Faculty of Life Sciences celebrates 2024 Nobel successes

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the "Godfather of AI," was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024 for his pioneering work in artificial neural networks. Between 1998 and 2001, Professor Hinton was the founding director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL. The unit brings together the fields of theoretical neuroscience and machine learning and since its founding has uncovered new insights into the mathematical underpinnings of learning, perception and action in biological and artificial systems.

Born in London and currently a professor at the University of Toronto, Professor Hinton's research in the 1980s laid the groundwork for modern AI systems. His method for training neural networks to autonomously identify properties in data has been instrumental in advancements ranging from climate modelling to medical image analysis.

Sir Demis Hassabis CBE, the CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 for his groundbreaking work on protein structure prediction. Alongside his colleague John Jumper and US-based scientist David Baker, Sir Demis was recognised for developing the AI model AlphaFold, which accurately predicts the 3D shapes of proteins.

Sir Demis completed a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL in 2009 before continuing as a post-doc at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL, and then went on to co-found London-based machine learning AI startup, Google DeepMind. This achievement has vast implications for drug development and understanding diseases, as proteins are fundamental to all biological processes.

Professor Maneesh Sahani, Director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, said: “It is quite wonderful to have had the Gatsby Unit's founding director, one of our more prominent alumni, and a founding advisor (Professor John Hopfield) all honoured in the course of a week. Their prizes acknowledge the increasingly central role that machine learning - and the AI that it fuels - plays in the sciences as well as in our day-to-day world.”

He added: “All three have also been deeply committed to the idea that intelligence in machines and in brains is very likely to share a common mathematical substrate. This is the principle that drives research at Gatsby (and our collaboration with the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and place in the Faculty of Life Sciences). Arguably, the joint mission in machine learning and theoretical neuroscience, underpinned by stable long-term funding from a generous and farsighted donor, and consequent ability to focus intensely on research and collaboration, have helped to amplify the unit's influence on both fields over more than 25 years.  We’re proud to celebrate these members of the Greater Gatsby and FLS communities.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised both Hinton and Hassabis for their contributions to machine learning and AI, noting that their work has revolutionised various scientific fields. Their Nobel Prizes serve as a testament to the transformative power of AI and its ability to unlock new frontiers in scientific exploration.

Further information:

• Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL
• Professor Maneesh Sahani’s academic profile
• AI for People and Planet at UCL
• Nobel Prize
• Google DeepMind
• University of Toronto

Image credits:

• Left: Professor Geoffrey Hinton in June 2023. Credit: Ramsey Cardy/Collision via Sportsfile. CC BY 2.0. Source: Flickr
• Right: Sir Demis Hassabis (courtesy of Google DeepMind).