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• IU Chancellor's Professor Robert Goldstone named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

IU Chancellor's Professor Robert Goldstone named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

• April 20, 2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An Indiana University Bloomington faculty member has been selected for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.

Robert L. Goldstone is a Chancellor's Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and a past director of the IU Cognitive Science Program.

"Professor Goldstone is among the world's foremost researchers and thought leaders in the field of cognitive science, and his investigations into our complex systems of reasoning, recognition, collective behavior and decision-making have led to major scholarly insights into how people learn, interact and organize with others," IU President Michael A. McRobbie said. "Indeed, over the last 25 years, he has been one of the most accomplished members of Indiana University's outstanding community of scholars, which is a distinguishing and essential characteristic of any world-class research university. His selection for membership in the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences is well-deserved, and we congratulate him on this honor."

One of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications and studies of policy, international affairs, the humanities, arts and education.

The 2016 class includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Wolf Prize; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; the Fields Medal; the Grammy Award; and the National Book Award. Academy members are scientists and mathematicians, social scientists, scholars of the humanities, artists and musicians, journalists, public affairs experts and leaders of businesses and cultural, philanthropic and education organizations.

"It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership," said Don Randel, chair of the academy's board of directors. "Their election affords us an invaluable opportunity to bring their expertise and knowledge to bear on some of the most significant challenges of our day. We look forward to engaging these new members in the work of the academy."

Goldstone's research focuses on concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, collective behavior and computational modeling of human cognition. He has developed neural network models that simultaneously learn new perceptual and conceptual representations and computational models of how groups of people compete for resources, cooperate to solve problems, exchange information and innovations, and form coalitions.

He has twice been awarded young investigator awards from the American Psychological Association and also received the Chase Memorial Award for Outstanding Young Researcher in Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the recipient of the 2000 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association and a 2004 Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

Goldstone is a fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Cognitive Science Society and the Association for Psychological Science. He received a bachelor's degree in cognitive science from Oberlin College in 1986, a master's degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989 and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1991.

IU alumni among the newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences include American classical pianist Jeremy Denk, who earned a master's degree in music from IU in 1993; and psychologist John Monahan, a member of the National Research Council, who earned a Ph.D. from IU in 1972. Philanthropist Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation, received an honorary degree from IU in 2014.

Past IU faculty members among this year's honorees are Grammy-winning violinist Kim Kashkashian and acclaimed poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Denk also formerly taught at IU.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780 by prominent figures in the American War of Independence, led by John Adams and James Bowdoin. It has elected leading "thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th century, and Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 20th century.

The new class will be inducted Oct. 8 in Cambridge, Mass.