Vivienne Ming
American theoretical neuroscientist and LGBT activist
Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming (born Evan Campbell Smith; October 19, 1971) is an American theoretical neuroscientist and artificial intelligence expert. She was named as one of the BBC 100 Women in 2017, and as one of the Financial Times' "LGBT leaders and allies today".
Early life and education
Ming has spoken extensively on her academic struggles early in life, which eventually led her to leave college. After struggling with depression, suicide, and homelessness, she returned ten years later and received her Bachelor of Science degree with honors in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego in 2000. In 2016 she delivered the convocation at her alma mater. Ming earned her Master of Science degree in 2003 followed in 2006 by a PhD in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, in parallel with the computational neuroscience program at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.
Career and research
After earning her PhD, Ming held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, which she later joined as a research scientist and visiting scholar. Ming has been involved with various organizations that challenge poor education and health policy. She co-founded the think tank Socos, which consults on artificial intelligence, neuroscience and education reform. She has demonstrated that the metrics used in hiring have little influence on workplace success.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vivienne Ming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.