Sam Roweis, Associate Professor at NYU, Jumps to Death After Dispute with Wife

Suicide has reared its ugly head once more at New York University. Sam Roweis, 37, an associate professor at the school's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, jumped to his death last night from a 16th-floor balcony at his university-owned apartment, 1Washington Square Village, sources told the NY Post. Roweis had recently became a father to twins who were born premature. According to the NY Post, there was an argument of some kind over caring for them and "all of a sudden, in the middle of the argument, he jumped over the 16th-floor balcony."

The university is no stranger to deaths by suicide. NYU has suffered a number of tragic suicides in recent years. In 2003, two separate death leaps at the Bobst Library led to the installation of protective panels along the atrium's railing. Still, there was another death in the library late last year.

Prior to teaching at NYU, Roweis held an associate professorship in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. According to his biographical sketch on NYU's Web site, he interests include data mining and machine learning. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and earned his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 1999. He did postdoctoral work at the Gatsby Unit in London. 

According to the NY Post, Roweis has won several awards and held a Canada Research Chair in Statistical Machine Learning, a Sloan Research Fellowship and a Premier's Research Excellence Award, and was a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Photo credit: Sam Roweis, NY Post