Vivienne Ming

Ming has spoken extensively on her academic struggles early in life, which eventually led her to leave college. After struggling with depression, suicide, and homelessness,^[3][4][5] she returned ten years later and received her Bachelor of Science degree with honors in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego in 2000.^[1][6] In 2016 she delivered the convocation at her alma mater.^[6] Ming earned her Master of Science degree in 2003 followed in 2006 by a PhD^[7] in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, in parallel with the computational neuroscience program at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.^{[8][9][10][2]}

After earning her PhD, Ming held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, which she later^[when?] joined as a research scientist and visiting scholar. Ming has been involved with various organizations that challenge poor education and health policy.^[11] She co-founded the think tank Socos, which consults on artificial intelligence, neuroscience and education reform.^[12][13] She has demonstrated that the metrics used in hiring have little influence on workplace success.^[12] She worked with Accenture on how they could train staff to be more creative.^[12]

Ming has published research on Artificial intelligence (AI) in education^[14] and created ”Muse”, a machine learning based tool for parents that recommends research-based activities to support young people's creativity, motivation, and emotional intelligence.^[15][16] She has led research showing that psychological constructs such as metacognition, socio-emotional competence, creativity, and curiosity significantly affect long-term life-outcomes such as health, productivity, educational attainment, and life satisfaction.^[17][18]