Adji Bousso Dieng, an expert in artificial intelligence, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, one of the top honors for early career faculty.
The award is part of NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program and supports junior faculty who exemplify leadership in education and research. It comes with $500,000 in research funding over five years.
Dieng, an assistant professor of computer science, will use the grant to build AI methods for discovering new molecules and materials. When scientists look for groundbreaking new materials for creating things like efficient solar cells or next-generation medicines, they increasingly rely on artificial intelligence in the discovery process. But Dieng’s research suggests there is a problem currently restricting scientific discovery: AI systems can get stuck in a loop, repeatedly generating and retrieving safe, predictable answers that mimic what is already known, a phenomenon Dieng calls “mode collapse.” In mode collapse, AI models miss the rare, unexplored chemical regions where new breakthroughs may be found.
Dieng’s research seeks to create a new paradigm for AI, what she calls “investigative intelligence.” Focused on discovery, the approach introduces new diversity-centered mathematical frameworks across the entire machine learning pipeline, forcing AI systems to actively hunt for novelty, rarity, and untapped chemical structures. Ultimately, the project aims to provide open-source tools to help the broader scientific community bypass current AI limitations, transforming AI into a method of scientific exploration capable of uncovering revolutionary new materials that will shape the future of science across disciplines.
Dieng joined the Princeton faculty in September 2021. Her work has been recognized with a Prix Galien Africa Special Prize, a 2022 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Early Career Fellowship and the 2022 Annie T. Randall Innovator Award from the American Statistical Association. She was a research scientist at Google DeepMind from 2020-2025.
She holds a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from Télécom Paris, a master’s degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. At Princeton she is affiliated with the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton Precision Health, the Princeton Quantum Initiative, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.
In 2026, Dieng was named one of 40 members on the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, the first global scientific body dedicated entirely to AI.
Dieng is the founder ofThe Africa I Know, a nonprofit which seeks to change narratives about African history, knowledge and innovation to inspire and empower young Africans to pursue education and careers in science and technology.