Professor Tomaso Poggio, Dr. Andrzej Banburski and M.Sc. Qianli Liao from the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won the first edition of the international Scientific Award "Ratio et Spes", established jointly by the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI.

The prize will be presented in Toruń on February 19, on the University Day, during the Gala on the occasion of the Polish Science Day. Its laureate - prof. Tomaso Poggio was awarded for the publication Theoretical Issues in Deep Networks: Approximation, Optimization and Generalization , which is the result of the collaboration of the professor with Dr. Andrzej Banburski and M.Sc. Qianli Liao (also from MIT).

The area of ​​knowledge in which the prize was awarded in the first edition of the competition is artificial intelligence. The Award Scientific Council appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the publication and its reference to contemporary problems, which can have a significant impact on the lives of individuals and societies.        

Ten publications (books, articles and series of articles) were submitted to the competition, which were evaluated by seven experts.