News Release

Four NYU Faculty elected to National Academy of Sciences

Grant and Award Announcement

New York University

Four New York University faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences: Marisa Carrasco, Yann LeCun, Kathryn J. Moore, and Adam Przeworski. This year's election of 120 new members--59 of whom are women, the most elected in a single year--and 30 international members were chosen "in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research," the Washington, D.C.-based organization announced.

"The historic number of women elected this year reflects the critical contributions that they are making in many fields of science, as well as a concerted effort by our Academy to recognize those contributions and the essential value of increasing diversity in our ranks," said National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt. "I am pleased to welcome all of our new members, and I look forward to engaging with them in the work of the National Academies."

Marisa Carrasco, Julius Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science and Collegiate Professor at NYU, was elected as an international member (Mexico). She investigates the relationship between the psychological and physiological mechanisms involved in visual perception and attention, using a variety of methods from cognitive neuroscience. Her recent research centers on the differential effects on performance, sensory representations, brain regions, and mechanisms mediating the deployment of endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) attention. Carrasco has a licentiate in psychology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and masters and doctoral degrees in psychology from Princeton University.

Yann LeCun, Silver Professor of Computer Science at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, founding director of and a professor at NYU's Center for Data Science, and vice president and chief artificial intelligence scientist at Facebook, has made breakthroughs in AI and, specifically, deep learning and convolutional neural networks. LeCun, an affiliated faculty member at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering and an associated faculty member in NYU's Center for Neural Science, received a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the Ecole Superieure d'Ingénieur en Electrotechnique et Electronique and a Ph.D. in computer science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie.

Kathryn J. Moore, Jean and David Blechman Professor of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine, studies how the immune system contributes to the development of atherosclerosis and how genes that control cholesterol deposition in blood vessels might be manipulated by experimental therapies. She also recently engendered notice for her study showing that heart attacks, by changing the immune system, may accelerate the development of breast cancer. She earned a Ph.D. from McGill University and did her post-doctoral training at the Lipid Metabolism Unit of Harvard Medical School.

Adam Przeworski, a professor emeritus in NYU's Department of Politics, studies the interplay among democracy, capitalism, and economic development. The author of States and Markets: A Primer In Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2003), among other publications, he holds a masters degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Warsaw and a doctorate in political science from Northwestern University.

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EDITOR'S NOTE:

Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the world's foremost research universities and is a member of the selective Association of American Universities. NYU has degree-granting university campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai and has 11 other global academic sites, including London, Paris, Florence, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, and Accra. Through its numerous schools and colleges, NYU is a leader in conducting research and providing education in the arts and sciences, engineering, law, medicine, business, dentistry, education, nursing, the cinematic and performing arts, music and studio arts, public administration, social work, and professional studies, among other areas. For more, please visit http://www.nyu.edu.


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