Academy Fellow

From Battling “Deep Sea Monsters” to Conserving Them

“Battling Deep Sea Monsters” sounds like a synopsis of the classic novel by French writer Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Instead, it’s something that could have been listed on the resume of Robert Cushman Murphy, a fellow of The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) more than a century ago.

Published May 6, 2025

By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager

Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Eagle – May 24, 1925 via newspapers.com.

Robert Cushman Murphy was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1887 to a family that had lived in the city for four generations. His father was a school principal, likely influencing his passion of learning. He frequented the Brooklyn Museum and got involved in his first bird study at the age of seven, when he studied a nest of chickadees. He eventually befriended the naturalist and explorer George K. Cherrie. An Iowa-born mechanical engineer by training, Cherrie later became a museum curator and was part of Theodore Roosevelt’s South American expedition in 1913-14.

“I have always been interested in natural science,” Murphy said in a 1925 article in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. “The first naturalist I ever knew well was George K. Cherrie. That was when I was only nine or ten years old and he will always remain a very great hero to me. I used to spend all my spare time at the Brooklyn Museum, and Mr. Cherrie’s friendship did much to stimulate me.”

An Expedition to the Subantarctic

Murphy went on to earn an undergraduate degree from Brown University. Upon graduating in 1911, he was appointed curator of birds and mammals at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The following year he worked as a naturalist on a whaling ship for an expedition to the subantarctic.

“During its stop of almost four months for elephant seals on South Georgia Island, he obtained specimens of penguins, other birds, marine mammals, and plants, which were all to be deposited in the American Museum of Natural History,” according to Stony Brook University’s Special Collections and University Archives.

Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Eagle – May 24, 1925 via newspapers.com.

While certain practices around whaling are considered unsustainable to today’s standards, Murphy detailed the thrill of doing battle with “sea beasts”. In particular, he found the methods on the “old-fashioned” clipper ships to be the most exciting.

“A harpoon was planted in the whale and a small boat tied to it. In spite of the fact that you have three hundred fathoms of line ready to let out, if the whale dives, which it almost invariably does, it gives you none too comfortable a feeling to find the nose of the small boat suddenly awash,” Murphy recounted in that 1925 Brooklyn Eagle article.

His reputation was, in part, based on his physique, described as “a good deal over six foot” and “with dark hair and expressive, deep-set eyes.”

“He was dressed in tweed knickerbockers and looked much more like a college athlete than a scientist with an impressive list of degrees after his name,” the 1925 Brooklyn Eagle article reported. “Athletic qualification might be found quite as useful as scientific background in a profession which requires an ability to wrestle with recalcitrant whales and other deep-sea monsters.”

From the Caribbean to the Mediterranean

Many of Murphy’s scientific contributions are not well known, but nonetheless impactful. Upon returning from his whaling adventures, he went on to earn an advanced degree in zoology from Columbia University. He then became a curator for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). (The Academy and its affiliates at the time played a role in establishing the AMNH, which opened its doors in 1869.)

Murphy continued his globetrotting. In the coming years, he would take excursions to Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and other parts of the Caribbean, as well as the western Mediterranean and New Zealand. He published his first book Bird Islands of Peru in 1925 and his second book The Oceanic Birds of South America in 1936. The latter would win the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in natural history writing as well as the Brewster Medal from the American Ornithologists Union.

Murphy’s wife, Grace Emeline (Barstow) Murphy, was his partner in both his personal life and his professional pursuits. The duo worked together in the 1930s to catalog a collection of more than a quarter million bird specimens that had been accumulated by British zoologist Lionel Walter Rothschild. The collection was displayed at the AMNH.

During the 1912 whaling voyage, Robert sent frequent letters to his wife, which along with entries from his diary, served as the basis for his Logbook for Grace, published in 1947. Throughout his career, Robert Murphy published nearly 600 articles in both scientific journals and popular magazine press, including National Geographic and Scientific Monthly.

A Productive Retirement

Murphy formally retired from the AMNH in 1955 and remained active in an emeritus capacity. In 1960, he was part of a National Science Foundation-funded expedition through the Antarctic on “Glacier”, an icebreaker ship. In 1970, he returned to South Georgia Island, the place that jumpstarted his scientific career nearly 60 years prior.

Murphy published Fish-Shape Paumanok: Nature and Man on Long Island in 1962, “a charming little volume on the Long Island he knew so intimately, having walked the length and breadth of it from his early years,” according to American ornithologist and AMNH curator Dean Amadon. The book borrowed its name from “Strating from Paumanok,” a poem by fellow Long Islander, Walt Whitman. In 1967, he published A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat, which included a series of whaling photos from his 1912 voyage.

Later in his life, Murphy understood the detrimental environmental impact of whaling, and alongside Grace became involved with various conservation and preservation efforts. Robert became the first president of the Long Island chapter of the Nature Conservancy, while Grace founded Conservationists United for Long Island. Though his lawsuit against the government to stop spraying the chemical pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDT) did not gain adequate traction, it did help to set the stage for later successful efforts, such as those led by Silent Spring author Rachel Carson.

Despite holding degrees from two Ivy League universities, Murphy was perhaps most proud of his honorary doctorate from the University of San Marcos. The Lima, Peru-based university is the oldest in the western hemisphere.

A Lasting Legacy

Robert Cushman Murphy died in 1973, at the age of 85. With a strong work ethic until the day he died, he was known for “still driving sixty miles into New York City and back, over that terrifying Long Island Expressway,” wrote Dean Amadon, the American ornithologist and AMNH curator, in an in memoriam following Murphy’s death.

During his life, Murphy was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geographical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Explorers’ Club, and the Long Island Biological Association. He was elected a fellow of The New York Academy of Sciences, meaning that he was selected by active members for his scientific achievement.

Murphy’s legacy has been memorialized in various ways. He lived to see Trachurus murphyi, a fish species also known as the Chilean jack mackerel, named in his honor. Furthermore, Robert Cushman Murphy Junior High School in Stony Brook was named after him in 1969. Posthumously, Robert Cushman Murphy Peconic River County Park was named in his honor in 1987. At the time, it was the largest park in Suffolk County. The Murphys were both also elected to the Long Island Hall of Fame.

Both Robert and Grace Murphy made crucial contributions in the realm of conservation specifically and biological science more broadly. Nearly two and a half decades after Robert’s passing, Steve Englebright, a former New York State Assembly member representing Long Island, reflected on the lasting impact of the explorer once known for “battling deep sea monsters.”

“Robert Cushman Murphy was the greatest scientist and naturalist Long Island ever produced,” Englebright told The New York Times in 1998. “We have our first national parks directly because of Robert Cushman Murphy’s leadership.”

Also read: One of Early America’s Engineering Marvels

A Social Scientist and Social Critic

One of The New York Academy of Sciences early Fellows advanced anthropological understandings of Native tribes. Her social sciences background also extended into feminism and broader societal critiques.

Published March 6, 2025

By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager

Elsie Clews Parsons. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Elsie Clews Parsons was born to a prominent New York family in 1875. She earned a BA from the recently established Barnard College prior to completing her PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1899. The following year she married Herbert Parsons, a New York City lawyer also involved with politics, furthering her access to “the wealthy, social, and generally conservative circles of New York City.”

While she could have spent her life as an elite socialite, she instead pursued a rigorous career in the social sciences, and later in life championed feminism and pacificism that may have run counter to those conservative, social networks.

Early Sociological Works

After completing her PhD, Parsons returned to Barnard where she served as a sociology lecturer and a Hartley House Fellow. However, her time on the Barnard faculty was relatively short-lived as in 1905 the family moved to Washington D.C.

She published her first major work, The Family: An Ethnographical and Historical Outline, in 1906. This was a textbook for freshman sociology students that taught them the basic sociology of familial matters from “The Meaning of the Family in Evolution” to the economic and ethical dynamics amongst kin. It included a robust discussion about “trial marriage” which at the time was considered provocative, but likely played a part in the book’s successful sales.

Between 1913 and 1916, she published five pieces: Religious Chastity (1913), The Old Fashioned Woman (1913), Fear and Conventionality (1914), Social Freedom (1915), and Social Rule (1916). Because of the notoriety of her first book, she penned her two 1913 pieces under the pseudonym “John Main” to avoid jeopardizing her husband’s political career.

It was during this time that she was elected a fellow of The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy), meaning that she was selected by active members for her scientific achievement.

Anthropological Research

Parson developed an interest in anthropology after visiting the American Southwest with her husband. She began making frequent trips to Arizona and New Mexico to study the Hopi and Pueblo tribes, where she “recorded in meticulous detail data on social organization, religious practices, and folklore of the Southwest Indians.” She worked closely alongside Franz Boas, a prominent Columbia academic who has been dubbed “The Father of American Anthropology.”

Later in her career, she expanded her focus area to study tribes and cultures in the Great Plains, the Carolinas, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Publications from this era include The Social Organization of the Tewa of New Mexico (1929), Hopi and Zuni Ceremonialism (1933), Mitla: Town of the Souls (1936), Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), and Peguche (1945).

A Leader to the End

Parsons contributed to the intellectual discourse up until her death, serving as associate editor for the Journal of American Folklore between 1918 and 1941. She was president of the American Folklore Society (1918-1920), the American Ethnological Association (1923-1925), and the American Anthropological Association (1940-1941). Parson passed away in 1941 at the age of 66. Her Journal of a Feminist was published posthumously.

In the 1960s, the American Ethnological Society (AES) established the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize to not only recognize “the best graduate-student paper that engages with AES’s core commitments to combining innovative fieldwork with rich theoretical critique,” but to also carry on the legacy of this trailblazing scientist.

Also read: Celebrating Girls and Women in STEM

This is part of a series of articles featuring past Academy members across all eras.

Artificial Intelligence and Animal Group Behavior

By linking cognitive strategy, neural mechanisms, movement statistics, and artificial intelligence (AI) a team of interdisciplinary researchers are trying to better understand animal group behavior.

Published December 23, 2024

By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager

A bay-breasted warbler in Central Park. Image courtesy of Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A new research paper in the journal Scientific Reports explores ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can analyze and perhaps even predict animal behavior.

The paper, titled “Linking cognitive strategy, neural mechanism, and movement statistics in group foraging behaviors,” was authored by Rafal Urbaniak and Emily Mackevicius, both from the Basis Research Institute, and Marjorie Xie, a member of the first cohort for The New York Academy of Sciences’ AI and Society Fellowship Program.

For this project, the team developed a novel framework to analyze group foraging behavior in animals. The framework, which bridged insights from cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, and statistics, was tested with both simulated data and real-world datasets, including observations of birds foraging in mixed-species flocks.

“By translating between cognitive, neural, and statistical perspectives, the study aims to understand how animals make foraging decisions in social contexts, integrating internal preferences, social cues, and environmental factors,” says Mackevicius.

An Interdisciplinary Approach

Each of the paper’s three co-authors brought their own expertise to the project. Mackevicius, a co-founder and director of Basis Research Institute, holds a PhD in neuroscience from MIT where her dissertation examined how birds learn to sing. She advised this project, collected the data on the groups of birds, and assisted with analytical work. Her contributions built upon her postdoctoral work studying memory-expert birds in the Aronov lab at Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.

Xie, who holds a PhD in neurobiology and behavior from Columbia University, brought her expertise in computational modeling, neuroscience, and animal behavior. Building on a neurobiological model of memory and planning in the avian brain, Xie worked along Mackevicius to design a cognitive model that would simulate communication strategies in birds.

“The cognitive model describes where a given bird chooses to move based on what features they value in their environment within a certain sight radius,” says Xie, who interned at Basis during her PhD studies. “To what extent does the bird value food versus being in close proximity to other birds versus information communicated by other birds?”

Bayesian Methods and Causal Probabilistic Programming

Urbaniak brought in his expertise in Bayesian methods and causal probabilistic programming. For the paper, he built all the statistical models and applied statistical inference tools to perform model identification.

“On the modeling side, the most exciting challenge for me was turning vague, qualitative theories about animal movement and motivations into precise, quantitative models. These models needed to capture a range of possible mechanisms, including inter-animal communication, in a way that would allow us to use relatively simple animal movement data with Bayesian inference to cast light on them,” says Urbaniak, who holds a PhD in logic and philosophy of mathematics from the University of Calgary, Canada and held previous positions at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and the University of Bristol, U.K.

For this project, the researchers set up video cameras in Central Park to analyze bird movements, which they then used to study behavior. In the paper, the researchers pointed out that birds are an appealing subject to study animal cognition within collaborative groups.

“Birds are highly intelligent and communicative, often operate in multi-agent or even multi-species groups, and occupy an impressively diverse range of ecosystems across the globe,” the researchers wrote in the paper’s introduction.

The paper built upon previous work within this realm, with the researchers writing that “[this work demonstrated] how abstract cognitive descriptions of multi-agent foraging behavior can be mapped to a biologically plausible neural network implementation and to a statistical model.”

Expanding their Research

For both Mackevicius and Xie, this project enabled them to expand their research from studying individual birds to groups of birds. They saw this as an opportunity to “scale up” their previous work to better understand how cognition differs within a group context. Since the paper was published in September, Mackevicius has applied a similar methodology to study NYC’s infamous rats, and she sees potential for extending this work even further.

“This research has broad implications not just for neuroscience and animal cognition but also for fields like artificial intelligence, where multi-agent decision-making is a central challenge,” Mackevicius wrote for the Springer Nature blog. “The ability to infer cognitive strategies from observed behavior, particularly in group contexts, is a crucial step toward designing more sophisticated AI systems.”

Xie says she “learned many skills on the spot” throughout the project, including reinforcement learning (an AI framework) and statistical inference. For her, it was especially rewarding to observe how all these small pieces shaped the bigger picture.

“This work inspires me to think about how we apply these tools to reason about human behavior in group settings such as team sports, crowds in public spaces, and traffic in urban environments,” says Xie. “In crowds, humans may set aside their individual agency and operate on heuristics such as following the flow of the crowd or moving towards unoccupied space. The balance between pursuing individual needs and cooperating with others is a fascinating phenomenon we have yet to understand.”

The AI and Society Fellowship is a collaboration with Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. For more info, click here.

Basis AI is currently seeking Research Interns for 2025. For more info, click here.

Have We Passed the Turing Test, and Should We Really be Trying?

The 70th anniversary of Turing’s death invites us to ponder: can we imagine AI models that will do well on the Turing test?

Published August 22, 2024

By Nitin Verma, PhD
AI & Society Fellow

Alan Turing (1912-1954) in 1936 at Princeton University.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Alan Turing is perhaps best remembered by many as the cryptography genius who led the British effort to break the German Enigma codes during WWII. His efforts provided crucial information about German troop movements and helped bring the war to an end.

2024 has been a noteworthy year in the story of Turing’s life as June 7th marked 70 years since his tragic death in 1954. But four years before that—in 1950—he kickstarted a revolution in digital computing by posing the question “can machines think?” and proposing an “imitation game” to answer it.

While this quest has been the holy grail for theoretical computer scientists since the publication of Turing’s 1950 paper, the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 has brought the question to the center stage of global conversation.

In his landmark 1950 paper, Turing predicted that: “[by about the year 2000] it will be possible to programme computers… [that] play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent. chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.” (p. 442). By “right identification”, Turing meant accurately distinguishing between human-generated and computer-generated text responses.

This “imitation game” eventually came to be known as the Turing test of machine intelligence. It is designed to determine whether a computer can successfully imitate a human to the point that a human interacting with it would be unable to tell the difference.

We’re much past the year 2000: Are we there yet?

In 2022, Google let go of Blake Lemoine, a software engineer who had publicly claimed that the company’s LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) program had attained sentience. Since then, the closest we’ve come to seeing Turing’s prediction come true is, perhaps, GPT-4, deepfakes, and OpenAI’s “Sora” text-to-video model that can churn out highly realistic video clips from mere text prompts.

Some researchers argue that LLMs (Large Language Models) such as GPT-4 do not yet pass the Turing test. Yet some others have flipped the script and argued that LLMs offer a way to assess human intelligence by positing a reverse Turing Test—i.e., what do our conversational interactions with LLMs reveal about our own intelligence?

Turing himself made a noteworthy remark about the imitation game in the same 1950 paper: “… we are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well.” (Emphasis mine; p. 436).

Would Turing have imagined the current crop of generative AI models such as GPT-4 as ‘machines’ capable of “doing well” on the Turing test? I believe so, but we’re not quite there, yet. As an information scientist, I believe that in 2024 AI has come closer than ever to passing the Turing test.

If we’re not there yet, then should we strive to get there?

As with any other technology ever invented, as much as Turing may have only been thinking of the public good, there is always the potential for unforeseen consequences.

Technologies such as deepfake apps and conversational agents such as ChatGPT still need human creativity to be useful and usable. But still, the advanced AI that powers these technologies carries the potential of passing the Turing test. That potential portends a range of consequences for society that deserve our serious attention.

Leading scholars have already warned about the consequences of the ability of “fake” information to fuel distrust in public institutions including the judicial system and national security. The upheaval in the public imagination caused by ChatGPT even prompted US President Biden to issue an Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI in the fall of 2023.

We’ll never know what Turing would have made of the spurt of AI advances in light of his own foundational work in theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. His untimely death at the young age of 41 deprived the world of one of the greatest minds of the 20^th century and the still more extraordinary achievements he could have made.

But it’s clear that the advances and use of AI technology have brought society to a turning point that he anticipated in his seminal works.

It remains difficult to say when—or whether—machines will truly surpass human-level intelligence. But more than 70 years after Turing’s death we are at a point where we can imagine AI agents that will do well on the Turing test. And if we can imagine it, we can someday build it too.

Passing a challenging test can be seen as a marker of progress. But would we truly rejoice in having our AI pass the Turing test, or some other benchmark of human–machine indistinguishability?

Using AI and Neuroscience to Transform Mental Health

With a deep appreciation for the liberal arts, neuroscientist Marjorie Xie is developing AI systems to facilitate the treatment of mental health conditions and improve access to care.

Published May 8, 2024

By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager

As the daughter of a telecommunications professional and a software engineer, it may come as no surprise that Marjorie Xie was destined to pursue a career in STEM. What was less predictable was her journey through the field of artificial intelligence because of her liberal arts background.

From the City of Light to the Emerald City

Marjorie Xie, a member of the inaugural cohort of the AI and Society Fellowship, a collaboration between The New York Academy of Sciences and Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, was born in Paris, France. Her parents, who grew up in Beijing, China, came to the City of Light to pursue their graduate studies, and they instilled in their daughter an appreciation for STEM as well as a strong work ethic.

The family moved to Seattle, Washington in 1995 when her father took a job with Microsoft. He was among the team of software engineers who developed the Windows operating system and the Internet Explorer web browser. Growing up, her father encouraged her to understand how computers work and even to learn some basic coding.

“Perhaps from his perspective, these skills were just as important as knowing how to read,” said Xie. “He emphasized to me; you want to be in control of the technology instead of letting technology control you.”

Xie’s parents gifted her a set of DK Encyclopedias as a child, her first serious exposure to science, which inspired her to take “field trips” into her backyard to collect and analyze samples. While her parents instilled in her an appreciation for science and technology, Xie admits her STEM classes were difficult and she had to work hard to understand the complexities. She said she was easily intimated by math growing up, but certain teachers helped her reframe her purpose in the classroom.

“My linear algebra teacher in college was extremely skilled at communicating abstract concepts and created a supportive learning environment – being a math student was no longer about knowing all the answers and avoiding mistakes,” she said. “It was about learning a new language of thought and exploring meaningful ways to use it. With this new perspective, I felt empowered to raise my hand and ask basic questions.”

She also loved reading and excelled in courses like philosophy, literature, and history, which gave her a deep appreciation for the humanities and would lay the groundwork for her future course of studies. Xie designed her own major in computational neuroscience at Princeton University, with her studies bringing in elements of philosophy, literature, and history.

“Throughout college, the task of choosing a major created a lot of tension within me between STEM and the humanities,” said Xie. “Designing my own major was a way of resolving this tension within the constraints of the academic system in which I was operating.”

She then pursued her PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, where she used AI tools to build interpretable models of neural systems in the brain.

A Deep Dive into the Science of Artificial and Biological Intelligence

Xie worked in Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience where she studied alongside physicists and used AI to understand how nervous systems work. Much of her work is based on the research of the late neuroscientist David Marr who explained information-processing systems at three levels: computation (what the system does), algorithm (how it does it), and implementation (what substrates are used).

“We were essentially using AI tools – specifically neural networks – as a language for describing the cerebellum at all of Marr’s levels,” said Xie. “A lot of the work understanding how the cerebellar architecture works came down to understanding the mathematics of neural networks. An equally important part was ensuring that the components of the model be mapped onto biologically meaningful phenomena that could be measured in animal behavior experiments.”

Her dissertation focused on the cerebellum, the region of the brain used during motor control, coordination, and the processing of language and emotions. She said the neural architecture of the cerebellum is “evolutionarily conserved” meaning it can be observed across many species, yet scientists don’t know exactly what it does.

“The mathematically beautiful work from Marr-Albus in the 1970s played a big role in starting a whole movement of modeling brain systems with neural networks. We wanted to extend these theories to explain how cerebellum-like architecture could support a wide range of behaviors,” Xie said.

As a computational neuroscientist, Xie learned how to map ideas between the math world and the natural world. She attributes her PhD advisor, Ashok Litwin-Kumar, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, for playing a critical role in her development of this skill.

“Even though my current research as a postdoc is less focused on the neural level, this skill is still my bread and butter. I am grateful for the countless hours Ashok spent with me at the whiteboard,” Xie said.

Joining a Community of Socially Responsible Researchers

After completing her PhD, Xie interned with Basis Research Institute, where she developed models of avian cognition and social behavior. It was here that her mentor, Emily Mackevicius, co-founder and director at Basis, encouraged her to apply to the AI and Society Fellowship.

The Fellowship has enabled Xie to continue growing professionally through opportunities such as collaborations with research labs, the winter academic sessions at Arizona State, the Academy’s weekly AI and Society seminars, and by working with a cohort of like-minded scholars across diverse backgrounds, including the other two AI and Society Fellows Akuadasuo Ezenyilimba and Nitin Verma.

During the Fellowship, her interest in combining neuroscience and AI with mental health led her to develop research collaborations at Mt. Sinai Center for Computational Psychiatry. With the labs of Angela Radulescu and Xiaosi Gu, Xie is building computational models to understand causal relationships between attention and mood, with the goal of developing tools that will enable those with medical conditions like ADHD or bipolar disorder to better regulate their emotional states.

“The process of finding the right treatment can be a very trial-and-error based process,” said Xie. “When treatments work, we don’t necessarily know why they work. When they fail, we may not know why they fail. I’m interested in how AI, combined with a scientific understanding of the mind and brain, can facilitate the diagnosis and treatment process and respect its dynamic nature.”

Challenged to Look Beyond the Science

Xie says the Academy and Arizona State University communities have challenged her to venture beyond her role as a scientist and to think like a designer and as a public steward. This means thinking about AI from the perspective of stakeholders and engaging them in the decision-making process.

“Even the question of who are the stakeholders and what they care about requires careful investigation,” Xie said. “For whom am I building AI tools? What do these populations value and need? How can they be empowered and participate in decision-making effectively?”

More broadly, she considers what systems of accountability need to be in place to ensure that AI technology effectively serves the public. As a case study, Xie points to mainstream social media platforms that were designed to maximize user engagement, however the proxies they used for engagement have led to harmful effects such as addiction and increased polarization of beliefs.

She is also mindful that problems in mental health span multiple levels – biological, psychological, social, economic, and political.

“A big question on my mind is, what are the biggest public health needs around mental health and how can computational psychiatry and AI best support those needs?” Xie asked.

Xie hopes to explore these questions through avenues such as journalism and entrepreneurship. She wants to integrate various perspectives gained from lived experience.

“I want to see the world through the eyes of people experiencing mental health challenges and from providers of care. I want to be on the front lines of our mental health crises,” said Xie.

More than a Scientist

Outside of work, Xie serves as a resident fellow at the International House in New York City, where she organizes events to build community amongst a diverse group of graduate students from across the globe. Her curiosity about cultures around the world led her to visit a mosque for the first time, with Muslim residents from I-House, and to participate in Ramadan celebrations.

“That experience was deeply satisfying.” Xie said, “It compels me to get to know my neighbors even better.”

Xie starts her day by hitting the pool at 6:00 each morning with the U.S. Masters Swimming team at Columbia University. She approaches swimming differently now than when she was younger and competed competitively in an environment where she felt there was too much emphasis on living up to the expectations of others. Instead, she now looks at it as an opportunity to grow.

“Now, it’s about engaging in a continual process of learning,” she said. “Being around faster swimmers helps me learn through observation. It’s about being deliberate, exercising my autonomy to set my own goals instead of meeting other people’s expectations. It’s about giving my full attention to the present task, welcoming challenges, and approaching each challenge with openness and curiosity.”

Read about the other AI and Society Fellows:

Applying Human Computer Interaction to Brain Injuries

With an appreciation for the value of education and an athlete’s work ethic, Akuadasuo Ezenyilimba brings a unique perspective to her research.

Published April 19, 2024

By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager

Athletes, military personnel, and others who endure traumatic brain injuries (TBI) may experience improved outcomes during the rehabilitation process thanks to research by a Fellow with Arizona State University and The New York Academy of Sciences.

Akuadasuo Ezenyilimba, a member of the inaugural cohort of the Academy’s AI and Society Fellowship, conducts research that aims to improve both the quality and the accessibility of TBI care by using human computer interaction. For Ezenyilimba, her interest in this research and STEM more broadly can be traced back to her upbringing in upstate New York.

Instilled with the Value of Education

Growing up in Rochester, New York, Ezenyilimba’s parents instilled in her, and her three younger siblings, the value of education and hard work. Her father, Matthew, migrated to the United States from Nigeria and spent his career in chemistry, while her mother, Kelley, grew up in Akron, Ohio and worked in accounting and insurance. Akuadasuo Ezenyilimba remembers competing as a 6-year-old with her younger sister in various activities pertaining to their after-school studies.

“Both my mother and father placed a strong emphasis on STEM-related education for all of us growing up and I believe that helped to shape us into the individuals we are today, and a big reason for the educational and career paths we all have taken,” said Ezenyilimba.

This competitive spirit also occurred outside of academics. Ezenyilimba competed as a hammer, weight, and discus thrower on the track and field team at La Cueva High School in New Mexico. An accomplished student athlete, Ezenyilimba was a discus state champion her senior year, and was back-to-back City Champion in discus as a junior and senior.

Her athletic prowess landed her a spot on the women’s track and field team as an undergraduate at New Mexico State University, where she competed in the discus and hammer throw. Off the field, she majored in psychology, which was her first step onto a professional path that would involve studying the human brain.

Studying the Brain

After completing her BS in psychology, Ezenyilimba went on to earn a MS in applied psychology from Sacred Heart University while throwing weight for the women’s track and field team, and then went on to earn a MS in human systems engineering from Arizona State University. She then pursued her PhD in human systems engineering at Arizona State, where her dissertation research focused on mild TBI and human computer interaction in regard to executive function rehabilitation. As a doctoral student, she participated in the National Science Foundation’s Research Traineeship Program.

“My dissertation focused on prototype of a wireframe I developed for a web-based application for mild traumatic brain injury rehabilitation when time, finance, insurance, or knowledge are potential constraints,” said Ezenyilimba. “The application is called Ụbụrụ.”

As part of her participation in the AI and Society Fellowship, she splits her time between Tempe, Arizona and New York. Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society partnered with the Academy for this Fellowship.

Understanding the Societal Impacts of AI

The Fellowship has provided Ezenyilimba the opportunity to consider the societal dimensions of AI and how that might be applied to her own research. In particular, she is mindful of the potential negative impact AI can have on marginalized communities if members of those communities are not included in the development of the technology.

“It is important to ensure everyone, regardless of background, is considered,” said Ezenyilimba. “We cannot overlook the history of distrust that has impacted marginalized communities when new innovations or changes do not properly consider them.”

Her participation in the Fellowship has enabled her to build and foster relationships with other professionals doing work related to TBI and AI. She also collaborates with her fellow cohort postdocs in brainstorming new ways to address the topic of AI in society.

“As a Fellow I have also been able to develop my skills through various professional workshops that I feel have helped make me more equipped and competitive as a researcher,” she said.

Looking Ahead

Ezenyilimba will continue advancing her research on TBI. Through serious gamification, she looks at how to lessen the negative context that can be associated with rehabilitation and how to better enhance the overall user experience.

“My research looks at how to increase accessibility to relevant care and ensure that everyone who needs it is equipped with the necessary knowledge to take control of their rehabilitation journey whether that be an athlete, military personnel, or a civilian,” she said.

Going forward she wants to continue contributing to TBI rehabilitation as well as telehealth with an emphasis on human factors and user experience. She also wants to be a part of an initiative that ensures accessibility to and trust in telehealth, so everyone is capable of being equipped with the necessary tools.

Outside of her professional work, Ezenyilimba enjoys listening to music and attending concerts with family and friends. Some of her favorite artists include Victoria Monet and Coco Jones. She is also getting back into the gym and focusing on weightlifting, harkening back to her days as a track and field student-athlete.

Like many, Ezenyilimba has concerns about the potential misuses of AI by bad actors, but she also sees potential in the positive applications if the proper inputs are considered during the development process.

“I think a promising aspect of AI is the limitless possibilities that we have with it. With AI, when properly used, we can utilize it to overcome potential biases that are innate to humans and utilize AI to address the needs of the vast majority in an inclusive manner,” she said.

Read about the other AI and Society Fellows:

Lost in Translation

A postdoc presents his researcher and poster to conference attendees.

The Underrecognized Challenges of Non-Native Postdocs in the English Scientific Wonderland

Published September 19, 2023

By Andrew Chang, PhD
Academy Contributor

Andrew Chang explaining his research to colleagues at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in Tokyo in August 2023. One is from Hong Kong, previously trained in UK, Germany, and Taiwan, now a postdoc in Japan. And the other is from Korea, previously trained in Germany, the UK, and the US, currently a postdoc in Germany. We communicated and chatted in English. Photo credit: ICMPC17 (*https://jsmpc.org/ICMPC17/*.)

Scientific communication has transcended borders, yet scientists often encounter significant language barriers.

English, hailed as the universal standard language of science, grants a significant advantage to native speakers. For non-native scientists, bridging this gap requires extensive preparation, and this journey can be isolating and anxiety-inducing, particularly for early-career postdoctoral researchers.

As a Taiwanese, Mandarin was my sole mode of communication until I embarked on my Ph.D. journey in Canada. While I was in Taiwan, English had only served as a tool for test-taking and reading imported textbooks.

My first semester in Canada proved to be an all-encompassing experience. Beyond adapting to English-based coursework, acclimatizing to the rapid and colloquial conversations of my peers presented a considerable hurdle. I had to familiarize myself with the natural flow of conversations, replete with slang and cultural references I had never encountered in a classroom in Taiwan.

Moreover, I lacked common ground with most Canadians/Americans, as I wasn’t familiar with their childhood pop culture, trivial facts, or internet memes. Despite being known for my sense of humor among my peers in Taiwan, I felt rather dull, unable to communicate beyond the realm of my science.

A Journey of Improved English Proficency

I vividly recall one evening when I was with fellow new graduate students. We were playing a party board game, and we drew a card that required my teammate and me to chat non-stop for a minute. Everyone anticipated the challenge it posed to me. I wore a reassuring smile, unwilling to disrupt the jovial atmosphere.

However, when the timer began, my partner launched into a rapid, uninterrupted monologue, denying me the opportunity to contribute. Although I knew she did it out of kindness to spare me embarrassment, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated and excluded. It seemed that overcoming the language barrier was an insurmountable expectation, and perhaps people would never recognize my talent or charisma because I couldn’t adequately express myself in a foreign language.

Over the past decade, my English proficiency has significantly improved since the start of my Ph.D. I’ve also assimilated Canadian/American social norms, enabling me to engage with my peers while maintaining my individuality.

Now, tools like ChatGPT make proofreading and editing, including this very article, much more manageable. However, while I can attain good results to a certain extent, the process remains time-consuming and mentally taxing. It can even lead to anxiety: If I fail to make a lasting impression within the first 30 seconds on someone I meet at a conference, particularly a leading scientist in my field, using highly fluent language to express my ideas, I risk losing their interest and potentially missing out on valuable career opportunities.

Diving into the Research

It wasn’t until recently that I stumbled upon a study surveying over 900 scientists, which revealed that many early-career non-native English-speaking scientists encounter similar obstacles. Non-native speakers spend approximately 91% more time reading a paper, 51% more time writing a paper, are 2.6 times more likely to face language-related rejection, encounter 12.5 times more language-related revisions, and invest 94% more time in preparing and practicing presentations.

Also, unfortunately, it appears that overcoming language barriers has largely been left to the efforts of non-native English speakers (Amano et al., 2023). These statistics, based on academia, likely underestimate the extent of the challenges, as many promising scientists may have already abandoned their research pursuits due to language-related frustration (Ortega, 2020).

One might argue that language barriers should not be considered excuses since individuals willingly choose to pursue scientific careers in the United States. However, the reality is that when one opts to become a scientist, they inevitably commit to English as their primary professional language throughout their career.

Exclusively in English

Given the United States’ predominant position across various scientific disciplines and the fact that all top-tier scientific journals, including Science and Nature, are published exclusively in English, achieving a successful scientific career within the current academic landscape without proficiency in English is an extremely daunting, if not impossible, task. (Note: Perhaps the sole exception is Nobel laureate Tu Youyou.) Scientific findings published in non-English journals are often, if not always, overlooked (Amano et al., 2016).

Indeed, choosing to pursue a postdoctoral position in a foreign country is a deliberate decision, driven by the belief that it will benefit our careers. This choice entails willingly embracing the additional challenges of overcoming not only language barriers but also navigating various other obstacles, including cultural differences (where I’m expected to network in an American way, likely with plenty of socializing over drinks), geographical distances from family and friends (with round-trip flights between New York and Taipei consistently exceeding $2,000, and a 12-hour time difference), dealing with laws, costs, and bureaucracy for obtaining and maintaining a visa and adapting to different daily routines (such as handling taxes, accessing healthcare, and obtaining a driver’s license).

However, as international scientists make greater sacrifices, the tolerance for failure diminishes, and it can evolve into unbearable stress.

Creating a Welcoming Environment for Non-Native Speakers

It is imperative for academia to recognize and address this issue to ensure that scientific progress remains unbiased and uninhibited by language barriers. Losing potential talent and dedicated international scientists due to these barriers is not only a disservice to individuals but also compromises the quality of scientific inquiry, potentially introducing biases rooted in the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of scientists.

Consider my research field of cognitive neuroscience of audition, which explores how the human brain perceives speech and music. Without contributions from international scientists, understanding the universal and culturally specific mechanisms underlying these perceptions would be severely limited and biased.

I extend my heartfelt appreciation to all my colleagues who have valued my contributions as a scientist and treated me equally, regardless of my occasionally peculiar English phrasing and my penchant for using amusing words. My hope is that other international scientists, especially those in the early stages of their careers, receive the support they need as they diligently work to overcome their barriers.

Ultimately, I aspire to witness a future in which language differences evolve from barriers into diverse perspectives that benefit the scientific community as a whole.

References

Amano T, et al. (2016). Languages are still a major barrier to global science. PLOS Biology, 14(12), e2000933. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000933
Amano T, et al. (2023). The manifold costs of being a non-native English speaker in science. PLOS Biology 21(7): e3002184. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002184
Henrich J, et al. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466(7302), 29-29. https://doi.org/10.1038/466029a
Ortega RP. (2020). Science’s English dominance hinders diversity—but the community can work toward change. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.abf4697

Andrew Chang, PhD, is a 2023 Leon Levy Scholar in Neuroscience.

This piece was originally published on the National Postdoctoral Association member blog as part of 2023 National Postdoc Appreciation Week. Current Academy Members can receive a 20% discount on a National Postdoctoral Association postdoc individual membership by emailing info@nyas.org and requesting the NPA membership discount code

Supporting International Postdocs: “How Can We Make This Place More Like Home?”

Thiago Arzua smiles while working in a lab

Every international postdoc has a multitude of interests, experiences, fears and dreams. Supporting them means taking into account all of those things, as opposed to just focusing on their research project.

Published September 18, 2023

By Thiago Arzua, PhD
Academy Contributor

Even after doing this countless times before, I was still nervous waiting outside my advisor’s office to talk about some experiments that did not work.

“What if they ask for more data than I have? What if I picked the wrong project?” These thoughts quickly devolve into something darker like: “Do I deserve to be here? Have I done enough?” My own internal imposter syndrome aside, my advisor’s response was comforting, “Cool, now we know that doesn’t work.” By contrast, his feedback made me realize that support is something we need.

International postdocs leave behind all of their support systems – family, friends, culture – in their home country and are often expected to adjust and start working right away. In reality, the support international scientists need is not unusual. Instead, it is something we do not realize we missed or needed until it is gone.

At the most fundamental level, supporting international postdocs looks like increasing support for all postdocs – temporary visa holders still represent a majority of postdocs in the U.S. It can be a bit of a conundrum. Being involved with science policy and advocacy for a while, a conversation with a political consultant once made that clear to me – “No matter how rational it is to fund international scientists, in some politicians’ minds, you are constituents – you are not voters”.

In that sense, support comes from peers, advisors, and the universities themselves fiercely advocating for their international researchers at every level. Internally and institutionally, this can also look like providing reliable advice and resources for international postdocs who need to navigate a new world of healthcare, taxes, visas, and more that people born and raised here in the United States take for granted.

At the core of this international postdoctoral account of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” are the basic things every postdoc needs, e.g. fair salaries, good working conditions, etc. At the top of this hierarchy, there is something less tangential – something that took me a while to realize I needed.

The U-Shaped Curve of Culture Shock

There is a famous U-shaped curve used to describe the emotional states of culture shock. In it, people go from a happy honeymoon stage, then through anxiety and adjustment periods, to finally get back up to an adapted stage. I went through that whole curve at least three times since leaving Brazil; once for every career level which came with a location change.

At every stage, the excitement for science was so front and center that I would lose track of the fact that everything was culturally changing around me. During those times, the support I needed had nothing to do with scientific research, but receiving an abundance of humanity and compassion from others.

Case in point, Thanksgiving of my first year in grad school, I was, in essence, adopted by the family of another student for the week. Years later, as a postdoc in a new city, almost as a repeat, other international postdocs and I were stranded by visas or simply by the weather and decided to host a potluck Christmas. So, when the next holiday season comes up, make sure to ask the international postdocs around you if they have plans, and if not, make a point to invite them.

Do Your Part to Make International Postdocs Feel Welcome

Having spaces where international postdocs can thrive means not just helping them adjust to the U.S., but fully acknowledging and incorporating their individualities in how they work, and above all, understanding that people cannot dissociate their personality from how they do research. In my case that has sometimes looked as simple as having my peers text me when they hear some news from Brazil.

It also means having an advisor who knows I enjoy science communication and connects me to opportunities I would not find by myself. Every international postdoc contains a multitude of interests, past experiences, current fears, and future dreams. Supporting them means supporting all of those and not just a finite research project.

At the end of the day, the question “So, do you think you’ll go back home?” is always present whether in talking to people or back in my internal voice. We all have our reasons either way, but in thinking critically about how my international peers can be supported while in the U.S., I think a much better question might be “How can we make this place a little more like home?”

Thiago Arzua, PhD is a 2023 Leon Levy Scholar in Neuroscience. You can learn more about him and the Leon Levy Scholars HERE.

This piece was originally published on the National Postdoctoral Association member blog as part of 2023 National Postdoc Appreciation Week. Current Academy Student Members can receive a 20% discount on a National Postdoctoral Association postdoc individual membership by emailing info@nyas.org and requesting the NPA membership discount code