On November 2, 2026, MIT News reported that Regina Barzilay and James (Jim) Collins have won the 2026 Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence, for their joint work in AI-enabled antibiotic discovery. The prize is awarded jointly by the University of Chicago and Caltech.
What happened
According to MIT News, the award recognises the pair’s work “pioneering AI-enabled antibiotic discovery,” which combines deep learning, bioengineering and experimental validation to identify new antibacterial candidates against drug-resistant pathogens. Barzilay is MIT School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of AI and Health; Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science. Both are faculty co-leads of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health.
The prize’s full name, per the University of Chicago Data Science Institute, is the Margot and Tom Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence. The Institute’s prize page says it was established in 2024, is sponsored by the Margot and Tom Pritzker Science Foundation, and offers two grand prizes of $50,000 each plus a certificate. Eligible recipients must be tenured or tenure-track academics at a U.S. institution of higher education; researchers solely in industry or solely at National Labs are not eligible.
The research behind the award
MIT News describes the collaboration’s milestones as follows:
- A 2020 paper in Cell, with Jonathan Stokes as first author, described halicin, presented as the first AI-discovered antibiotic. A deep learning model trained on about 2,500 molecules identified it; it had originally been studied as a potential diabetes drug.
- MIT News reports halicin killed resistant bacteria including Clostridium difficile, Acinetobacter baumannii and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
- In 2023 the group used machine learning to identify abaucin, a narrow-spectrum antibiotic effective against A. baumannii.
MIT News quotes Collins as saying that “historically, antibiotic discovery has depended on laborious, trial-and-error strategies,” and describes his view that AI is shifting from a discovery tool to a design tool. It quotes Barzilay as cautioning that “we are still in early stages of drug discovery.”
What it means for researchers, universities and research offices
The points below are editorial interpretation, not claims made by the prize bodies.
- Researchers. The prize recognises a team combining computational and experimental work, with validation in the lab. The prize page also notes that for teams with industry collaborators, industry contributions must be specified, a detail relevant to anyone preparing a nomination or a team-based case.
- Universities. Eligibility is limited to tenured or tenure-track academics at U.S. institutions, with defined treatment of split industry and National Lab appointments. Research offices tracking award nominations should check these criteria against faculty appointment types before preparing materials.
- Research offices. Antibiotic discovery sits in a field where candidates move from computational prediction to experimental testing and, much later, to clinical development. Barzilay’s own caution about early stages is a useful reminder when communications teams describe such results. Award announcements are not evidence of clinical efficacy.
The ceremony
The University of Chicago Data Science Institute’s prize page lists the prize ceremony as part of the University of Chicago and Caltech AI+Science Conference in Chicago on October 19–20, 2026.
Sources
- MIT News, “Regina Barzilay and Jim Collins win Pritzker Prize for AI and Science Research Excellence for work in AI-enabled antibiotic discovery”, November 2, 2026 (read November 12, 2026).
- University of Chicago Data Science Institute, Pritzker Prize page (read November 12, 2026).
