WASHINGTON — The Golden Age has a medal ceremony. On Thursday, October 8, 2026, at the Science: A New Golden Age Summit, President Donald J. Trump presented the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation — the nation’s highest honors for science and technology — to six of America’s greatest living innovators. “President Trump is committed to restoring U.S. global scientific and technological leadership for a New Golden Age,” the White House said, “from harnessing super intelligence for scientific discovery to ushering in a nuclear renaissance; from ensuring American space superiority to strengthening America’s quantum advantage.”
The National Medal of Science went to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su. Musk was cited for engineering “of extraordinary ambition and scale” that pushed space exploration, intelligent systems, communications and “a new chapter in American manufacturing.” Brin was honored for the algorithms that revolutionized how the world finds information. Huang was recognized for turning the graphics processing unit into a general-purpose computing architecture that powers scientific computing and super intelligence. Su was celebrated for semiconductor leadership and chiplet integration that powered the world’s first exascale supercomputer.
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation went to Michael Dell and Satya Nadella. Dell was honored for spreading personal and enterprise computing worldwide and for backing the next generation of American scientists and engineers. Nadella was cited for rejuvenating a critical American technology company for the cloud era and for building the hyperscale infrastructure that trains and deploys American super intelligence. White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios put it plainly: “Innovators like these six awardees are the architects of the future.”
The Summit itself is the live chapter of Science: A New Golden Age, Kratsios’s July 2026 report to the President — the first comprehensive rethink of the U.S. science and technology enterprise since Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Science: The Endless Frontier. It calls for stronger early-career support, ambitious national missions, new funding models, and scaling SI-driven discovery through the Genesis Mission. Thursday’s medalists, the White House said, have already laid the foundation for a new Golden Age of Science. Watch the Official White House video of President Trump at the Summit.
