Regina Barzilay is a preeminent leader in artificial intelligence whose groundbreaking work has transformed medical applications of machine learning. She serves as the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been a faculty member since completing her doctorate in 2003. Dr. Barzilay earned her undergraduate education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and received her PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University from 2002 to 2003. As AI Faculty Lead for the Jameel Clinic-MIT Initiative in Machine Learning and Health, she directs pioneering research that bridges computational science with clinical medicine to address critical healthcare challenges.
Dr. Barzilay's revolutionary research has fundamentally advanced the application of artificial intelligence in cancer detection and drug discovery through multiple landmark innovations. Her development of image-based machine learning models predicts breast cancer risk up to five years before traditional diagnostic methods, effectively doubling the detection rate of current clinical algorithms while maintaining accuracy across diverse populations and imaging devices. She created the MIRAI mammogram reading system deployed in 44 hospitals across eight countries, which proved invaluable during the pandemic when it helped prioritize high-risk patients for mammograms as screening services were constrained. Her work extends to molecular modeling where she developed neural molecular representations that accurately capture molecular structures, advancing computational approaches to drug discovery and revolutionizing what was previously possible in bioactivity modeling.
Beyond her technical contributions, Dr. Barzilay has emerged as a transformative voice advocating for responsible and equitable implementation of artificial intelligence in medical settings. She has received numerous prestigious accolades including the MacArthur Fellowship, the AAAI Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity, and the 2025 IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal for her pioneering work at the intersection of language technology and medicine. Elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, she continues to shape the ethical discourse around clinical AI through her leadership in developing standards that ensure fairness and transparency in medical algorithms. Dr. Barzilay's ongoing research focuses on expanding predictive capabilities to additional cancer types while advancing tools that can learn from multimodal patient data to improve disease modeling and ultimately contribute to prevention and cure strategies.
