Education
Elman attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, then Harvard University, where he graduated in 1969. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.
Elman attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, then Harvard University, where he graduated in 1969. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.
He is a psycholinguist and pioneer in the field of neural networks. With Jay McClelland, Elman developed the TRACE model of speech perception in the mid-80s. TRACE remains a highly influential model that has stimulated a large body of empirical research.
In 1990, he introduced the Simple Recurrent neural network (aka "Elman network"), which is a widely used recurrent neural network that is capable of processing sequentially ordered stimuli.
Elman nets are used in a number of fields, including cognitive science, psychology, economics and physics, among many others In 1996, he co-authored (with Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark H Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett), the book Rethinking Innateness, which argues against a strong nativist (innate) view of development.
Elman is an Inaugural Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, and also was its President, from 1999-2000. He is founding Company-Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at University of California San Diego, and holds the Chancellor"s Associates Endowed Chair.
He was Dean of Social Sciences at University of California, San Diego from 2008 until June 2014.
Elman"s letter suggested that Biernacki"s criticism of the University of California, San Diego colleague constituted "harassment" and threatened Biernacki with censure, salary reduction or dismissal if he tried to publish his work. The Committee on Academic Freedom of the University of California, San Diego Academic Senate initiated an investigation of the letter. In May 2011, after hearing a report from the committee, the University of California, San Diego faculty senate expressed "grave concern" about the incident, which it deemed a violation of academic freedom.
The committee called on the administration to acknowledge and correct the situation.