MIT affiliates named 2026 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Fellows

Five MIT faculty members have been named to the 2026 cohort of AI2050 Fellows, MIT News reported on October 30, along with alumni Irene Chen PhD '22 and Allison Z. Koenecke '14 and former postdoc Juan Carlos Perdomo. The annual fellowships come from Schmidt Sciences, the philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt. AI2050, co-chaired by Eric Schmidt and James Manyika, asks researchers to imagine that AI has proved hugely beneficial by 2050 and to work out which problems had to be solved to get there.

Sendhil Mullainathan, an economics and computer science professor, is the MIT group's Senior Fellow. His project aims to turn patterns detected by AI into testable theories. He is also launching The Bike Shop@MIT, a research center focused on more human-centered AI.

The four MIT Early Career Fellows span several fields. Mathematician Alex Damian will study effective AI model training, while political scientist Bailey Flanigan is working on ways to gather structured public input that lawmakers can use for complex decisions. Biologist Yunha Hwang, co-founder and chief scientist of the nonprofit Tatta Bio, will focus on determining the functions of biological enzymes. Manish Raghavan of MIT Sloan will look at reducing the harms and strengthening the benefits of widespread reliance on AI.

The selections show the program's reach beyond core computer science, with MIT's fellows applying AI to economics, democratic decision-making and biology. All five hold roles connected to MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.