Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She is the Founder and Executive Chair of Socos Labs, a philanthropic “mad science” incubator, and the Chief Scientist at Possibility Sciences, where she is pioneering systems for hybrid human-machine collective intelligence.
Her career is defined by intellectual trespassing—ignoring the borders between neuroscience, economics, and AI to solve the problems that don’t fit into neat categories. After surviving homelessness in her early 20s, she returned to academia to complete her undergraduate degree in just 15 months. She went on to earn her PhD from Carnegie Mellon, publishing research in Nature and NeuroIPS, then holding joint appointments at Stanford and UC Berkeley.
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Vivienne was an early pioneer in using AI for human potential. As Chief Scientist of Gild, she built machine learning models trained on 122 million professionals to predict human capability. Today, through The Human Trust and Socos Labs, she has developed AI to treat diabetes and bipolar disorder, reunite orphan refugees, and help autistic children learn facial expressions.
She is the author of the upcoming book Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All The Answers, Build Better People (March 2026). A transgender woman and fierce advocate for inclusion, she speaks frequently on the “Tax on Being Different” and the economic cost of discrimination.
Affiliations
- Founder & Executive Chair, Socos Labs, The Human Trust
- Chief Scientist, Possibility Sciences
- Academic: Chair, UC Berkeley Neurotech Collider Hub; Prof (Hon), UCL Global Business School for Health, Advisory Board, UCSD
- Board Director: RFK Human Rights, Optoceutics, Dionysus Health (co-Founder)