On 8th September 2026, Project Lecturer Irene Li, Department of Technology Management for Innovation, has been selected for MIT Technology Review’s 2026 Global Innovators Under 35.
Project Lecturer Irene Li
MIT Technology Review 2026 Global Innovators Under 35
The MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 (MIT TR35) is one of the most prestigious global accolades celebrating the world's finest young minds in science and technology. As a definitive global benchmark for groundbreaking talent, this elite roster honors 35 exceptional innovators whose world-class breakthroughs are actively reshaping the future of humanity. From artificial intelligence and biotechnology to climate tech and computing, the global list serves as a launching pad for international visionary leaders, transforming early-career pioneers into globally recognized icons of innovation.
About awarded research
Recognized for research on multilingual medical AI and large language models (LLMs) that aims to give speakers of languages other than English equitable access to high-quality medical information.
Her team has built a benchmark for comparing how LLMs perform on medical tasks across multiple languages, analyzing both the size of the performance gaps and their underlying causes — with particular attention to South Asian and African languages that existing AI development has left underserved. At its core is HealMed, a multilingual medical benchmark built over two years by 23 physicians and medical specialists across nine countries. Spanning nine languages and 9,000 questions in total, every translation was independently reviewed by two bilingual experts, revealing a previously overlooked problem: translation quality itself shapes evaluation outcomes. The team has further developed Med-CoReasoner, which reasons in both the local language and English, combining region-specific medical knowledge with the stronger reasoning capabilities available in English to improve answer accuracy on multilingual medical questions.
The ultimate goal is an AI that delivers trustworthy medical information regardless of the user's language or where they live, contributing to the reduction of health disparities.
Your impression & future plan
Encouraged by this recognition, I will continue to advance research on trustworthy and responsible AI, working to close the gaps in access to medical information across multilingual settings. Looking ahead, I hope to bring this work into hospitals and real clinical settings — not to replace healthcare professionals, but to support what they do — so that it delivers concrete value to as many people as possible.
Project Lecturer LI Zihui received "Innovators Under 35 Japan 2025"
Ayato Kitadai (D2) , Department of Technology Management for Innovation, received 2026 GDN Springer Best Student Paper Award
