The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence (SQI), a research unit of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, brings together researchers from across MIT who combine their diverse expertise to understand intelligence through tightly coupled scientific investigation and rigorous engineering. These researchers engage in collaborative efforts across science, engineering, humanities, and other fields.
SQI seeks to understand how the brain generates intelligence and how it can be replicated in artificial systems to solve real-world problems that exceed the capabilities of current artificial intelligence technologies.
“At SQI, we are studying intelligence scientifically and in general, in the hope that by studying neuroscience and behavior in humans and animals, and also by studying what we can create as intelligent engineering artifacts, we will be able to understand the fundamental underlying principles of intelligence,” says Leslie Pack Kelbling, SQI director of research and Panasonic Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
“We at SQI believe that understanding human intelligence is one of the greatest open questions in science – along with the origin of the universe and our place in it, and the origin of life. The question of human intelligence has two parts: how it works, and where it comes from. If we understand them, we will see payoffs beyond our current imaginations,” says Jim DiCarlo, director of SQI and the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Discovering the Great Mysteries of the Mind
The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence was recently renamed in honor of a major gift from the Siegel Family Endowment, which is enabling further growth in SQI’s research and activities.
SQI efforts are organized around missions – long-term, collaborative projects that are rooted in fundamental questions about intelligence and supported by platforms – systems and software that enable new research and create benchmarking and testing interfaces.
“We have the only unit at MIT dedicated to building a scientific understanding of intelligence, working with researchers from across the institute,” says DiCarlo. “The past decade has seen remarkable progress in AI, but I believe the next decade will bring even greater advances in our understanding of human intelligence – advances that will reshape what we call AI. By supporting us, David Siegel, the Siegel Family Endowment and our other donors are demonstrating their confidence in our vision.”
Legacy of Interdisciplinary Support
In 2011, David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91 established the Siegel Family Endowment (SFE) to support organizations working at the intersection of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. SFE funds organizations addressing society’s most pressing challenges while supporting innovative civic and community leaders, social entrepreneurs, researchers, and others who advance this work. Siegel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. While in graduate school at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, he worked on robotics in the group of Tomas Lozano-Pérez – currently the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence – focusing on sensing and grasping. Later, he co-founded Two Sigma with the belief that innovative technology, AI and data science can help uncover value in the world’s data. Today, Two Sigma is transforming the financial services industry in investment management, venture capital, private equity, and real estate.
Siegel explains, “The human brain may be the most complex physical system in the universe, yet most people have not shown much interest in how it works. People take the brain for granted, yet wonder deeply about other scientific mysteries such as the origin of the universe. My fascination with the brain and its intersection with artificial intelligence stems from this. I don’t care whether there are commercial applications for this discovery; instead, we need to move forward with the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Research should be done like the research done in intelligence. As we learn more about human intelligence, I hope we will lay the groundwork not only for advancing artificial intelligence but also for expanding our thinking.
As a long-time champion of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM), a collaborative interdisciplinary research center funded by the National Science Foundation, and one of the first donors to the MIT Quest for Intelligence, David Siegel helped lay the foundation for the research underway today. In early 2024, he founded Open Athena, a nonprofit that bridges the gap between academic research and the cutting-edge of AI. Open Athena equips universities with elite AI and data engineering talent to accelerate important discoveries at scale. Siegel serves on the MIT Corporation Executive Committee, is vice president of the Scratch Foundation, and is a member of the Cornell Tech Council. He also serves on the boards of Re:Build Manufacturing, Khan Academy, NYC First, and Carnegie Hall.
A catalyst for global cooperation
MIT President Sally Kornbluth says, “Of all the donors and supporters whose generosity fueled Quest for Intelligence, none has been more important from the beginning than David Siegel. Without his long-term commitment to CBMM and his support of Quest, this community could never have been formed. There is every reason to think that David’s recent gift, which renames Quest for Intelligence and endows the Schwarzman College of “Computing also supports this initiative and will be even more powerful in shaping the future of the region.” She adds, “Thanks to generous donors – especially David Siegel’s transformative gift – SQI is poised to play an even more important role.”
SQI scientists and engineers are presenting their work widely, publishing papers, and developing new tools and technologies that are used in research institutions around the world, as they connect with colleagues across disciplines at the Institute and at universities and institutes around the world. DiCarlo explains, “We’re part of the Schwarzman College of Computing, which is the nexus between people interested in biology and different forms of intelligence, and people interested in AI. We’re working with other universities, nonprofits, and partners in industry — we can’t do this alone.”
“Fundamentally, we are not an AI effort. We are a human intelligence effort using the tools of engineering,” says DiCarlo. “It gives us very useful insights for human learning and health, among other things, but also gives us very useful tools for AI – including AI that will work much better in the human world.”
The entire SQI community of faculty, students, and staff is excited to face new challenges in efforts to understand the fundamental principles of intelligence.
New missions and next horizons
SQI research is broadening: mission principal investigators are integrating their efforts across areas of interest, increasing their impact on the field. In the coming months, the organization plans to launch a new social intelligence mission.
“We need to focus on problems that reflect natural and artificial intelligence—making sure that we’re evaluating new models on tasks that reflect what humans and other natural intelligences can do,” says Nick Roy, SQI director of systems engineering and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. He speculates that future research of the SQI will depend on asking the right questions: “[While] We are good at choosing tasks that test our computational models, and we are extremely good at choosing tasks that our models can already do, we need to be better at choosing tasks and benchmarks that also tell us something about natural intelligence,” he says.
On November 24, 2025, faculty, staff, students, and supporters gathered at an event called “The Next Horizon: Quest Future” to celebrate SQI’s next chapter. The event consisted of an afternoon research update, a panel discussion, and a poster session on new and developing research, and was attended by David Siegel, representatives of the Siegel Family Endowment, and various members of the MIT Corporation. Recordings of the program’s presentations are available on SQI’s YouTube channel.
