Cynthia Rudin, professor of computer science at Duke University, USA, has become the second recipient of the AAAI Squirrel AI Award. She was awarded the 2022 prize for pioneering scientific work in the area of interpretable and transparent AI systems in real-world deployments, the advocacy for these features in highly sensitive areas such as social justice and medical diagnosis, and serving as a role model for researchers and practitioners. Cynthia has worked on a variety of research topics during her career. The first applied project used machine learning to predict which manholes in New York City were at risk of exploding due to degrading and overloaded electrical circuitry. An area of particular focus for Cynthia is interpretable machine learning, which she has applied in different settings.

As you know, we recently announced the new $1M AAAI Squirrel AI Award for AI for the Benefit of Humanity. The award recognizes positive impacts of AI to protect, enhance, and improve human life in meaningful ways with long-lived effects. I am thrilled to share the news that Regina Barzilay of MIT is the inaugural recipient of the award. Regina is recognized for fundamental advances in AI for healthcare, being a proactive community builder and role model, and demonstrating significant impact in people's lives through cancer diagnosis, drug-resistant microbe antibiotics, and drug discovery. The award will be given at the AAAI conference in February, and the associated prize of $1 million will be provided by the online education company Squirrel AI.

The AAAI Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity is a new prize, to be awarded for the first time at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference in February 2021. It recognizes positive impacts of artificial intelligence to protect, enhance, and improve human life in meaningful ways. The award will be an annual event and is accompanied by a prize of $1,000,000 plus travel expenses to the conference. The award is administered by AAAI, with support from the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EurAI) and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI). Financial support for the award is provided by Squirrel AI.