Professor George Cybenko Named AAAS Fellow

George Cybenko, the Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering (Photo by John Sherman)

AAAS is one of the world's largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals. The honor, bestowed upon members by their academic peers since 1874, recognizes researchers for scientifically and socially distinguished achievements throughout their careers.

Cybenko is being honored for key research contributions in artificial neural networks, distributed computing systems, and signal processing.

Cybenko's research applies mathematical and computational thinking to engineering, social, and computing problems. He proved that even a simple neural network can learn to mimic almost any pattern, if it has enough neurons. Known as the universal approximation theorem, it is viewed as a foundational part of modern artificial intelligence and neural network technology.

In 2020, Cybenko was nominated a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the first Dartmouth researcher to earn the honor. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, founding editor-in-chief of Computing in Science and Engineering, co-founder of Flowtraq, Inc., and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Cybenko was a co-recipient of the inaugural 2004 Dartmouth Faculty Mentoring Award, a recognition he cherishes. "My students' appreciation and recognition have been priceless to me," says Cybenko, who is now developing a mathematical and computational approach to artificial consciousness.