Samuel Gershman.

Samuel Gershman

Professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science
Harvard University

Sam Gershman is professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. His lab studies the computational mechanisms of learning, memory, decision-making and perception. He is also affiliated with the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard. He is author of the 2021 book “What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition.”

Gershman received his B.A. in neuroscience and behavior from Columbia University in 2007 and his Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University in 2013. From 2013 to 2015 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the brain and cognitive sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Harvard University as assistant professor in 2015.

From this contributor

Illustration of a brain that is half organic texture and half geometric pattern.
The big picture

Trading places: What happens when neuroscience turns into machine learning, and machine learning turns into neuroscience?

By Samuel Gershman
23 March 2026 | 22 min read
Two scientists walk along interlocking rings.
Theoretical neuroscience

Breaking the barrier between theorists and experimentalists

By Samuel Gershman
24 February 2025 | 6 min read
Illustration of three figures cleaning data with brooms and brushes.
Open neuroscience and data-sharing

A README for open neuroscience

By Samuel Gershman
9 September 2024 | 5 min read

Selected articles

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