PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Bernard Koch

Also known as Bernard J. Koch, Bernie

Bernard Koch is an assistant professor of sociology and data science at the University of Chicago whose work studies AI, data, and scientific evaluation. He earned a sociology PhD at UCLA in 2023 and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management from 2022 to 2024. His 2021 NeurIPS award-winning paper found that machine-learning communities increasingly relied on fewer datasets, often from a handful of elite institutions. In 2024, he and David Peterson traced AI benchmarking's history; Koch also wrote a 2025 TIME op-ed about AI evaluation and coauthored a 2026 study of automation in science. In July 2026, he taught a course on the future of social science at Tsinghua and spoke at Zhongguancun Academy.

Timeline

  1. 2021

    A NeurIPS datasets award

    In 2021, he and Emily Denton, Alex Hanna, and Jacob Gates Foster win NeurIPS’s Datasets & Benchmarks Best Paper Award for “Reduced, Reused and Recycled: The Life of a Dataset in Machine Learning Research.” Their study analyzes thousands of papers and finds that machine-learning communities increasingly use fewer datasets, often from a handful of elite institutions.

  2. 2022–2024

    A Kellogg postdoc

    From 2022 to 2024, he works as a postdoctoral research fellow at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

  3. 2023

    A UCLA sociology PhD

    He earns a sociology PhD at UCLA in 2023.

  4. 2024

    A history of AI benchmarks

    In 2024, he and David Peterson publish “From Protoscience to Epistemic Monoculture: How Benchmarking Set the Stage for the Deep Learning Revolution.” Their history traces a reconceptualization of AI progress to the late 1980s. It describes a U.S. government intervention during the 1980s that steers research toward measurable progress on military and commercial tasks.

  5. December 2025

    An AI evaluation op-ed

    In December 2025, he and David Peterson write a TIME op-ed about AI’s history of evaluation and what it can teach about the potential and limits of large language models.

  6. July 2026

    Teaching at Tsinghua

    In July 2026, he teaches “Social Science 2030,” a course on the future of social science at Tsinghua, and gives a talk at Zhongguancun Academy.

  7. By September 2026

    Automating scientific work

    In 2026, he coauthors “Remaking the landscape of scientific expertise: The emergent research program of total automation in science” with David Peterson, Ramya Natarajan, and Aaron Panofsky. The article examines efforts to automate literature synthesis, hypothesis generation, experiments, and evaluation of research results.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Chicago

    In January 2023, he announces plans to join the University of Chicago Sociology faculty. As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor of sociology and data science at the University of Chicago, with interests that include AI ethics, the science of science, and computational social science.

Career

  1. Since 2023University of ChicagoAssistant Professor of Sociology and Data Science
  2. 2026Tsinghua University
  3. Northwestern UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow

Education

  1. 2023University of California, Los AngelesPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Bernard Koch. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Chicago. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Chicago. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Chicago. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Bernard Koch yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Announcing the NeurIPS 2021 Award Recipients blog.neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Bernard J. Koch bernardjkoch.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Faculty & contributors | Science of Science | Kellogg School of Management kellogg.northwestern.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Bernard Koch | Masters in Computational Social Science macss.uchicago.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. [2404.06647] From Protoscience to Epistemic Monoculture: How Benchmarking Set the Stage for the Deep Learning Revolution arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. As AI Enters the Lab, Science Itself is Changing cla.purdue.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.