I research ways in which the tools and perspective from theoretical physics can be applied to artificial intelligence. In particular, I co-authored of The Principles of Deep Learning Theory with Sho Yaida (also based on research in collaboration with Boris Hanin), which will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2022. (https://deeplearningtheory.com)
I am a Research Affiliate at the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT and also a Principal Researcher at Salesforce, having arrived via acquisition of Diffeo where I was Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. I am also an Affiliate of the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI).
I imagine that the Peekskill, New York location might be similar in setting, environment, and overall relationship to NYC as Princeton, NJ. So it might be worth talking to people who’ve spent time at one of the universities or institutes in Princeton in order to understand the relative merits of such a setting and how they felt about the balance there between rural and urban.
(My disclosure is that I have spent time in such a setting and found it overly isolating, to the point of struggling to get any useful work completed there, and ended up moving to live in NYC. However, from the content of this post, perhaps the MIRI staff have pretty different preferences with regard to ideal living and research environments as compared to me.)