Barzilay, Collins Win 2026 Pritzker Prize for AI
The award honors their joint work using artificial intelligence to discover new antibiotics.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Life Sciences
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Regina Barzilay and James Collins were named recipients of the 2026 Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence. The honor recognizes their AI-enabled antibiotic discovery work, beginning with halicin, the first AI-discovered antibiotic.
Why it matters
Antibiotic discovery is needed amid the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. The recognition highlights AI's potential to shorten drug discovery timelines that once took years.
The 2020 halicin study used a deep learning model trained on 2,500 molecules to identify a compound effective against resistant bacteria including Clostridium difficile, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The 2023 abaucin identification relied on machine learning, though the extraction does not detail its clinical testing status.
The players
Regina Barzilay
Regina Barzilay is an MIT computer scientist known for applying deep learning to drug discovery and medicine.
James Collins
James Collins is an MIT bioengineer who has pioneered the use of machine learning to discover antibiotics.
Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence
The Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence is an award established in 2024 by the University of Chicago in partnership with Caltech.
The details
Halicin killed several antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including Clostridium difficile, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2023, the pair identified abaucin, a narrow-spectrum antibiotic effective against A. baumannii.
Timeline
2020: Halicin AI-discovery paper published in Cell.
2023: Abaucin identified using machine learning.
2024: Pritzker Prize for AI in Science established by the University of Chicago with Caltech.
November 2, 2026: Pritzker Prize awarded to Barzilay and Collins.
Big Picture
The 2020 halicin discovery, published in Cell, marked the first AI-discovered antibiotic and set the pattern for the later abaucin identification in 2023. This 2026 recognition formalizes that line of research as a benchmark for AI-enabled drug discovery.
AI-discovered antibiotics could eventually provide new treatment options for infections resistant to current drugs. The extraction does not establish a clinical timeline for halicin or abaucin.
The takeaway
AI can compress drug discovery from years to weeks, but it accelerates parts of the pipeline rather than replacing the full process. Readers should watch for clinical trial results before treating these candidates as available treatments.
Further reading
Explore more Life Sciences coverage for context on how researchers are applying computation to biology.
Source note: This article includes information reported by MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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