bsky.social),* Cengiz Pehlevan (@cpehlevan.bsky.social).

*Equal contribution

NEW: #Kempner researchers develop a mean-field theory of task-trained RNNs that bridges random and learned connectivity—and find macaque motor cortex is best captured by an intermediate, task-specific recurrent structure.
Read the blog post 👇
🔗 bit.ly/47f3Ldl

Kempner Institute Announces 2026 Accelerator Awards Request for Proposals - Kempner Institute Cambridge, MA– The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2026 Kempner Institute Accelerator Awards request for proposa...

📢 Request for proposals: Applications for the #KempnerInstitute Accelerator Awards open to @harvard.edu faculty on April 14. Awardees pursue intelligence research on the Kempner #AI cluster, one of the largest academic AI clusters in the world.

Learn more 👉 bit.ly/4smmyeW

What Happens When AI Isn’t Trained, But Evolves? - Kempner Institute Over the past two decades, progress in artificial intelligence has involved a reliable recipe: define a clear goal for an AI system and teach it to improve on that objective […]

What if #AI could emerge through natural selection instead of training?

A new study led by #KempnerInsitute Research Fellow @aaronwalsman.bsky.social shows that environment size & sensory richness are key factors for how intelligence evolves.

Read more here: bit.ly/4b2gKjC

Learning World Models and Agents for High-Cost Environments with Sherry Yang YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

Thanks to Sherry Yang from @nyucourant.bsky.social and Google DeepMind for a great talk on Friday discussing strategies for building intelligent agents that learn efficiently despite real-world constraints.

Watch the talk 👉 youtu.be/SpNTKghP11Q

#AI #NeuroAI

NEW: Kempner Research Roundup: February 2026! 🧠🤖

Learn about the latest research on natural and artificial intelligence from the Kempner Institute:

bit.ly/4rFlHGh #AI #NeuroAI #neuroscience

How the Brain and AI Reuse Old Knowledge in New Situations - Kempner Institute Humans and other animals are remarkably good at using old knowledge in new situations. This ability — known as generalization — allows us to recognize a friend in an unexpected […]

In a new @natneuro.nature.com paper, #KempnerInstitute Investigator @sueyeonchung.bsky.social & her team present a new mathematical theory linking four geometric properties of neural representations to generalization, across brains and AI.

Read more here: bit.ly/4kVbDpT

#NeuroAI #neuroscience

Kempner Institute Welcomes Spring 2026 Undergraduate Student Researchers - Kempner Institute Cambridge, MA – The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University is pleased to announce the spring 2026 recipients of the Kempner Undergraduate Research...

🤖 Who’s shaping the future of intelligence? 🧠

📯 The #KempnerInstitute proudly announces this semester’s KURE award recipients. Meet the @harvard.edu undergrads exploring the frontiers of natural & artificial intelligence:
kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu/news/kempner...

#AI #NeuroAI #Neuroscience

Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks.

@zuckermanbrain.bsky.social
@flatironinstitute.org
@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social

1/14

☝️Joint work with Hamza Tahir Chaudhry, @mishaahrens.bsky.social, Christopher D. Harvey, Matthew G. Perich, and @deisseroth.bsky.social.

Forecasting the Brain: Scalable Neural Prediction with POCO - Kempner Institute Predicting future neural activity is a critical step toward achieving real-time, closed-loop neurotechnologies. To this end, we introduce POCO, a unified forecasting model trained on diverse calcium i...

🧠📈A new foundation model for #neuroscience! In the latest Deeper Learning blog, @duranrin.bsky.social and @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social describe their state-of-the-art POCO model, which accurately forecasts neural dynamics across individuals and species.

bit.ly/4afqx5A #NeuroAI #neuroscience

☝️Joint work by @alexmeterez.bsky.social, Pranav Ajit Nair, Depen Morwani, @cpehlevan.bsky.social and @shamkakade.bsky.social!

Anytime Pretraining: Horizon-Free Learning-Rate Schedules with Weight Averaging - Kempner Institute In this work, we show that horizon-free recipes with weight averaging can match cosine pretraining performance, and we prove that these schedulers achieve the optimal convergence rates of stochastic g...

NEW in the Deeper Learning blog: a #KempnerInstitute team describes their recent preprint that shows the existence of “anytime” or “horizon-free” learning schedules: an effective alternative to cosine learning-rate schedules for LLM pretraining.

bit.ly/4qeXAg1 #AI #ML #LLMs

OLMo 3: Defining the Future of Open-Science AI with Model Flows with Hanna Hajishirzi YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

In the latest #KempnerInstitute seminar series talk, Hanna Hajishirzi of @uwcse.bsky.social and @ai2.bsky.social introduces Olmo 3, a family of state-of-the-art, fully-open language and thinking models at the 7B and 32B parameter scales.

Watch the talk ➡️ youtu.be/ei06Or9mwjY

NEW: Kempner Research Roundup: January 2026! 🧠

We’ve redesigned our monthly Research Roundup so you can learn about the latest research from the Kempner in a new, easier-to-read format. 📖

Read the Research Roundup here 🔗 bit.ly/4kiOSfs

Measuring and Controlling Solution Degeneracy Across Task-Trained Recurrent Neural Networks - Kempner Institute Despite reaching equal performance success when trained on the same task, artificial neural networks can develop dramatically different internal solutions, much like different students solving the sam...

🤖📊 NEW in the Deeper Learning blog: @annhuang42.bsky.social & @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social break down their recent work examining how #RNNs solve the same task in different ways, and why that matters. Joint work with @satpreetsingh.bsky.social & @flavioh.bsky.social bit.ly/4kj4fVd #NeuroAI

Thanks to @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social for highlighting our new study! I'm excited to see where this research will take us in the years to come :)

New Study Sheds Light on the Brain’s “Extended Language Network” - Kempner Institute For more than a century, scientists studying how the brain processes language have focused their attention on the cerebral cortex, specifically the left frontal and temporal lobes. But a new […]

New in Neuron! A team including #KempnerInstitute’s
@coltoncasto.bsky.social & @gretatuckute.bsky.social maps the cerebellum's role beyond motor control as part of an extended language network.🧠🗣️

More here: bit.ly/4rptQ13 #neuroscience #fMRI
@gsas.harvard.edu @evfedorenko.bsky.social

PROTON: A Relational Foundation Model for Neurological Discovery - Kempner Institute Foundation models have transformed AI by scaling sequence-based learning, but many scientific problems are not naturally sequential. In neuroscience, insight depends on relationships across genes, cel...

How can foundational models be optimized for real-world scientific discovery? 🧠

⚛️Introducing PROTON: A new relational foundation model for #neurology from @marinkazitnik.bsky.social and @ayushnoori.bsky.social.

More in the Deeper Learning Blog👉 bit.ly/4jYh1bD
#AI #NeuroAI #KempnerInstitute

In the latest #KempnerInstitute Seminar Series talk, @kyunghyuncho.bsky.social from New York University discussed how deep learning could be used to derive statistical and causal estimators we may not be able to design ourselves.

Watch the talk👉 youtu.be/lz1iJWHLuwk
#AI #DeepLearning

Post-Baccalaureate Program - Kempner Institute Offered in partnership with the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB), the Kempner’s post-bacc program prepares recen...

📢Last call for applications!
Applications for the #KempnerInstitute #postbac program close on Feb 1. Don't miss the opportunity to receive support in preparing to apply to Ph.D. programs in #intelligence research.

Apply today 👉 bit.ly/3LDj4Fd
@shamkakade.bsky.social

Happy 2nd science birthday to the #KempnerInstitute! 🧠In our 2nd full year we reached 420+ members, 350+ papers, 3,200+ event attendees, and 3M+ GPU hours. See our strides in #intelligence research!

Read the 2025 Annual Report: bit.ly/3LPSVmB
@shamkakade.bsky.social @blsabatini.bsky.social

Kempner Institute Announces 2026 Accelerator Award Recipients - Kempner Institute The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University is pleased to announce Nada Amin and Debora Marks as the recipients of the 2026 Kempner […]

Congratulations to #Harvard faculty Nada Amin and Debora Marks (@deboramarks.bsky.social) with Noor Youssef, recipients of the 2026 #KempnerInstitute Accelerator Awards! 🎊

Learn more about their exciting research in the field of #intelligence 👉 bit.ly/49TVgWO

🚨Deadline approaching!

Applications for the #KempnerInstitute #postbac program close on February 1st! This 2-year program offers additional preparation for recent grads applying to Ph.D. programs in #intelligence research. 💡

Apply today 🔗 bit.ly/4aSAXdb
#AI #NeuroAI