As part of this year’s AI2050 program, Acceleration Consortium (AC) director and University of Toronto (U of T) professor and Senior Director at NVIDIA, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, is one of twenty-eight scholars who are eligible to receive more than $18 million in AI2050 fellowships to solve challenging problems in AI.

The goal of the AI2050 program is to fund researchers pursuing projects that help AI create immense benefits for humanity by 2050. Twenty-one early-career fellows and seven senior fellows, including Aspuru-Guzik, will receive funding over the next three years. This marks the 4th cohort of the program, which now has 99 fellows across eight countries and 42 institutions.

As an AI2050 senior fellow, Aspuru-Guzik seeks to develop an AI chemist capable of independently conducting research and collaborating with humans. Building on prior advances in self-driving labs and multi-agent systems, it will develop AI agents capable of creating new tools, communicating across systems, and generating and testing scientific hypotheses. The goal is to accelerate global scientific discovery and democratize access to advanced AI-driven chemistry.

“It is extremely exciting to join the cohort of AI2050,” said Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Acceleration Consortium director and University of Toronto professor. “I am highly honoured by this recognition and grateful to receive this support. Through the AI2050 Fellowship, we will be able to materialize the vision of an autonomous scientific collaborator and address difficult problems that can impact humanity. This support will enable us to make chemistry more open, intelligent, and accessible to all.”  

In recent years, AI2050 fellows have been named Samsung AI Researcher of the Year and recognized as top innovators by TIME Magazine, the MIT Technology Review, and several scientific organizations and journals. Last year, the fellows published more than 100 papers and posters in leading journals, such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and npj Robotics.

As the director of the U of T’s Acceleration Consortium, Alán Aspuru-Guzik brings together academia, government, industry, and not-for-profits to accelerate the discovery of materials needed for a sustainable future. He is a professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at U of T, the Canada 150 Laureate in Theoretical Chemistry, and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. Aspuru-Guzik is also a CIFAR Fellow, co-directing the Accelerated Decarbonization program. 

In September of this year, Aspuru-Guzik was also named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an organization dedicated to highlighting exceptional achievements by Canadian academics that celebrates both academic excellence and societal impact. Aspuru-Guzik’s work bridges both, advancing scientific discovery and addressing global challenges. 

Learn more about the Schmidt Sciences AI2050 program and this year’s complete list of recipients around the world.