PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michael J. Tarr

Also known as Michael Tarr

Michael J. Tarr is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies human visual perception and artificial vision systems. His 1999 research with Isabel Gauthier used unfamiliar objects called Greebles to examine how visual expertise changes activity in a brain region involved in recognizing faces. He co-founded Neon to select online video thumbnails in 2012, then coauthored the AI methods BrainSCUBA in 2023 and BraInCoRL in 2025. As of October 2026, he is the Kavčić-Moura University Professor of Cognitive and Brain Science, with appointments in psychology, the Neuroscience Institute and machine learning.

Works
287
Citations
16,960
h-index
59
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1980–1995

    Cornell, MIT and Brown

    He graduates from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1980 and completes a bachelor's degree in psychology at Cornell University in 1984. He earns a PhD in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, then teaches at Yale University for six years. In 1995, he joins Brown's Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences.

  2. 1999

    Greebles and face recognition

    In 1999, he and Isabel Gauthier are the primary authors of a Nature Neuroscience study of visual expertise. After participants learn to recognize unfamiliar objects called Greebles, fMRI shows activity in the right middle fusiform gyrus that resembles activity during human face recognition.

  3. 2003–2007

    Troland and Guggenheim awards

    He receives the National Academy of Sciences' Troland Research Award in 2003 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. His 2007 fellowship project concerns statistical models of human visual object recognition.

  4. 2009–2014

    CNBC and psychology leadership

    He joins Carnegie Mellon in 2009 to co-direct the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint center with the University of Pittsburgh. In January 2014, he becomes head of Carnegie Mellon's Department of Psychology, succeeding Michael Scheier.

  5. 2012

    Co-founding Neon

    In 2012, he co-founds Neon, a Carnegie Mellon startup that applies research on visual perception to online video thumbnails. As co-founder and senior technical adviser, he remains in Pittsburgh while the company moves to CMU's Silicon Valley campus. The team develops a software service that selects video frames to use as thumbnails.

  6. 2018

    A Kavčić-Moura professorship

    In February 2018, he becomes one of the first four recipients of Carnegie Mellon's Kavčić-Moura Professorships. The appointments provide sustained support for research where human life and technology meet.

  7. 2023

    BrainSCUBA describes visual cortex

    In 2023, he coauthors BrainSCUBA with Andrew F. Luo, Margaret M. Henderson and Leila Wehbe. The method combines a vision-language model with a pretrained large language model to generate captions for images predicted to activate individual fMRI voxels.

  8. 2025

    BraInCoRL predicts brain responses

    He coauthors the BraInCoRL paper in 2025, introducing a transformer model that predicts visual cortex responses from a few examples. The model handles new people and images without additional fine-tuning.

  9. As of October 2026

    NeuroAI at Carnegie Mellon

    As of October 2026, he is the Kavčić-Moura University Professor of Cognitive and Brain Science at Carnegie Mellon. His appointments include the Department of Psychology, the Neuroscience Institute and an affiliated professorship in machine learning. He studies the perception of objects and scenes, computational vision, and artificial vision systems.

Career

  1. NowCarnegie Mellon UniversityKavčić-Moura University Professor of Cognitive and Brain Science, Affiliated Professor, Machine Learning
  2. From 2012Neon (video thumbnail startup)Co-Founder, Senior Technical Adviser
  3. 1995–2009Brown UniversityFaculty Member
  4. 1990–1995Yale UniversityFaculty Member

Education

  1. 1984Cornell UniversityBachelor’s degree in psychology
  2. Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Michael J. Tarr - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. 06-132 (Guggenheim Fellows) archive2.news.brown.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. 98-154 (Face Recognition) archive2.news.brown.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Press Release: Michael J. Tarr To Head Carnegie Mellon's Department of Psychology - News - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Startup, Neon, Moves to Silicon Valley Campus - News - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Michael J. Tarr Named A Recipient of CMU's Kavčić-Moura Professorships - Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. [2310.04420] BrainSCUBA: Fine-Grained Natural Language Captions of Visual Cortex Selectivity arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. [2505.15813] Meta-Learning an In-Context Transformer Model of Human Higher Visual Cortex arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. CMU Builds on Its Strengths To Advance NeuroAI | Mellon College of Science cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. Michael J Tarr - Department of Psychology - Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.