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The Courant Institute of Mathematical Science is proud to announce the creation of the Jacob T. Schwartz Chaired Professorship in Computer Science. Yann LeCun, an esteemed scholar and leader of the AI revolution, has been appointed as the inaugural Chair.
The creation of the Jacob T. Schwartz Chair represents New York University’s commitment to computer science, its scholarship and teaching. Jacob T. Schwartz co-founded the university’s Computer Science Department alongside Martin Davis, Max Goldstein and others; he served as the department's first chairman from 1969 to 1977. Schwartz was an early and influential leader in the field—acting as director of DARPA's Information Science and Technology Office and chairman of the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems.

Yann LeCun, Silver Professor of Computer Science, upholds this legacy of innovation and service. LeCun is considered a godfather of deep learning, and his research on artificial neural networks created the bedrock of current AI technologies. In 2018, LeCun was honored with the Turing Award for his pioneering work alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the French Académie des Sciences. LeCun has served on the Courant Institute's faculty since 2003. He is also VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta.

The Jacob T. Schwartz Chair was made possible by the generous support of an anonymous donor. We are excited to see the positive impact it will have on our academic community.