PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

SueYeon Chung

SueYeon Chung is a physicist and AI researcher who studies how geometry shapes computation in brains and artificial neural networks. Raised in Seoul, she studied physics and mathematics at Cornell and earned a Ph.D. in applied physics at Harvard in 2017. Her work on perceptual manifolds links neural geometry to classification, and her career took her through MIT, Columbia, Flatiron and NYU. She received Klingenstein-Simons and Sloan Research Fellowships, returned to Harvard in 2025, and published 2026 research on neural geometry and task generalization. At Harvard, she is an assistant professor of physics and applied mathematics and an investigator at the Kempner Institute.

Works
59
Citations
1,110
h-index
12
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2010–2017

    From Seoul to Harvard

    Raised in Seoul, she earns physics and mathematics degrees at Cornell, spends an extra year as a research assistant in a Cornell physics lab, and comes to Harvard in 2010. She earns a Ph.D. in applied physics at Harvard in 2017, with Haim Sompolinsky as her primary advisor and Ryan P. Adams as co-advisor.

  2. 2018

    Classifying perceptual manifolds

    With Daniel D. Lee and Haim Sompolinsky, she coauthors *Classification and Geometry of General Perceptual Manifolds* in 2018. The paper develops a statistical mechanical theory for linear classification of manifolds formed by neural responses to varying object features.

  3. 2022

    From MIT to Flatiron and NYU

    At MIT, she serves as a Fellow in Computation in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; at Columbia University, she works as a postdoctoral researcher developing neural network models and learning rules inspired by neuroscience. In January 2022, she joins the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Neuroscience as an associate research scientist and project leader. In September 2022, she joins NYU’s Center for Neural Science as an assistant professor through a joint appointment.

  4. 2023

    Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship

    In 2023, she receives the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience. Her research group develops mathematical theories of neural population geometry and neural network and circuit models of brain functions.

  5. 2024

    Sloan Research Fellowship

    In 2024, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selects her as a Sloan Research Fellow.

  6. Since July 2025

    Harvard faculty and generalization

    In July 2025, she joins Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Physics with a joint appointment in Applied Mathematics and as a Center for Brain Science faculty member. In July 2025, she also begins her appointment as an Institute Investigator at the Kempner Institute; her research develops theories of neural representations and artificial neural network models with biologically inspired learning rules. In February 2026, she and collaborators publish *Neural population geometry and optimal coding of tasks with shared latent structure* in *Nature Neuroscience*, showing that neural geometry predicts generalization across tasks in artificial networks and biological data from rats and monkeys.

Career

  1. Since 2025Harvard UniversityAssistant Professor of Physics with a joint appointment in Applied Mathematics
  2. Since 2025Harvard UniversityFaculty Member, Center for Brain Science
  3. Since 2025Harvard UniversityInstitute Investigator, Kempner Institute
  4. From 2022Simons FoundationAssociate Research Scientist and Project Leader, Center for Computational Neuroscience, Flatiron Institute
  5. From 2022New York UniversityAssistant Professor, Center for Neural Science
  6. Cornell UniversityResearch Assistant in a physics lab
  7. Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyFellow in Computation
  8. Columbia UniversityPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2017Harvard UniversityPhD in Applied Physics
  2. Cornell UniversityDegrees in Physics and Mathematics

From the biography.

Checked career sources: simonsfoundation.org.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Alumni profile: SueYeon Chung, S.M., Ph.D. ’17 seas.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Classification and Geometry of General Perceptual Manifolds | Phys. Rev. X journals.aps.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. SueYeon Chung and Alex Williams Join CCN as Project Leaders – Simons Foundation simonsfoundation.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Neuroscientist SueYeon Chung Awarded a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship – Simons Foundation simonsfoundation.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Leading Computational Neuroscientist SueYeon Chung to join Harvard’s Kempner Institute and FAS’ Center for Brain Science kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. SueYeon Chung - Kempner Institute kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. How the Brain and AI Reuse Old Knowledge in New Situations - Kempner Institute kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Neural population geometry and optimal coding of tasks with shared latent structure | Nature Neuroscience nature.com. Checked 27 October 2026.