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Regina Barzilay

AI Faculty Lead

Regina Barzilay is a School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT. Since 2018, she has been the AI faculty lead for Jameel Clinic and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

Her research interests are in machine learning models for clinical use and molecular modeling with applications to drug discovery. She also works in natural language processing.

She is a recipient of various awards including the NSF Career Award, the MIT Technology Review TR-35 Award, Microsoft Faculty Fellowship and several Best Paper Awards at NAACL and ACL. In 2017, she received a MacArthur fellowship “Genius Grant”, an ACL fellowship, and an AAAI fellowship. In 2020, she was awarded the Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University, and spent a year as a postdoc at Cornell University. Barzilay received her undergraduate degree from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

Awards and Accolades

  • National Academy of Medicine 2023
  • American Academy of Arts & Sciences 2022
  • AACC Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award 2021
  • UNESCO/Netexplo Award 2021
  • AAAI Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity 2021
  • Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery & Advanced Healthcare 2019
  • Xconomy Boston Digital Trailblazer 2019
  • Susan Komen Scholar 2018
  • Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching 2018
  • AAAI Fellowship 2017
  • ACL Fellowship 2017
  • MacArthur Fellowship 2017
  • Best Paper Award, EMNLP 2016
  • Burgess & Elizabeth Jamieson Award for Excellence in Teaching 2016
  • Delta Electronics Professor 2016
  • Best Paper Honorable Mention, EMNLP 2015
  • Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship 2014
  • Best Student Paper Award, NAACL 2014
  • Best Paper Award, SLT 2010
  • Carolyn Baldwin Morrison Lecture, Cornell 2009
  • Best Paper Award, ACL 2009
  • Ross Career Development Professor 2006
  • Microsoft Faculty Fellowship 2006
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems: “AI Ten to Watch” 2006
  • Technology Review: 35 Top Innovators 2005
  • NSF Career Award 2005
  • Technology Research News: “Top Picks: Technology Research Advances of 2004”
  • Best Paper Award, HLT/NAACL 2004
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