Regina Barzilay wins $1M Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Squirrel AI award

For more than 100 years Nobel Prizes have been given out annually to recognize breakthrough achievements in chemistry, literature, medicine, peace, and physics. As these disciplines undoubtedly continue to impact society, newer fields like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have also begun to profoundly reshape the world. In recognition of this, the world's largest AI society -- the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) -- announced today the winner of their new Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity, a $1 million award given to honor individuals whose work in the field has had a transformative impact on society. The recipient, Regina Barzilay, the Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is being recognized for her work developing machine learning models to develop antibiotics and other drugs, and to detect and diagnose breast cancer at early stages. In February, AAAI will officially present Barzilay with the award, which comes with an associated prize of $1 million provided by the online education company Squirrel AI. "Only world-renowned recognitions, such as the Association of Computing Machinery's A.M. Turing Award and the Nobel Prize, carry monetary rewards at the million-dollar level," says AAAI awards committee chair Yolanda Gil.