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Chemistry Nobel goes to developers of AlphaFold AI that predicts protein structures

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2024-10-12 05:30:03

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David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper (left to right) won the chemistry Nobel for developing computational tools that can predict and design protein structures. Credit: BBVA Foundation

For the first time — and probably not the last — a scientific breakthrough enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) has been recognized with a Nobel prize. The 2024 chemistry Nobel was awarded to John Jumper and Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind in London, for developing a game-changing AI tool for predicting protein structures called AlphaFold, and David Baker, at the University of Washington in Seattle, for his work on computational protein design, which has been bolstered by Al in the past few years.

“I hope when we look back on AlphaFold, it will be the first proof point of AI’s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery,” Hassabis said at a press briefing at DeepMind on 9 October. “It’s so unreal at this moment.”