This morning, Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs Sir Demis Hassabis, and Google DeepMind Director Dr. John Jumper were co-awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his or her work developing AlphaFold, a groundbreaking AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. David Baker was also co-awarded for his work on computational protein design.
Before AlphaFold, predicting the structure of a protein was a fancy and time-consuming process.
AlphaFold’s predictions, made freely available through the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, have given greater than 2 million scientists and researchers from 190 countries a robust tool for making latest discoveries. The AlphaFold 2 paper, published in 2021, stays considered one of the most-cited publications of all time.
AlphaFold’s contributions to science have been widely praised, and amongst its recognitions are the 2023 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the 2023 Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2024 Clarivate Citation Laureate award, and the 2024 Keio Medical Science Prize Award.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has long shown incredible potential to be used in scientific research, and AlphaFold was proof-of-concept. As more scientists adopt AI to be used in every part from constructing data, to simulating experiments, drug design, modelling complexity, discovering novel solutions for extant problems, and constructing upon existing knowledge, we’ll proceed to see foundational scientific breakthroughs within the years ahead.
In an announcement released after informed of the news, Demis Hassabis said:
“Receiving the Nobel Prize is the honour of a lifetime. Thanks to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, to John Jumper and the AlphaFold team, the broader DeepMind and Google teams, and to all my colleagues past and present that made this moment possible. I’ve dedicated my profession to advancing AI due to its unparalleled potential to enhance the lives of billions of individuals. AlphaFold has already been utilized by greater than two million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery. I hope we’ll look back on AlphaFold as the primary proof point of AI’s incredible potential to speed up scientific discovery.”
After receiving the news that he won the Nobel Prize, John Jumper released the next statement:
“Thanks to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for this extraordinary honor. We’re so honored to be recognized for delivering on the long promise of computational biology to assist us understand the protein world and to tell the incredible work of experimental biologists. It’s a key demonstration that AI will make science faster and ultimately help to grasp disease and develop therapeutics. That is the work of an exceptional team at Google DeepMind and this award recognizes their amazing work.
Computational biology has long held tremendous promise for creating practical insights that might be put to make use of in real-world experiments. AlphaFold delivered on this promise. Ahead of us are a universe of recent insights and scientific discoveries made possible by way of AI as a scientific tool. Thanks to my colleagues through the years, for making possible this moment of recognition, in addition to the various moments of discovery that lie ahead.”
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