Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

and co-founder of

Google DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Goo ...

, and Isomorphic Labs, and a UK Government AI Adviser. In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper were jointly awarded the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

for their AI research contributions for

protein structure prediction Protein structure prediction is the inference of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence—that is, the prediction of its Protein secondary structure, secondary and Protein tertiary structure, tertiary structure ...

. Hassabis is a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

, and has won many prestigious awards for his research work including the Breakthrough Prize, the

Canada Gairdner International Award The Canada Gairdner International Award is given annually by the Gairdner Foundation at a special dinner to five individuals for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science. Receipt of the Gairdner is traditionally considered a ...

, and the

Lasker Award In 1945 Albert Lasker and Mary Woodard Lasker created the Lasker Awards. Every year since then the award has been given to the living person considered to have made the greatest contribution to medical science or who has demonstrated public ser ...

. In 2017 he was appointed a

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

and listed in the

Time 100 ''Time'' 100 is a list of the top 100 most influential people, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now a highly ...

most influential people list. In 2024 he was

knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

for services to AI, and was listed in the Time 100 again in 2025, this time featured in one of the five covers of the printed version.

Early life and education

Hassabis was born to Costas and Angela Hassabis. His father is Greek Cypriot and his mother is from Singapore. Demis grew up in

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames and the City of London. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshi ...

. In his early career, he was a

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

and

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

, and an expert

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

s player. A

child prodigy A child prodigy is, technically, a child under the age of 10 who produces meaningful work in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to describe young people who are extraordinarily talented in some f ...

in chess from the age of four, Hassabis reached master standard at the age of 13 with an

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system wa ...

of 2300 and captained many of the

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

junior chess teams. He represented the University of Cambridge in the Oxford–Cambridge varsity chess matches of 1995, 1996 and 1997, winning a half blue. Between 1988 and 1990, Hassabis was educated at Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, a boys'

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...

in North London. He was subsequently home-schooled by his parents, during which time he bought his first computer, a

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

48K funded from chess winnings, and taught himself how to program from books. He wrote his first AI program on a

Commodore Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processo ...

based on the

reversi Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. ''Othello'', a variant with a fixed initial setup of the board, was patented in 1971. Basics Two players compete, using 64 identi ...

board game. He then studied at the

comprehensive school A comprehensive school is a secondary school for pupils aged 11–16 or 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis ...

Christ's College, Finchley. He completed his

A-level The A-level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational ...

exams two years early at 16.

Bullfrog Productions

Asked by Cambridge University to take a

gap year A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is a period of time when students take a break from their studies, usually after completing high school or before beginning graduate school. During this time, students engage in a variety of educatio ...

due to his young age, Hassabis began his computer games career at

Bullfrog Productions Bullfrog Productions Limited was a British video game developer based in Guildford, England. Founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, the company gained recognition in 1989 for their third release, ''Populous (video game), Populous'', ...

after entering an

Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. History The first issue of ''Amiga Power'' was publi ...

"Win-a-job-at-Bullfrog" competition. He began first by level designing on ''

Syndicate A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. Etymology The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French word ''syndic ...

'', and then at 17 co-designing and lead programming on the 1994 game ''

Theme Park An amusement park is a park that features various attractions, such as rides and games, and events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central theme, often fea ...

'', with the game's designer

Peter Molyneux Peter Douglas Molyneux (; born 5 May 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games '' Populous'', ''Dungeon Keeper'', and '' Black & White'', as well as ''Theme Park'', the ''Fable'' series, '' Curiosity: Wh ...

. ''Theme Park'', a

simulation video game Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

, sold several million copies and inspired a whole genre of simulation

sandbox game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objec ...

s. He earned enough from his gap year to pay his own way through university.

University of Cambridge

Hassabis left Bullfrog to study at

Queens' College, Cambridge Queens' College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the 16 "old colleges" of the university, and was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. Its buildings span the R ...

, where he completed the Computer Science Tripos and graduated in 1997 with a

double first The British undergraduate degree classification system is a Grading in education, grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and Master's degree#Integrated Masters Degree, integrated master's degrees in the United Kingd ...

Career and research

Lionhead

After graduating from Cambridge, Hassabis worked at

Lionhead Studios Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson (British game designer), Steve Jackson. The company is best known for the ''Black & White (series), Bl ...

. Games designer Peter Molyneux, with whom Hassabis had worked at Bullfrog Productions, had recently founded the company. At Lionhead, Hassabis worked as lead AI programmer on the 2001

god game A god game is an artificial life game that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine and supernatural powers, as a great leader, or with no specified character (as in ''Spore''), and pla ...

'' Black & White''.

Elixir Studios

Hassabis left Lionhead in 1998 to found

Elixir Studios Elixir Studios was a British video game developer. History The company was founded on 7 July 1998 by Demis Hassabis, formerly a prominent figure at Lionhead Studios. After failing to secure venture capital at acceptable terms, Hassabis had p ...

, a London-based independent games developer, signing publishing deals with

Eidos Interactive Eidos Interactive Limited (formerly Domark Limited) was a British video game publisher based in Wimbledon, London. Among its franchises were '' Championship Manager'', '' Deus Ex'', ''Hitman'', '' Thief'' and ''Tomb Raider''. Domark was founded ...

Vivendi Universal Vivendi SE (stylized in all lowercase) is a French investment company headquartered in Paris. It currently wholly-owns Gameloft as well as a number of investments in several companies, primarily involved in content, entertainment, media, and t ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. In addition to managing the company, Hassabis served as executive designer of the games '' Republic: The Revolution'' and '' Evil Genius.'' Each received

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

Nominations for their interactive music scores, created by

James Hannigan James Hannigan (born 23 July 1971) is a BAFTA Award winning composer and producer. His credits include entries in the ''Harry Potter video games, Harry Potter'', ''Command & Conquer'', ''Dead Space 3, Dead Space'', ''List of Games Workshop vid ...

. The release of Elixir's first game, '' Republic: The Revolution'', a highly ambitious and unusual political simulation game, was delayed due to its huge scope, which involved an AI simulation of the workings of an entire fictional country. The final game was reduced from its original vision and greeted with lukewarm reviews, receiving a

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

score of 62/100. Evil Genius, a tongue-in-cheek Bond villain simulator, fared much better with a score of 75/100. In April 2005 the intellectual property and technology rights were sold to various publishers and the studio was closed.

Neuroscience research at University College London

Following Elixir Studios, Hassabis returned to academia to obtain his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the Biology, biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental ...

from

UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology The UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology is an institute within the Faculty of Brain Sciences of University College London (UCL) and is located in London, United Kingdom. Together with the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a ...

in 2009 supervised by Eleanor Maguire. He sought to find inspiration in the

human brain The human brain is the central organ (anatomy), organ of the nervous system, and with the spinal cord, comprises the central nervous system. It consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. The brain controls most of the activi ...

for new AI algorithms. He continued his neuroscience and artificial intelligence research as a

visiting scientist In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

jointly at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT), in the lab of

Tomaso Poggio Tomaso Armando Poggio (born 11 September 1947 in Genoa, Italy), is the Eugene McDermott professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a member of the MIT Computer Sci ...

, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, before earning a

Henry Wellcome Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (21 August 1853 – 25 July 1936) was an American and British pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He founded the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Company with his colleague Silas Mainville Burroughs, Jr., Silas Bur ...

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

ship to the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL in 2009 working with

Peter Dayan Peter Dayan is a British neuroscientist and computer scientist who is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, along with Ivan De Araujo. He is co-author of ''Theoretical Neuroscience'', an influent ...

. Working in the field of imagination,

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

, and

amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be temporarily caused by t ...

, he co-authored several influential papers published in ''Nature'', ''Science'', ''Neuron'', and ''

PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of S ...

''. His very first academic work, published in ''PNAS'', was a landmark paper that showed systematically for the first time that patients with damage to their

hippocampus The hippocampus (: hippocampi; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , 'seahorse'), also hippocampus proper, is a major component of the brain of humans and many other vertebrates. In the human brain the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, and the ...

, known to cause

, were also unable to imagine themselves in new experiences. The finding established a link between the constructive process of

imagination Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes ...

and the reconstructive process of

episodic memory Episodic memory is the memory of everyday events (such as times, location geography, associated emotions, and other contextual information) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred ...

recall. Based on this work and a follow-up

functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...

(fMRI) study, Hassabis developed a new theoretical account of the episodic memory system identifying ''scene construction'', the generation and online maintenance of a complex and coherent scene, as a key process underlying both memory recall and imagination. This work received widespread coverage in the mainstream media and was listed in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year by the journal ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

''. He later generalised these ideas to advance the notion of a 'simulation engine of the mind' whose role it was to imagine events and scenarios to aid with better planning.

DeepMind

Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Go ...

, a

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

AI startup, founded in London in 2010 with

Shane Legg Shane Legg (born ) is a machine learning researcher and entrepreneur. With Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, he cofounded DeepMind Technologies (later bought by Google and now called Google DeepMind), and works there as the chief AGI scienti ...

and

Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman (born 1984) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Microsoft AI, and the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an AI company acquired by Google. After leaving DeepMind, he co-fou ...

. Hassabis met Legg when both were postdocs at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, and he and Suleyman had been friends through family. Hassabis also recruited his university friend and Elixir partner

David Silver David Silver may refer to: * David Silver (Beverly Hills, 90210), a character on the TV series ''Beverly Hills, 90210'' * David Silver (drummer), American musician, drummer of Season to Risk and Offworld * David Silver (computer scientist) (born 19 ...

. DeepMind's mission is to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". More concretely, DeepMind aims to combine insights from systems neuroscience with new developments in machine learning and computing hardware to unlock increasingly powerful general-purpose learning algorithms that will work towards the creation of an

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

(AGI). The company has focused on training learning algorithms to master games, and in December 2013 it announced that it had made a pioneering breakthrough by training an algorithm called a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to play

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...

games at a superhuman level by using only the raw pixels on the screen as inputs. DeepMind's early investors included several high-profile tech entrepreneurs. In 2014,

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

purchased DeepMind for £400 million. Although most of the company has remained an independent entity based in London, DeepMind Health has since been directly incorporated into

Google Health Google Health encompasses the health and wellbeing initiatives of Google, including Fitbit and a range of other features and integrations. Google Health started in 2008 as an attempt to create a repository of personal health information in ord ...

. Since the Google acquisition, the company has notched up a number of significant achievements, perhaps the most notable being the creation of

AlphaGo AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies, an acquired subsidiary of Google. Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that c ...

, a program that defeated world champion

Lee Sedol Lee Sedol (; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean former professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). His nickname is "The Stro ...

at the complex game of Go. Go had been considered a holy grail of AI, for its high number of possible board positions and resistance to existing programming techniques. However, AlphaGo beat European champion

Fan Hui Fan Hui (; born 27 December 1981) is a Chinese-born French Go player. Becoming a professional Go player in 1996, Fan moved to France in 2000 and became the coach of the French national Go team in 2005. He was the winner of the European Go Champi ...

5–0 in October 2015 before winning 4–1 against former world champion Lee Sedol in March 2016. Additional DeepMind accomplishments include creating a

neural Turing machine A neural Turing machine (NTM) is a recurrent neural network model of a Turing machine. The approach was published by Alex Graves et al. in 2014. NTMs combine the fuzzy pattern matching capabilities of neural networks with the algorithmic power of ...

, reducing the energy used by the cooling systems in Google's data centers by 40%, advancing research on AI safety, and the creation of a partnership with the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

(NHS) of the United Kingdom and

Moorfields Eye Hospital Moorfields Eye Hospital is a specialist National Health Service (NHS) eye hospital in Finsbury in the London Borough of Islington in London, England run by Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Together with the UCL Institute of Ophthal ...

to improve medical service and identify the onset of degenerative eye conditions. DeepMind has also been responsible for technical advances in machine learning, having produced a number of award-winning papers. In particular, the company has made significant advances in

deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

and

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent should take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize a reward signal. Reinforcement learnin ...

, and pioneered the field of deep reinforcement learning which combines these two methods. Hassabis has predicted that artificial intelligence will be "one of the most beneficial technologies of mankind ever" but that significant ethical issues remain. Hassabis has also warned of the potential dangers and risks of AI if misused, and has been a strong advocate of further AI safety research being needed. In 2023, he signed the statement that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". He considers however that a pause on AI progress would be very hard to enforce worldwide, and that the potential benefits (e.g. for health and against climate change) make it worth continuing. He said that there is an urgent need for research on evaluation tests that measure how capable and controllable new AI models are.

AlphaFold

In 2016, DeepMind turned its artificial intelligence to

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein, after Protein biosynthesis, synthesis by a ribosome as a linear chain of Amino acid, amino acids, changes from an unstable random coil into a more ordered protein tertiary structure, t ...

, a 50-year grand challenge in science, to predict the 3D structure of a protein from its 1D

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

sequence. This is an important problem in biology, as proteins are essential to life, almost every biological function depends on them, and the function of a protein is thought to be related to its structure. Knowing the structure of a protein can be very helpful in drug discovery and disease understanding. In December 2018, DeepMind's tool

AlphaFold AlphaFold is an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed by DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, which performs predictions of protein structure. It is designed using deep learning techniques. AlphaFold 1 (2018) placed first in the overall ...

won the 13th

Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), sometimes called Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. CASP pro ...

(CASP) by successfully predicting the most accurate structure for 25 out of 43 proteins. "This is a lighthouse project, our first major investment in terms of people and resources into a fundamental, very important, real-world scientific problem", Hassabis said to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. In November 2020, DeepMind again announced world-beating results in the CASP14 edition of the competition with AlphaFold 2, a new version of the system. It achieved a median

global distance test The global distance test (GDT), also written as GDT_TS to represent "total score", is a measure of similarity between two protein structures with known amino acid correspondences (e.g. identical amino acid sequences) but different tertiary struct ...

(GDT) score of 87.0 across protein targets in the challenging free-modeling category, much higher than the same 2018 results with a median GDT < 60, and an overall error of less than the width of an atom (<1

Angstrom The angstrom (; ) is a unit of length equal to m; that is, one ten-billionth of a metre, a hundred-millionth of a centimetre, 0.1 nanometre, or 100 picometres. The unit is named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–18 ...

), making it competitive with experimental methods, and leading the organisers of CASP to declare the problem essentially solved. Over the next year DeepMind used AlphaFold2 to fold all 200 million proteins known to science, and made the system and these structures openly and freely available for anyone to use via th
AlphaFold Protein Structure Database
developed in collaboration with

EMBL-EBI The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) which, as part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) family, focuses on research and services in bioinformatics. It is located on the Well ...

Personal life

Hassabis is married to Dr. Teresa Niccoli, an Italian molecular biologist with whom he has two sons. He resides in North London with his family. He is also a lifelong fan of

Liverpool FC Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club based in Liverpool, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1892, the club joined the Football League the following year and has ...

. Hassabis is the main subject of the documentary called ''The Thinking Game'', which premiered in 2024's

Tribeca Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...

, from the same filmmaker as the award-winning documentary
AlphaGo
' (2016).

Awards and honours

Entrepreneurial and scientific

* 2025 –

Gold House Gold House is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Singapore that promotes the interests of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. The collective consists of founders, creators, investors, ente ...

A100 Honoree * 2025 – ''Time'' 100: The 100 Most Influential People * 2025 – STAT Status List * 2025 –

Ukie The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) is a non-profit trade association for the video game industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Ukie was founded in 1989 as the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), then chang ...

Hall of Fame * 2024 –

* 2024 –

Clarivate Citation Laureates Clarivate Citation Laureates, formerly Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates, is a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in their respective field. The candidates are so named based on the citation impact of their published rese ...

* 2024 –

Keio Medical Science Prize The Keio Medical Science Prize ( Japanese: 慶應医学賞) is a Japanese prize in medical sciences. Introduction The prize is awarded to scientists who made significant contributions to the field of medical sciences or life sciences. And these c ...

* 2024 – The AI Citizen of the Year * 2024 – Included in the Time 100 AI list * 2024 –

Science Museum Group The Science Museum Group (SMG) consists of five British museums: * The Science Museum in South Kensington, London * The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester * The National Railway Museum in York * The Locomotion Museum (formerly the Na ...

Fellowship Awards * 2024 – Honorary degree,

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

* 2024 –

Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry; it is a part of the Orders, decorations, and medals ...

for "services to artificial intelligence" * 2023 –

BCS Lovelace Medal The Lovelace Medal was established by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT in 1998, and is presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the understanding or advancement of computing. It is the top award in computing in the UK ...

* 2023 – UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences * 2023 –

Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is one of the Lasker Award, prizes awarded by the Lasker Foundation for a fundamental discovery that opens up a new area of biomedical science. The award frequently precedes a Nobel Prize in Phys ...

* 2023 – Honorary degree,

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

* 2023 –

Member of the Academia Europaea Membership of the Academia Europaea (MAE) is an award conferred by the Academia Europaea to individuals that have demonstrated "sustained academic excellence". Membership is by invitation only by existing MAE and judged during a peer review selecti ...

* 2023 –

* 2023 – Ordinary Member of

Pontifical Academy of Sciences The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (, ) is a Academy of sciences, scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences and the study ...

* 2023 –

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is a scientific award, funded by internet entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook; Sergey Brin of Google; entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner; and Anne Wojcicki, one of t ...

for developing

, which accurately predicts protein structures * 2022 –

VinFuture Prize The VinFuture Prize is an international award established in Vietnam in 2020 to recognize achievements in science and technology. It is presented annually by the VinFuture Foundation. According to the Foundation, the prize aims to support resear ...

for Innovators with Outstanding Achievements in Emerging Fields * 2022 – Global Swiss AI Award * 2022 –

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in the category "Biology and Biomedicine" * 2022 –

Princess of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards (, ), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 (), are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Princess of Asturias Foundation (previously the Prince of Asturias Foundation) to individuals ...

(with

Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian-French computer scientist, and a pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Université de Montréal and scientific director of the AI institute Montreal In ...

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title "the Godfather of AI". Hinton is Univer ...

, and

Yann LeCun Yann André Le Cun ( , ; usually spelled LeCun; born 8 July 1960) is a French-American computer scientist working primarily in the fields of machine learning, computer vision, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the Silver Pr ...

) for Technical and Scientific Research * 2022 –

Wiley Prize The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences is intended to recognize breakthrough research in pure or applied life science research that is distinguished by its excellence, originality and impact on our understanding of biological systems and processes. ...

in Biomedical Sciences * 2022 – Advisor to the

Advanced Research and Invention Agency The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, is a research funding agency of the UK government, announced on 19 February 2021 and formally established on 26 January 2023. History The Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022 cre ...

* 2021 –

IRI Medal The IRI Medal, established by the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) in 1946, recognizes and honors leaders of technology for their outstanding accomplishments in technological innovation which contribute broadly to the development of industry and ...

, established by the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) * 2021 – International Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* 2020 – Pius XI Medal from the

* 2020 – The 50 most influential people in Britain from British '' GQ'' magazine * 2020 –

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is an international group of awards that recognize and support outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. Nine prizes of $300,000 are awarded each year to outstand ...

– Future Award * 2019 – Winner of UKtech50 (the 50 most influential people in UK technology) from

Computer Weekly ''Computer Weekly'' is a digital magazine and website for IT professionals in the United Kingdom owned by Informa TechTarget. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 50 years. Topics covered wit ...

* 2018 – Elected a

(FRS) in May * 2018 – Adviser to the UK's Government Office for Artificial Intelligence * 2018 – Honorary doctorate,

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

* 2017 – Appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) in the

2018 New Year Honours The 2018 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to Orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms, various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Hono ...

for "services to Science and Technology". * 2017 – ''Time'' 100: The 100 Most Influential People * 2017 –

The Asian Awards The Asian Awards is an annual award ceremony for the global British Asian, Asian community which takes place in the United Kingdom, with 14 categories that include business, philanthropy, entertainment, culture and sport. Nominees are selected by ...

: Outstanding Achievement in Science and Technology * 2017 – Elected a

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in United K ...

(FREng) * 2017 –

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving people in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet one ano ...

: Golden Plate Award * 2016 –

Honorary Fellow Honorary titles (professor, president, reader, lecturer) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as ...

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

* 2016 –

Francis Crick Institute The Francis Crick Institute (formerly the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation) is a biomedical research centre in London, which was established in 2010 and opened in 2016. The institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Im ...

scientific advisory board * 2016 – ''

London Evening Standard The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free of charge in London, England. It is print ...

'' list of influential Londoners, number 6 * 2016 –

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

Silver Medal * 2016 – ''

WIRED Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'' Leadership in Innovation * 2016 –

Nature's 10 ''Nature'' 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal ''Nature (journal), Nature''. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad. Reporters and editorial s ...

: the 10 most influential (good or bad) scientists of the year * 2016 – ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'' Digital Entrepreneur of the Year * 2016 –

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

Global 100 * 2015 – ''

'' top 50 Entrepreneurs in Europe * 2015 – Fellow Benefactor,

* 2014 – Third most influential Londoner according to the ''

'' * 2014 –

Mullard Award The Mullard Award is awarded annually by the Royal Society to a person who has "an outstanding academic record in any field of natural science, engineering or technology and whose contribution is currently making or has the potential to make a co ...

of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

* 2013 – Listed on ''

s 'Smart 50' * 2009 –

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a learned society that champions innovation and progress across a multitude of sectors by fostering creativity, s ...

(FRSA)

Research

Hassabis's research work has been listed in the Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of the Year by

Science Magazine ''Science'' is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, is currently circulated weekly and has a subscrib ...

on four separate occasions: * 2021 Breakthrough of the Year (Winner) – for AlphaFold v2 * 2020 Breakthrough of the Year (Top 10) – for AlphaFold v1 * 2016 Breakthrough of the Year (Top 10) – for AlphaGo * 2007 Breakthrough of the Year (Top 10) – for neuroscience research on imagination

DeepMind

* Cambridge Computer Laboratory Company of the Year (2014) * Eight ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'' front cover articles (2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, two in 2021, 2022, and 2024) and one ''

'' front cover article (2017) * Honorary 9-dan Go rank for

from

Korea Baduk Association The Korea Baduk Association, also known as Hanguk Kiwon (), is the organization that oversees Go (''baduk'') and Go tournaments in South Korea. It was founded in 1945 by Cho Namchul as the ''Hanseong Kiwon''. Baduk is a game which was present ...

(2016),

Chinese Weiqi Association Chinese Weiqi Association (), or Chinese Go Association, founded in Hefei, Anhui, in 1962, is the major go organization in China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, ...

(2017), and Japan Go Association (2024) * Cannes Lion Grand Prix for AlphaGo (2016) *

Innovation in AI Award (2016) *

City A.M. ''City AM'' is a free business-focused newspaper distributed in and around London, England, with an accompanying website. In January 2025, it had a monthly online readership of 4m. In 2023 it had a print circulation of 67,714. History ''City ...

Innovative Company of the Year (2016)

Games

Hassabis is a five-times winner of the all-round world board games championship (the

Pentamind The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports by Mind Sports Organisation. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fun ...

), and an expert player of many games including: *

Chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

: achieved Master standard at age 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 (at the time the second-highest in the world for his age after

Judit Polgár Judit Polgár (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the Strong (chess), strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years ...

) * ''Diplomacy'': World Team Champion in 2004, 4th in 2006 World Championship *

Poker Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...

: cashed at the

World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada, and since 2004, sponsored by Eldorado Resorts, Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best ...

six times including in the Main Event * Multi-games events at the London

Mind Sports Olympiad The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-sport event, multi-disciplined competition and festival for game of skill, games of mental skill and mind sports by Mind Sports Organisation. The inaugural event was held in 1997 i ...

: World

Champion (five times: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003) and World Decamentathlon Champion (twice: 2003, 2004)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hassabis, Demis 1976 births Living people Academics of University College London Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge Alumni of University College London British artificial intelligence researchers British computer programmers British video game designers British video game programmers Bullfrog Productions Businesspeople awarded knighthoods Businesspeople from London Chess Candidate Masters Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English chess players English people of Greek Cypriot descent English people of Chinese descent English people of Singaporean descent Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society Knights Bachelor Lionhead Studios Machine learning researchers People educated at Christ's College, Finchley Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research British technology company founders British Nobel laureates Nobel laureates in Chemistry DeepMind people Royal Designers for Industry