The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday awarded a joint Nobel Prize “for protein structure prediction” to Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper. Demis Hassabis currently serves as the CEO of Google DeepMind, while John Jumper holds the position of Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind. “This year’s chemistry laureates Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model, AlphaFold2, to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins,” reads an X post from the Nobel Prize.

“Receiving the Nobel Prize is the honor of a lifetime. Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, John Jumper and the AlphaFold team, the broader DeepMind and Google teams, and all my colleagues past and present who made this moment possible. Because it has the unique potential to improve the lives of billions of people, I hope that AlphaFold will be used to advance important work from enzyme design to drug discovery. “I look to AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI’s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery,” he said in a statement after winning.

“Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for this extraordinary honour. We are very honored to be recognized for fulfilling the long promise of computational biology in helping us understand the world of proteins and informing the incredible work of experimental biologists.” This is a major demonstration of how AI will accelerate science and ultimately help us understand disease and develop treatments, and this award recognizes their amazing work. Is,” Jumper wrote in a statement.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Geoffrey Hinton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his “fundamental discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks.” Hinton worked at Google (Google Brain) between 2013 and 2023. While major credit goes to the award winners, this is a big moment for Google too.

Particularly in the case of Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, this recognition highlights the impact of Google DeepMind, further strengthening its position as a leader in AI research and its practical applications in science. Additionally, the Nobel Prize awarded to Geoffrey Hinton for his contributions to machine learning underscores Google’s commitment to advancing AI technologies. Together, these accolades reflect Google’s role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to revolutionize a variety of sectors, including health care and biotechnology.

“This is incredibly special, and it hasn’t fully hit me yet. This is really huge!”, said 2024 Chemistry Prize winner Demis Hassabis. “If we can build AI right it could be the ultimate tool to help scientists.” Help us explore the universe around us,” he said.

In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, as part of Google’s DeepMind team, developed AlphaFold2, an advanced AI model that successfully predicted the structure of nearly all 200 million known proteins. This breakthrough was a significant step forward in biology, giving researchers unprecedented insight into the building blocks of life. AlphaFold2’s ability to accurately model protein structures has revolutionized various fields of drug discovery, disease research, and biochemistry, providing a valuable resource for scientists around the world. This achievement cemented DeepMind’s place at the forefront of AI-powered scientific discovery.

The Nobel Prize release states, “John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used the tools of physics to create methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. Machine learning based on artificial neural networks Currently revolutionizing science, engineering and daily life.”

On the other hand, Geoffrey Hinton’s Nobel Prize win is important for Google because of the significant contributions he has made to the field of AI while working with Google Brain. Hinton’s foundational work on neural networks and machine learning paved the way for technologies that are central to AI progress today. He played a key role in developing deep learning algorithms that are now widely used in products and services across Google’s ecosystem, from search engines to virtual assistants.

Their Nobel recognition for these unprecedented achievements highlights the important role Google plays in fostering AI innovation, cementing the company’s legacy as a leader in cutting-edge AI research.