ICTP Names Recipient of 2026 Brahmagupta AI Prize

ICTP and IBM announce that the 2026 winner of their joint ICTP-IBM Brahmagupta Artificial Intelligence Prize for Early Career Scientists is Professor Michael Skinnider of Princeton University, USA.

The citation reads, “For pioneering the application of artificial intelligence to biomedical discovery, and for developing transformative AI methods that reveal previously unknown chemistry, accelerate metabolite discovery, advance neuroscience, and address major challenges in human health.”

Michael Skinnider is a computational biologist and assistant professor at Princeton University, where he directs a research program that uses artificial intelligence to identify chemical structures in our bodies known as “metabolites” and discover how they influence human health, drawing on his dual training as an MD. He earned his MD and PhD from the University of British Columbia. His research interests are broadly at the intersection of applied machine learning for problems in biology, chemistry, and medicine, with a particular interest in the discovery of novel small molecules.  

“Through exceptional scientific creativity, interdisciplinary vision, and an outstanding record of innovation, Michael Skinnider has demonstrated how AI can profoundly expand the frontiers of scientific knowledge and accelerate its translation to benefit society,” said Marc Mézard, a professor at Bocconi University who chaired the selection panel. Other members included Professors Eiman Kanjo of Nottingham Trent University, Patrick McSharry of Carnegie Mellon University, and Andrea Montanari of Stanford University.

“At IBM, we believe the next era of scientific progress will be defined by breakthroughs in algorithms. Michael Skinnider’s work powerfully illustrates how advanced algorithmic foundations at the interface of AI and modern computing architectures can help reveal hidden patterns in complex data and advance knowledge. Through the ICTP-IBM Brahmagupta AI Prize, we are proud to support a new generation of scientists who are reimagining the mathematical foundations of discovery and translating them into meaningful advances for society,” said Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, Vice President of IBM Europe and Africa, and Director of IBM Research Zurich.

The ICTP-IBM Brahmagupta AI Prize was established by ICTP and IBM in 2024 to recognize outstanding young researchers working on AI for Science/Science for AI. It is supported by IBM and intends to promote research focusing on approaches to AI and science that can benefit the society at large. The award honours Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta, known for his important contributions to mathematics. In particular, he was the first to consider zero as a number and for introducing negative numbers.

This year, the prize ceremony will be held in conjunction with the conference Youth in High-Dimensions: Recent Progress in Machine Learning, High-Dimensional Statistics and Inference and the Advanced School in Applied Machine Learning: Uncertainty and Robustness of DL Models for Science. 

The Schools and the ICTP-IBM Brahmagupta Prize for AI are organised and administered by ICTP, with support from IBM under a five-year agreement with ICTP.  These activities are aligned with the broader objectives  of the AI Alliance, a global initiative launched by IBM and Meta aiming to accelerate responsible open innovation in AI while ensuring safety, security, and trust. ICTP is a founding member of that initiative.

The Prize and school are part of ICTP’s initiative ICOMP – International Consortium for Scientific Computing -- which aims to equalise access to knowledge and resources in scientific computing, including Artificial Intelligence.