Official Story
Michael Landy received a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from Michigan in 1981. At Michigan he worked with John Holland, the great popularizer of genetic algorithms. Holland was also a co-author on one of the earliest simulations of a neural net (Rochester, Holland, Haibt and Duda, 1956) that attempted to simulate the cell-assembly theory of Donald Hebb. Michael was also inspired by Hebb's book, and his dissertation was an updated attempt to simulate cell-assembly theory in response to visual stimuli. Landy then moved to NYU as a programmer and then postdoc, becoming a faculty member in 1984, where he has remained ever since. Since 1996 he has been the Coordinator of the Program in Cognition & Perception (except during the occasional sabbatical).
Unofficial Story
Michael skipped a bunch of grades, mainly because he was good at math tests and became totally disruptive when bored in class (that arrogance apparently continues to this day; just look at his RateMyProfessor page). At the age of 14, his big brother and father decided it was time for Mikey to go to college (and avoid moving to Phoenix with his Mom). Needless to say, they didn't consult Mom. He skipped school and hitchhiked to neighboring Princeton to ask whether they would admit him, but admissions was over by then and they blew him off. Luckily, his father had a personal connection with the dean at Columbia and he was granted late acceptance to the engineering school. At Columbia, he went into computer science because he had been playing with the computers in his high school, which he had to himself since no one else there knew how to use them. Columbia decided to use his youth for marketing, leading to a bunch of annoying interviews and press, and some odd fan mail. One long-forgotten (and ignored) letter surfaced recently from a bag of memorabilia in the back of a closet: a letter inviting him to study under a certain R. E. Kalman. Pushing through undergraduate studies in 3 years, Michael arrived in Ann Arbor, away from family, at the ripe old age of 17. Needless to say, he wasn't remotely focused on his graduate studies. Rather, he hung out with undergraduates and did all the things that undergraduates did in those years (enough said). He spent much more of his time doing music-related things (as a DJ on the college station, putting on jazz concerts as a lighting person, sound person and promoter, and picking up jazz flute as an instrument) than he did on his thesis (that, fortunately, involved computer simulations that ran for a month straight before there was any analysis to do). His move to NYU was through random personal connections and was made so he could continue his flute studies with a teacher here. He only got the faculty position at NYU because the job wasn't filled the previous year by another protege of his boss. A major dispute with another professor almost led to a failure to make tenure; his tenure case was saved only when friendly colleagues interceded.