PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nori Jacoby

Nori Jacoby is a cognitive scientist who combines machine learning with large online experiments to study how people perceive, create and share culture, and how humans and AI systems shape one another. He earned a PhD in computational neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2014, held postdoctoral posts at MIT, UC Berkeley and Columbia University, and led the Computational Auditory Perception Group at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt from 2018 to 2024. A coauthor of the 2020 NeurIPS oral paper "Gibbs Sampling with People," he was first author of a 2024 Nature Human Behaviour study of rhythm priors in 15 countries and coauthored a 2024 study showing that GPT models predict human sensory judgments. He joined Cornell's Department of Psychology in 2024, where he is an assistant professor and leads the Cornell Computational Cognition Lab, which studies human–AI hybrid societies.

Timeline

  1. 2000–2014

    Mathematics, then a neuroscience PhD

    He earns a BSc in mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2000 and an MS in mathematics there in 2003. In 2014 he completes a PhD in computational neuroscience at the university's Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, supervised by Naftali Tishby and Merav Ahissar.

  2. 2014–2018

    Postdocs at MIT, Berkeley, Columbia

    He is a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at MIT from 2014 to 2016, in Josh McDermott's Computational Audition Lab. In 2016 he holds a postdoctoral position in Tom Griffiths's Computational Cognitive Science Lab at UC Berkeley, and from 2016 to 2018 he is a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University's Center for Science and Society.

  3. 2018–2024

    Leading a Max Planck group

    From 2018 to 2024 he is research group leader of the Computational Auditory Perception Group at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt.

  4. 2020

    Gibbs Sampling with People

    In 2020, he coauthors the NeurIPS oral paper "Gibbs Sampling with People" with Peter Harrison, Raja Marjieh and colleagues. In the method, many participants take turns moving a slider along one stimulus dimension, so the chain of choices maps where a concept such as pleasantness lies in a stimulus space. The team demonstrates it on colors, musical chords, emotional prosody and faces.

  5. March 2024

    Rhythm priors across 15 countries

    In March 2024, Nature Human Behaviour publishes a study of rhythm priors with Jacoby as first author and Josh McDermott as senior author. Participants in 39 groups across 15 countries reproduce random seed rhythms, and every group shows a sparse prior with peaks at integer-ratio rhythms, though the weight of each ratio varies and often reflects local musical practices. The work grows out of a 2017 study by Jacoby and McDermott that compared listeners in the United States and the Tsimane' of Bolivia.

  6. September 2024

    Language models and sensory judgments

    In September 2024, Scientific Reports publishes "Large language models predict human sensory judgments across six modalities," which he coauthors with Raja Marjieh, Ilia Sucholutsky, Pol van Rijn and Thomas Griffiths. Pairwise similarity judgments elicited from GPT models correlate with human data across six psychophysical datasets and recover the color wheel and the pitch spiral.

  7. September 2024

    Joining Cornell psychology

    He joins Cornell's Department of Psychology as an assistant professor in 2024. In September 2024, Cornell reports an NSF fellowship for his project "Designing Smart Environments to Augment Collective Learning & Creativity," which develops algorithms to harness the intelligence of crowds with co-principal investigators at Princeton University, City University of New York and the University of California, Davis.

  8. As of October 2026

    Leading the CoCoCo Lab

    He is an assistant professor in Cornell's Department of Psychology, a field member in Computer Science, and principal investigator of the Cornell Computational Cognition Lab (CoCoCo), which also develops the PsyNet framework for online behavioral experiments. In April 2026, he presents to Cornell's AI seminar his large-scale social network experiments that integrate human participants with machine learning agents, covering creative search, creative writing and team-based vibe coding.

Career

  1. Since 2024Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor
  2. 2018–2024Max Planck SocietyResearch Group Leader
  3. From 2016University of California, BerkeleyPostdoctoral Researcher
  4. 2016–2018Columbia UniversityPresidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience
  5. 2014–2016Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2014Hebrew University of JerusalemPhD
  2. 2003Hebrew University of JerusalemMS
  3. 2000Hebrew University of JerusalemBSc

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Cornell University. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Cornell University. 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.
  3. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Cornell University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Cornell University. 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.

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 Nori Jacoby yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. New Faculty: Nori Jacoby | Department of Psychology psychology.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Nori Jacoby | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. NeurIPS Oral Gibbs Sampling with People neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Gibbs Sampling with People – Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik aesthetics.mpg.de. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries | Nature Human Behaviour nature.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Rhythm Diversity: Different Cultures Prefer Different Beat Patterns – Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik aesthetics.mpg.de. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Large language models predict human sensory judgments across six modalities - PMC ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Empowering online communities with NSF grant | Department of Psychology psychology.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Studying Human–AI Hybrid Societies through Large-Scale Experiments Involving Humans and AI Agents | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Cornell Computational Cognition Lab cococo-lab.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  11. Nori Jacoby | Department of Psychology psychology.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.