Jacob Andreas, MIT Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science [EECS] and MIT Associate Professor Brett McGuire of the Department of Chemistry have been selected as winners of the 2026 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award. Established in 1982 as a lasting tribute to the great and enduring support of young faculty members of the Institute’s Emeritus Professor Harold E. Edgerton, the award is given annually in recognition of exceptional distinction in teaching, research, and service.
“The Chemistry Department is extremely pleased to see Brett recognized for the science that has changed the way we think about carbon in space,” says Matthew D. Shoulders, chemistry professor and department head, Class of 1942. “Brett’s laboratory combines laboratory spectroscopy, radio astronomy, and sophisticated signal-analysis methods to draw definitive molecular fingerprints from exceptionally blurry data. His discovery of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the cold interstellar medium has opened a powerful new window on astrochemistry. In addition, Brett is inventing creative and unique tools that make such discoveries possible.”
“Jacob Andreas represents the best of MIT EECS,” says Asu Ozdagler, head of the EECS department. “She is an innovative researcher whose work combines computational and linguistically informed approaches to build the foundation of language learning. She is an exceptional teacher who has brought these pioneering ideas into our core classes in natural language processing and machine learning. Her ability to connect grounded theory with real-world impact, while also advancing the social and ethical dimensions of computing, makes her truly worthy of the Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.”
Andreas joined the MIT faculty in July 2019, and is affiliated with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His work is in natural language processing (NLP) and AI more broadly. Their goal is to understand the computational foundations of language learning and build intelligent systems that can learn with human guidance. Among other honors, Andreas has received Samsung’s AI Researcher of the Year award, MIT’s Colocotrones and Junior Bose teaching awards, the 2024 Sloan Research Fellow award, and paper awards from the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences, the International Conference on Machine Learning, and the Association for Computational Linguistics.
Andreas received a BS from Columbia University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge (where he studied as a Churchill Scholar), and a PhD in Natural Language Processing from the University of California at Berkeley. His work in natural language processing has raised complex problems of the capability gap between humans and computers. “The defining characteristic of human language use is our capacity for constructive generalization,” explains Antonio Torralba, Delta Electronics professor and faculty head of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making in the EECS department. “Many of the core challenges in natural language processing are addressed simply by training larger and larger neural models, but this kind of creative generalization remains a persistent difficulty, and without the ability to generalize creatively, the deep learning toolkit will never be robust enough for the most challenging real-world NLP tasks. Jacob’s work on composite modeling creates new connections between NLP and computer vision and work in physics, aimed at generalization by symmetries and other algebraic structures. have worked on governed modeling systems and, using them, they have been able to build NLP models to demonstrate many new, human-like language acquisition behaviors, including one-shot word learning, learning through mutual exclusivity constraints, and learning grammatical rules in extremely low-resource settings.
Within EECS, Andreas has developed several advanced courses in natural language processing, as well as new exercises designed to help students grapple with important social and ethical considerations in the deployment of machine learning. “Jacob has played a leading role in completely modernizing and expanding our curriculum in natural language processing,” says award nominee Leslie Pack Kelbling, Panasonic Professor in the EECS department. “He has led the development of the modern two-course sequence, which is the cornerstone of the new AI+D [artificial intelligence and decision-making] The major regularly enrolls several hundred students each semester. His grasp of the field is broad and deep, and his classes integrate a classical structural understanding of language with the most modern learning-based approaches. They have put MIT EECS on the worldwide map as the place to study natural language at every level.
Brett McGuire joined the MIT faculty in 2020 and was promoted to associate professor in 2025. His research operates at the intersection of physical chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, and observational astrophysics, where he seeks to uncover how the chemical building blocks of life evolve and help shape the birth of stars and planets. A former Jansky Fellow and then Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, McGuire holds a BS in chemistry from the University of Illinois and a PhD in physical chemistry from Caltech. His honors include the 2026 Sloan Fellowship, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Helen B. Warner Award for Astronomy, and the MIT Award for Teaching with Digital Technology.
The faculty nominating McGuire for this award praised his exceptional public outreach, his immediate willingness to teach Class 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Sciences), a General Institute Requirements (GIR) course serving 150–500 students, and his service to both the MIT and astrochemistry communities.
Brett is at the top of his age group of astrochemists due to his discovery of fused carbon ring compounds in the cold region of the ISM. [interstellar medium]An observation that provides a pathway to carbon assimilation in planets,” Sylvia Sear, the John C. Sheehan Professor of Chemistry, said in her nomination statement. “His extensive involvement in service-oriented activities within the astrochemical/physical community is highly unusual for a junior scientist, and is a testament to the value that the astrophysical community places on his knowledge and judgment. His phenomenal organizational skills have made his contributions to graduate admissions protocols and seminar administration at MIT the envy of the department. And most importantly, Brett is a fantastic teacher who cares deeply about his students’ understanding and success, not only in his courses, but also in their future endeavors.
“As an assistant professor, Brett volunteered to teach a large GIR course, 5.111, with 150-500 students, and has received some of the best teaching evaluations among all faculty leading the subject,” says Mei Hong, the David A. Leety Professor of Chemistry. “He has a natural talent for explaining abstract physical chemistry concepts in an engaging way. His slides, which he prepared from scratch rather than modifying from previous years’ material from other professors, are clear, and … his combination of clear explanation and humor has generated great excitement and interest in chemistry among students.”
Subject evaluations of McGuire’s courses praised his humor, the clarity of his explanations, and his ability to turn a lecture into a “science show.” “I have never felt such a desire for depth of understanding in a subject beyond a straight grade [in some time],” says a student. “Brett definitely inspired a love of learning in me.”
“Brett is an outstanding faculty member who is dedicated to promoting student education and success,” says Jennifer Weisman, assistant director of academic programs in chemistry. “He is thoughtful, caring and goes out of his way to help his colleagues, students and staff.”
“I am thrilled to be selected for the Edgerton Award this year,” says McGuire. “This award is nominally for teaching, research, and service; MIT, and the Department of Chemistry in particular, has been an incredible place to learn and grow in all of these areas. I am incredibly grateful for the guidance, enthusiasm, and support I have received from my colleagues, my students in the laboratory and the classroom, and from the MIT community during my time here. I look forward to many more years of exciting discovery together with this unique community.”
