Feb 11, 2026

Zev Williams

AI for infertility

Alice Park

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Senior Correspondent

Courtesy of Columbia University Fertility Center

Male infertility accounts for about half of all infertility issues among couples. Dr. Zev Williams found a way to address one of the most common causes using AI. In men with azoospermia, doctors generally can’t detect any sperm in the semen. Williams knew that didn’t mean that the sperm were absent, just harder to find. He and his team developed an AI-based system, Sperm Track and Recovery, or STAR, that detects and isolates sperm in semen samples with impressive results; in one sample in which technicians could find no sperm after analyzing it for two days under a microscope, STAR found 44 in an hour. The process led to the first successful pregnancy in a couple that had been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for nearly two decades. In November, they welcomed a healthy baby girl. “The dream is to develop technologies so that those who are told, ‘You have no chance of being able to have a child,’ can now go on to have healthy children,” says Williams.