New York, NY, March 27, 2026 — A team led by Dr. Kuan-lin Huang, PhD, has been named a winner of the $1 million Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize, the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) announced on March 20. Dr. Huang is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The award honors the development of Biomni-AD, an advanced AI-powered “co-scientist” designed to dramatically reduce the time required to generate scientific insights from complex biomedical data.
The Mount Sinai team collaborated with partners at Stanford University on the winning project. Originally conceived as a single $1 million award, the competition expanded to recognize two winning teams, doubling the total prize amount to $2 million—reflecting both the exceptional quality of submissions and the urgency of advancing new approaches to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
“Receiving this prize validates that AI can contribute to Alzheimer’s research right now, not someday,” said Dr. Huang. “It gives us the resources and visibility to deploy Biomni-AD broadly so researchers around the world can move from data to insight in minutes rather than months. That is what we have been working toward.”
Alzheimer’s disease is projected to affect more than 150 million people globally by 2050. While massive datasets now exist across genomics, imaging, proteomics, and clinical research, much of this information remains fragmented and difficult to integrate. Biomni-AD was designed to address this bottleneck.
Key capabilities and innovations of Biomni-AD include:
In early testing, the platform has already identified robust biological signals and helped prioritize promising drug targets with greater speed and confidence than conventional approaches, according to the investigators.
“Mount Sinai has been a leader in Alzheimer’s genomics and data-driven discovery for decades. Biomni-AD builds on the intersection of these approaches and expertise,” says Alison Goate, DPhil, Director of The Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine. “Biomni-AD represents a meaningful advance in how science can be conducted, enabling scientists to ask more ambitious questions and pursue discoveries that were previously out of reach.”
The winning solution will be made freely available to researchers worldwide through the AD Data Initiative’s AD Workbench platform, helping to democratize access to advanced analytics and accelerate progress across institutions.
“Every month saved in the research pipeline matters for patients and families. If Biomni-AD can help move even one promising lead to clinical testing faster, that is meaningful,” says Dr. Huang
The team emphasized that this work extends beyond a single platform to a broader ecosystem. Building on the Biomni open-source community, they plan to launch a new ADA Consortium to expand collaboration. Earlier this year, the Biomni-AD Discovery Prize engaged researchers in tackling real Alzheimer’s questions using the AI agent, reflecting a shared goal of enabling the field to move faster together.
Looking ahead, the Mount Sinai team plans to focus on deploying Biomni-AD globally and launching collaborative “call-for-hypothesis” initiatives. These efforts are expected to enable researchers to generate and prioritize data-driven hypotheses, with the most promising candidates advancing to experimental validation at Mount Sinai.
“No single lab is going to solve Alzheimer’s alone,” says Dr. Huang. “What we’re building is a shared infrastructure—a way for thousands of researchers to work with a powerful AI as a partner, test more ideas, and reach answers faster. That’s how we find the next breakthrough.”
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About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is internationally renowned for its outstanding research, educational, and clinical care programs. It is the sole academic partner for the seven member hospitals* of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic health systems in the United States, providing care to New York City’s large and diverse patient population.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai offers highly competitive MD, PhD, MD-PhD, and master’s degree programs, with enrollment of more than 1,200 students. It has the largest graduate medical education program in the country, with more than 2,600 clinical residents and fellows training throughout the Health System. Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers 13 degree-granting programs, conducts innovative basic and translational research, and trains more than 560 postdoctoral research fellows.
Ranked 11th nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is among the 99th percentile in research dollars per investigator according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. More than 4,500 scientists, educators, and clinicians work within and across dozens of academic departments and multidisciplinary institutes with an emphasis on translational research and therapeutics. Through Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the Health System facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of medical breakthroughs made at Mount Sinai.
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* Mount Sinai Health System member hospitals: The Mount Sinai Hospital; Mount Sinai Brooklyn; Mount Sinai Morningside; Mount Sinai Queens; Mount Sinai South Nassau; Mount Sinai West; and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai