At the 2025 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) honours ceremony in Tokyo, Japan, Regina Barzilay, faculty lead for artificial intelligence (AI) at the MIT Jameel Clinic, was awarded the 2025 IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal for her innovative machine learning algorithms that have led to significant advances in medicine.
Kathleen A. Kramer, president and chief executive officer, IEEE:
The IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal is sponsored by IBM.
This year’s medal is given to Regina Barzilay for her innovative machine learning algorithms that have led to significant advances in medicine.
Norishige Morimoto, vice president, IBM Japan:
Hi, good evening. I am Norishige Morimoto, representing IBM, and I am glad to present the IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal.
Announcer:
Artificial intelligence is reshaping our understanding of the world and Regina Barzilay is at the forefront of this transformation.
In clinical AI, her image-based models can detect breast cancer up to five years before traditional diagnosis, doubling the detection rate of current risk assessment tools.
Her mammogram reading system, MIRAI, has been deployed in hospitals worldwide, and she has also expanded AI-driven, early detection to lung cancer with SYBIL, which predicts future risk with remarkable accuracy.
With unparalleled vision, Barzilay’s innovations are changing how we diagnose disease, pushing the limits of artificial intelligence.
The IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal is sponsored by IBM.
Regina Barzilay, faculty lead for AI, MIT Jameel Clinic:
It is a huge honour to receive this award, named after Frances Allen, the first woman who won the Turing Award.
Many years ago, when I started my career in computer science, I could not have imagined where I would end up and what kind of topics I would address, starting from the decipherment of ancient languages and now to developing new drugs.
And I really hope that all these technologies that we are developing are going to have a positive outcome on people’s lives.
That is what we are trying to do.
I am very grateful to IEEE and to IBM for sponsoring this award.