Demis Hassabis
AI LAUREATE By Jennifer Doudna Demis Hassabis is reshaping what’s possible in science. His work at DeepMind—most notably the development of AlphaFold, which earned him a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—is already accelerating discoveries across biology and medicine. The ripple effects are real: labs around the world, including my own, are using his AI tools to tackle rare genetic diseases, antibiotic resistance, and even climate-driven challenges in agriculture. Demis brings a rare kind of mindset to biology, one shaped by deep study of neuroscience, cognition, and computation. He doesn’t just build powerful systems; he builds understanding. His approach reveals biology as a system of patterns we can read, predict, and eventually design for in ways that have never been previously possible.
In our conversations, I’ve…