Official Announcement

2026 NAAI Academy Award Laureates

The National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (NAAI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 NAAI Academy Award, the highest honor conferred by the Academy.

The NAAI Academy Award recognizes individuals whose pioneering research has fundamentally advanced the scientific foundations of artificial intelligence and whose work has had a profound and lasting impact on the global AI community.

For the 2026 cycle, the Academy proudly honors three distinguished scholars whose groundbreaking contributions span the theoretical pillars of modern artificial intelligence, including causal reasoning, logical foundations of intelligent systems, and optimization theory for machine learning.

2026 Laureates

Judea Pearl

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Award Citation
for establishing the foundations of causal reasoning and causal artificial intelligence.

Professor Pearl is widely recognized as the father of modern causal inference. His pioneering work on structural causal models and probabilistic reasoning has fundamentally transformed the way intelligent systems understand cause and effect, shaping fields ranging from machine learning and statistics to philosophy of science.

Moshe Y. Vardi

Rice University

Award Citation
for seminal contributions to logic-based artificial intelligence and formal reasoning in intelligent systems.

Professor Vardi is a global authority on logic in computer science and artificial intelligence. His influential work has significantly advanced formal reasoning, verification, and logical foundations of intelligent systems, providing essential theoretical tools for modern AI research.

Yurii Nesterov

Université catholique de Louvain

Award Citation
for foundational contributions to convex optimization theory and its profound impact on modern machine learning.

Professor Nesterov is one of the world’s leading scholars in optimization theory. His groundbreaking work on convex optimization has profoundly influenced modern machine learning algorithms and large-scale data-driven computation.

About the NAAI Academy Award

The NAAI Academy Award represents the highest distinction awarded by the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence. It honors scientists whose work has reshaped the intellectual foundations of artificial intelligence and whose influence continues to guide the evolution of the field.

The award will be formally recognized during the 2026 NAAI Annual Conference , to be held in Singapore, May 3–5, 2026.

National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (NAAI)
Office of the President

Website: www.thenaai.org
Email: secretary@thenaai.org