{"id":853303,"date":"2026-06-08T18:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/853303\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T18:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:08:15","slug":"new-jersey-ai-pioneer-honored-at-liberty-science-centers-2026-genius-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/853303\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey AI Pioneer Honored at Liberty Science Center\u2019s 2026 Genius Gala"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine walking into a party where every person in the room is one of the smartest people you\u2019ll ever meet. Meanwhile, an R2-D2 robot weaves through a crowd of hundreds dressed in black-tie attire, beeping playfully.<\/p>\n

This was the scene at a recent event at Jersey City\u2019s Liberty Science Center (LSC), which hosted innovators and philanthropists for its 14th annual Genius Gala. <\/p>\n

The soir\u00e9e spotlighted Project Supernova, a $40-million, largely state-funded expansion<\/a> to LSC\u2019s facilities aimed at cementing New Jersey as a premier destination for science and technology. <\/p>\n

The transformation will bring a physics-themed miniature golf course, a river otter habitat, a goat playground, expanded animal exhibits, and other major upgrades to the center\u2019s planetarium and traveling exhibition spaces.<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s Genius award honorees included de-extinction paleogenomicist Beth Shapiro, rare disease researcher and physician Dr. David Fajgenbaum, and early AI pioneer Yann LeCun, who lives in Rumson.<\/p>\n

LeCun, the son of an aerospace engineer, grew up in the Paris suburbs before moving to New Jersey. He spent the early days of his career working in artificial intelligence at the former AT&T Bell Labs facility in Holmdel\u2014now Bell Works<\/a>\u2014where in the 1980s he and his colleagues helped pioneer convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that helped U.S. Postal Service systems read and sort handwritten ZIP codes. <\/p>\n

Formerly a chief AI scientist at Meta, LeCun is the founder of Paris-based AI startup Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs. Accepting his award, he offered a more reassuring view of AI. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to take your job\u2014it\u2019s going to change your job,\u201d he said. \u201c[\u2026] It\u2019s going to transform society, but it\u2019s not going to create mass unemployment.\u201d<\/p>\n

LSC\u2019s Project Supernova is expected to be completed in 2028.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Maplewood<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Spend a fun day noshing and shopping in this Essex County town.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Exterior<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The community gem has continually reinvented itself, evolving from silent films and vaudeville performances to concerts, musicals, children\u2019s plays and comedy shows.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Asbury<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Our picks for the best beaches at the Jersey Shore.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Smoked<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Garden State’s dining scene has it all\u2014from incredible Italian food to amazing Asian fare, French cuisine and more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine walking into a party where every person in the room is one of the smartest people you\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":853304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,113002,32521,348480,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-853303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-hudson-county","tag-jersey-city","tag-liberty-science-center","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116715828775105738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}