VentureBeat October 9, 2024
A trio of scientists consisting of Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google’s AI division DeepMind, as well as John Jumper, Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and David Baker of the University of Washington have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking work in predicting and developing new proteins.
The DeepMinders won for AlphaFold 2, an AI system capable of predicting the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. Meanwhile, Baker won for leading a laboratory where the 20 amino acids that form proteins were used to design new ones, including proteins for “pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors,” according to the Nobel committee’s announcement.
The award highlights how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing...