MIT Senior Teresa Gao has been selected as one of 12 winners in the 2024 class of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship. After graduating next spring with her dual majors in computer science and engineering and brain and cognitive science, she will study augmentation and virtualization. Reality at Trinity College Dublin. Gao is the fifth MIT student to be named a Mitchell Scholar.
Mitchell Scholars are selected on the basis of academic achievement, leadership, and dedication to public service. The scholarship is named in honor of Senator George Mitchell’s contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process. This year, more than 300 American students have been approved to apply for prestigious fellowships sponsored by the Ireland-U.S. Alliance to fund his one-year graduate study in Ireland.
“Theresa’s outstanding achievements at the intersection of engineering, music and science communication make the Mitchell Scholarship in Ireland a perfect fit for her next step,” said Associate Dean of the Distinguished Fellowship in Career Advising and Professional Development. Kim Bennard said. “I’m proud that she represents her MIT there because she embodies the heart and hands of our teaching.”
Based in Provo, Utah, Gao is interested in developing artificial intelligence and autonomous agents. She has worked in a variety of fields, including psycholinguistics in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, social her robots for mental health in her lab for media, and machine learning architectures for biological imaging at the Broad Institute. I have been doing research on Currently, she is working on establishing cognitive benchmarks for her AI in her MIT Quest for Intelligence.
Gao’s love of science is matched by his passion for creativity and art. She hosts the educational radio program “Psycholochat: Where Neuroscience Meets Philosophy” on MIT campus radio station WMBR 88.1 FM, exploring topics in psychology, neuroscience and philosophy.
Completely self-taught on the viola, Gao won a very competitive seat in the MIT Chamber Music Society. She is also co-president of the Ribotones, a student group that performs music for inpatients and nursing home residents throughout the Greater Boston community, and she has competed with the MIT Bangla Dance Team. are co-starring.
Outside of the arts, Gao mentors fellow students at MIT through the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society, manages the logistics of MIT’s Computer Science Division’s annual Battlecode programming contest, and is a peer-supported anonymous campus textline. I volunteer at Lean On Me.
