NYU’s Yann LeCun a winner of the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

(Press-News.org) New York University’s Yann LeCun has been selected as a winner of the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering—one of seven recognized for contributions to the advancement of Modern Machine Learning, which has fueled advances in artificial intelligence. 

“This year, we celebrate the remarkable achievements that these seven engineers have contributed to Modern Machine Learning, a field that has revolutionized artificial intelligence by uniting algorithms, hardware, and data,” said Lord Vallance, chair of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. “The impact of this innovation is felt across industries, economies, and the planet, showcasing the profound role engineering plays in shaping our future. With admiration for the interdisciplinary approach between these innovators, this year’s laureates are addressing some of the most complex challenges of our time. Their work exemplifies the power of collaboration and stands as an inspiration to engineers everywhere. We celebrate their extraordinary contributions and their well-earned recognition as Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Laureates.” 

LeCun is the Jacob T. Schwartz Chaired Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, founding director of and a professor at NYU’s Center for Data Science, and vice president and chief artificial intelligence scientist at Meta. He and his colleagues—Université de Montréal’s Yoshua Bengio, the University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton, and Princeton University’s John Hopfield—were cited by the foundation for “championing artificial neural networks, which are now the dominant model for machine learning. Their groundbreaking research laid the conceptual foundations for this transformative approach, enabling machines to process and learn from vast amounts of data in ways previously unimaginable.”

LeCun, also part of the faculty at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, is a past recipient of the Turing Award, which he shared with Bengio and Hinton, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2024, the Carnegie Corporation of New York recognized LeCun, who has been on the NYU faculty since 2003, as one of its “Great Immigrants.” 

Other 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering winners were Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Nvidia Chief Scientist Bill Dally for developments for the hardware that underpins the operation of modern machine learning algorithms and Stanford University Professor Fei-Fei Li for her creation of ImageNet, a large-scale image database.

“This year’s winning innovation is a groundbreaking advancement that impacts everyone, yet the full extent of its underlying engineering remains largely unrecognized, making it an especially exciting choice,” said Professor Dame Lynn Gladden, chair Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering’s judging panel. “This year’s prize celebrates the value of transformative breakthroughs and serves as a reminder of the importance of continuous innovation in engineering.”

Now in its 12th year, the Queen Elizabeth Prize has honored 24 engineers whose innovations have had a significant impact on billions of lives around the world. The 2025 Laureates will share the £500,000 (approximately $620,000) prize.

To find out more about this year's winning innovation, visit the prize’s website. 

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