Geoffrey Hinton awarded Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering
Professor Yoshua Bengio, HM The King, Dr Yann LeCun, Professor Geoffrey Hinton, Jensen Huang, Dr Fei-Fei Li, Dr Bill Dally, and Professor John Hopfield. Photo credit: QEPrize/Jason Alden
On November 5, 2025, SRI Advisory Board member Geoffrey Hinton, University Professor Emeritus of computer science at U of T, was named among the 2025 Laureates of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPrize)—one of the world’s highest honours for contributions to the public good through engineering.
Presented by His Majesty King Charles III at St James’s Palace on the United Kingdom’s National Engineering Day, the award recognized Hinton and his peers Yoshua Bengio, John Hopfield, Yann LeCun, Bill Dally, Jensen Huang, and Fei-Fei Li for their pioneering work in machine learning—the foundation of today’s AI revolution.
Hinton’s decades-long pursuit of computational models that mimic the brain’s learning processes helped lay the scientific groundwork for deep learning, a field now transforming nearly every sector of society—from healthcare and education to climate science, robotics, and creative industries. His research, carried out across the University of Toronto, SRI, and the Vector Institute, has also spurred international dialogue about the social and ethical implications of increasingly capable AI systems.
“Receiving the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is a wonderful honour and recognition of the role engineering plays in advancing society,” Hinton told the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. “I hope this award will encourage future innovators to address our world's most pressing challenges, including the challenge of making AI safe so that we can all reap its benefits.”
Hinton was congratulated by His Majesty King Charles III at St. James Palace. Photo credit: QEPrize/Jason Alden
Established in 2013, the QEPrize celebrates engineers whose work delivers global benefit to humanity. Past laureates include the inventers of the internet, GPS, and digital imaging. In continuing Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy of championing innovation for the public good, King Charles III presented this year’s trophies—each designed by young creators through the Prize’s international Create the Trophy competition—to the 2024 and 2025 Laureates during a ceremony that highlighted engineering’s role in building a sustainable and equitable future.
Hinton’s recognition by the QEPrize underscores his enduring influence on both the science and the societal conversation surrounding artificial intelligence. At the SRI, his leadership and insight continue to guide research and public engagement on how intelligent systems can best serve human values.
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