Official Story
Eero received a BA in Physics from Harvard (1984), a Certificate of Advanced study in Math(s) from University of Cambridge (1986), and a MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT (1988/1993). He was an assistant professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1993 to 1996, and then moved to NYU as an assistant professor of Neural Science and Mathematics (later adding Psychology, and most recently, Data Science). Eero received an NSF CAREER award in 1996, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998, and became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2000. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008, and an associate member of the Canadian institute for Advanced Research in 2010. He has received two Outstanding Faculty awards from the NYU GSAS Graduate Student Council (2003/2011), two IEEE Best Journal Article awards (2009/2010) and a Sustained Impact Paper award (2016), an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for a method of measuring the perceptual quality of images (2015), and the Golden Brain Award from the Minerva Foundation, for fundamental contributions to visual neuroscience (2017). His group studies the representation and analysis of visual images in biological and machine systems.
Unofficial Story
Eero was born in Philadelphia, and initiated a complicated relationship with educational institutions by withdrawing from pre-school after two weeks. His childhood was dominated by two activities: building and/or breaking things (model airplanes, furniture, electrical devices, lawn mowers, etc), and playing music (clarinet and tenor sax). He also was armtwisted into leading roles in a sequence of musical stage productions from 5th to 9th grades - despite his abysmal acting skills, and acute stage fright, the school was desperate for boys that could carry a tune. He's quite sure that these early stage experiences are the only reason he has survived the public speaking aspect of faculty life. In 9th grade, he read a Scientific American issue about the brain, and found himself fascinated by the concept that orchestrated electrical signals could enable thought. Two years later, Paul Rozin (a close family friend from the Penn Psychology Department) helped arrange a summer job in Randy Gallistel's lab. Implanting electrodes in rats and running experiments to determine the strength of their desire for simulated reward was a fascinating, but somewhat surreal experience (made more tangible by a tendency to faint at the sight of blood). The following year he spent the summer at the Tanglewood Young Artists Orchestral program, reconsidering whether music might make a better choice of profession. As a Harvard freshman, Eero signed up for Intro Bio, but was disappointed to find after two weeks that it was mostly focused on memorizing the names of things. He dropped the course, thereby eliminating the option of a biology major. Psychology didn't seem physical enough, and math too abstract. Goldilocks-like, he landed on physics. College went quickly, as if in a dream, but punctuated by trauma - a severe eye injury after freshman year left him legally blind in one eye; sophomore year brought a round of pneumonia after one too many all-nighters; junior year he was on the brink of dropping out five weeks into the term when he was unable to decide which of the 12 classes he'd signed up for he would officially take (one of many indecision crises). Graduation came, along with a fellowship for a year's study abroad, and Eero went off to Cambridge to learn more math, play even more music, and row on the Cam. He returned home abruptly when his mother became ill again, and she passed away just after Thanksgiving. He stayed home the rest of the year to help his father and sister (and himself) to come to grips with the permanance of the unexpected change. But trauma brought opportunity, and he was rescued (again by Paul Rozin), who helped him arrange a research job with Alan Gelperin, John Hopfield, and David Tank at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Princeton. After returning to Cambridge for another year, Eero headed to MIT, where he settled in as the only member of Ted Adelson's newly formed research group. Working with Ted in those early years was exhilerating, culminating in a master's degree, but followed immediately by a complete loss of direction and crisis in confidence. He took a leave of absence to take a contracting job at Fidelity Investments, which was just what was needed to provide perspective on the joys of academic freedom and scientific reasoning, as well as paying off a pile of student loans. Summers working with David Heeger at NASA Ames Research Center provided a welcome change in scenery and some outdoor life. Eero stepped directly from his PhD into a faculty job in computer science at Penn (literally, teaching his first class 3 days after his thesis defense). He floundered for 2 years (no grants, no publications, diffuse research plans, heavy teaching load), but did manage to get married and buy (and renovate) a house, just before being lured (by Tony Movshon and Mike Landy) into applying for a faculty position at CNS/NYU. Moving from an engineering department to a science department, and from his home town to "The City" seemed fraught with risks, but his wife convinced him otherwise, and he has been grateful ever since.