Crossing the Atlantic to work for NorwAI

Maybe a small academic step for a professor of machine learning, but a big leap for an American family with a little girl: to cross an ocean to establish themselves in the north. Gavin William Taylor and his lawyer wife Allison have made the jump from the US Naval Academy in Maryland to NorwAI at NTNU as permanent settlers in Trondheim this summer.

Some jump?

-Yes, but I have always believed in testing your skills and knowledge in an unfamiliar environment – a quality that has proved invaluable when mid-life circumstances presented our transatlantic challenge: changing continents and moving to Europe, says Gavin W. Taylor.
Actually, that was a lesson learned when joining the faculty at the US Naval Academy after finishing his education in computer science at the prestigious Duke University in North Carolina.

-I like both to teach and to do research. The Naval Academy gave me both opportunities. And the military mission gives the Naval Academy a unique culturewhich was fun to learn to fit into and leverage. You know, we had students preparing for a career in the Navy or the Marine Corps, in uniform, men and women, with different types like those attracted by leadership, those by academia or the physical aspects, with sergeants yelling at them to work hard to be better – just like you see at the movies, says Gavin while smiling as he remembers back to his last job.

A taste of Norway

Gavin W. Taylor won recognition for his work in computer science specializing in machine learning at the Naval Academy, including reinforcement learning, adversarial vulnerabilities in neural networks, distributed optimization and representation learning for time-series data.

He spent over a decade as a professor at the US Naval Academy as a full professor from 2011 up to now. He directed work at the Center for High Performance Computing and won the campuswide Class of 1951 Civilian Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2022.

The United States Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis has graduated a number of famous people, including US President Jimmy Carter, astronauts such as Alan Shepard and Sunita Williams, as well as politicians such as John McCain and the legandary military admiral Chester Nimitz at WW2. A first sabbatical with the COMP group of NTNU in 2017-2018 left him wanting more. Gavin later returned as a visiting professor at NTNU's Norwegian Open AI Lab for another sabbatical year starting mid-2024.

The die was cast

-There were both pulls and pushes in the choice my wife and I made. One of the definite pulls was the upbringing of our daughter Annalise (5), says Gavin talking enthusiastically about «barnehager».

He finds Norwegian playgrounds really wonderful. It is much more playful than the American alternative that are more drillful. Their basic idea is protection and safety. Here, the children learn to handle risks and they learn to stay outside regardless weather for example. In their family blog «The Taylors Go North» in the newly published post «What we choose to care about», the couple pays a hommage to «barnehager»: The playgrounds in Trondheim are noticeably more creative, diverse, and fun than the playgrounds of the US, to the point that there had to be some systemic reason. Like all political decisions, the story of the Trondheim playgrounds must be viewed through the culture of the place. In Norway, there’s general agreement that a happy person is active, capable, and, most importantly, outside. You simply cannot be a happy Norwegian without time on a trail, a field, or a
coastline. The public interest is in raising children to be capable and interested in achieving that particular form of happiness. And of course there is also his Norwegian ancestors. His Wisconsin Grandmother has roots in counties in Eastern Norway – roots that he wants to explore when time is at hand.

Time for change

- The Naval Academy wanted me to stay, but I felt it was time for a change. Luckily my wife agreed. As a North Carolinian girl she has worked hard to learn to dress according to Norwegian standards which is really different from the climate on the southern east coast of the US, Gavin says, adding a quote from a professor friend about their midlife choice of moving to Norway:

You only live once. Why should you only live one life?

Researcher for three years

At NorwAI, he will be free of educational obligations for the first three years. However, he hope to pick up teaching later on. His academic NTNU CV tells a story of a dedicated researcher:

"Gavin W. Taylor has done research in neural network optimization, data poisoning, reinforcement learning, and representation learning. He is interested in basic research as well as its application in the military or other complex environments."

- My priority to start with is to build a new network. I have left people that funded me and trusted me. Here I must build a new collaborative network, apply for grants, meet new people and basicly have an open mind for opportunities, says Gavin.

Gavin looks forward to working on basic machine learning research with practical applications. He is interested in understanding machine learning better so that it can be applied in a variety of contexts. One direction for this research is in representation learning, which he has studied for both reinforcement learning and time-series. Another is in optimization, which often provides insight into why deep networks behave as they do. He also studies attacks on machine learning systems, such as through adversarial examples or data poisoning; these attacks often provide a perspective on how networks interact with their training data.

Much of Gavin’s research has been with the military, which he hopes to continue. He believes military research is especially interesting because they are motivated customers with precise needs and capabilities; something that almost, but not completely, meets their requirements is often of no use to them.

Skijumping!

At his last stay, his interest for sport drove him to work with the Norwegian and American Ski Jumping Teams. The two teams colloborate. They had data on how head and tail wind affected the jumpers. They asked if data confirmed the wind adaptation scores used in ski jumping.

- The wind adpation was defenceable, but arguably not optimised, says Gavin, proud to be appointed a coach with no responsibilities for the American skijumper team for a day – a postion that allowed him total access at the skijumping competitions at the World Championship in Trondheim last winter.

- But I had nothing to do with the suits, he assures us.

2026-08-25

By Rolf D. Svendsen