Francis Halzen, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, spoke with pride on Wednesday about his early promotion of artificial intelligence in his research on neutrinos.

Halzen, 82, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was visiting the city of Turin in northern Italy and spoke to reporters there a day after the Nobel announcement.

The U.S.–Belgian physicist is the mind behind the IceCube neutrino observatory, made up of 5,484 optical modules used as sensors deep in the Antarctic ice.