Kyunghyun Cho Named Glen de Vries Professor of Health Statistics

February 27, 2025

Kyunghyun Cho, Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, has been named as the recipient of the Glen de Vries Chair for Health Statistics by the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and its Director Russel Caflish. Established in 2014, the Glen de Vries Chair recognizes “a scholar who has attained wide renown and prominence for research and teaching in the area of Health Statistics, that shows promise for extraordinary advancement for scientific knowledge, and that fits Courant’s strategic needs for future growth and excellence in the field.” The position is appointed by the Institute Director, and the occupant of the chair is known as the Glen de Vries Professor of Health Statistics.

Glen de Vries was an entrepreneur in the field of medical science and pharmacology, co-founding and serving as co-CEO of Medidata Solutions. After completing his undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University, de Vries studied probabilistic algorithms at the Courant Institute. He was an early supporter of NYU’s Center for Data Science, endowing the Center’s first student fellowship in 2013. In October of 2021, de Vries took a suborbital flight into outer space aboard the Blue Origin NS-18. Tragically, he passed away just one month later in a small plane crash. 

Kyunghyun Cho is a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at New York University and an Executive Director of Frontier Research at the Prescient Design Team within Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED). He is also a CIFAR Fellow of Learning in Machines & Brains and an Associate Member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea. Professor Cho’s research at NYU has often focused on the intersection of technology and medicine. He serves as co-lead of the Computational Intelligence, Vision, and Robotics Lab, which includes students and faculty working on AI, machine learning, and a wide variety of applications, notably computer perception, natural language understanding, robotics, and healthcare. Professor Cho co-leads the Machine Learning for Language (ML²) team. He also works with Professor Krzysztof Geras in the Department of Radiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Professor Cho has written a blog post detailing his history with Glen de Vries and his reaction to this new positon, you can read that here.