̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Alastair Beresford

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge alumni awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 10:21:22 +0000

In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper of Google DeepMind presented an AI model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified.

Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries. Among a myriad of scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic.

̽��ֱ��duo received the Nobel along with Professor David Baker of the ̽��ֱ�� of Washington, who succeeded in using amino acids to design a new protein in 2003.

Sir Demis Hassabis read Computer Science as an undergraduate at Queens' College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1994. He went on to complete a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at ̽��ֱ�� College London and create the videogame company Elixir Studios.

Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, a company that developed masterful AI models for popular boardgames. ̽��ֱ��company was sold to Google in 2014 and, two years later, DeepMind came to global attention when the company achieved what many then believed to be the holy grail of AI: beating the champion player of one of the world’s oldest boardgames, Go.

In 2014, Hassabis was elected as a Fellow Benefactor and, later, as an Honorary Fellow of Queens' College. In 2024, he was knighted by the King for services to artificial intelligence.

In 2018, the ̽��ֱ�� announced the establishment of a DeepMind Chair of Machine Learning, thanks to a benefaction from Hassabis’s company, and appointed Professor Neil Lawrence to the position the following year.

“I have many happy memories from my time as an undergraduate at Cambridge, so it’s now a real honour for DeepMind to be able to contribute back to the Department of Computer Science and Technology and support others through their studies,” said Hassabis in 2018.

“It is wonderful to see Demis’s work recognised at the highest level — his contributions have been really transformative across many domains. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next!” said Professor Alastair Beresford, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology and Robin Walker Fellow in Computer Science at Queens' College.

In a statement released by Google DeepMind following the announcement by the Nobel committee, Hassabis said: "I’ve dedicated my career to advancing AI because of its unparalleled potential to improve the lives of billions of people... I hope we'll look back on AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI's incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery."

Dr John Jumper completed an MPhil in theoretical condensed matter physics at Cambridge's famous Cavendish Laboratory in 2008, during which time he was a member of St Edmund’s College, before going on to receive his PhD in Chemistry from the ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago.

"Computational biology has long held tremendous promise for creating practical insights that could be put to use in real-world experiments," said Jumper, Director of Google DeepMind, in a statement released by the company. "AlphaFold delivered on this promise. Ahead of us are a universe of new insights and scientific discoveries made possible by the use of AI as a scientific tool."

“ ̽��ֱ��whole of the St Edmund’s community joins me in congratulating our former Masters student Dr John Jumper on this illustrious achievement – the most inspiring example imaginable to our new generation of students as they go through their matriculation this week,” said St Edmund’s College Master, Professor Chris Young.

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge: “I’d like to congratulate Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who, alongside Geoffrey Hinton yesterday, are all alumni of our ̽��ֱ��. Together, their pioneering work in the development and application of machine learning is transforming our understanding of the world around us. They join an illustrious line-up of Cambridge people to have received Nobel Prizes – now totalling 125 individuals – for which we can be very proud.”

Article updated on 10 October 2024 to reflect that the number of Cambridge people to have received Nobel Prizes now totals 125.

Two ̽��ֱ�� alumni, Sir Demis Hassabis and Dr John Jumper, have been jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins.

I have many happy memories from my time as an undergraduate at Cambridge

Sir Demis Hassabis

Left: Demis Hassabis; Right: John Jumper

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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On the move

skbf2 — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:35:14 +0000

Wearable devices will play an important part in the healthcare delivery of the future. Cambridge and Nokia Bell Labs are working together to build the foundations for these transformative new technologies.

Cambridge and Nokia Bell Labs establish new research centre to advance AI-supported multi-sensory personal devices

plc32 — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 14:00:23 +0000

Nokia Bell Labs is a founding partner of the new Centre for Mobile, Wearable Systems and Augmented Intelligence, to be based in Cambridge’s world-leading Department of Computer Science and Technology. ̽��ֱ��Centre will advance state-of-the-art mobile systems, security, new materials, and artificial intelligence (AI) to address one of the main human needs – the ability to communicate better with each other.

̽��ֱ��collaboration pairs two innovation powerhouses. Nokia Bell Labs in Cambridge conducts research on novel sensors based on emerging materials, embedded and network intelligence, and computational social science. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Computer Science and Technology is expert in analysing mobile data and systems research in real world applications with quantifiable impact.

Research into mobile, wearable and augmented intelligence systems

̽��ֱ��research jointly conducted in the new Centre will redefine the way people interact with the digital and physical world. Areas of focus include precise, predictive and personalised medicine, digital, physical, mental, and social well-being, and sensory human communication experiences beyond visual and audio. ̽��ֱ��Centre will be directed by Cecilia Mascolo, Professor of Mobile Systems, and Alastair Beresford, Reader in Computer Security.

“ ̽��ֱ��new Centre provides support for high-quality, long-term research into mobile, wearable and augmented intelligence systems in Cambridge,” said Professor Mascolo. “In addition, the Centre will also engage with other researchers across the UK and abroad. We will formally launch the new Centre with a research symposium later in the year, with researchers drawn from across the UK and beyond.”

“Mobile systems have transformed our lives and evolved dramatically over the last 20 years,” said Dr Beresford. “However, there are many big changes to come, and our research will ensure we have the right technical solutions as well as appropriate safeguards available.”

Establishing a dynamic research community

̽��ֱ��Centre will be used to establish a vibrant research community, and support Nokia Bell Labs PhD Studentships as well as postdoctoral researchers over the next five years. It will also support the wider research community with a range of events, workshops and seminars. ̽��ֱ��official opening and first academic research symposium will take place in September.

Markus Hofmann, Head of Applications, Platforms and Software Systems Research at Nokia Bell Labs said: “We are very excited to participate in the creation of this new Centre at Cambridge. We look forward to solving the key technical challenges as we move towards our shared goal – to provide people with enhanced awareness of their world, to help them better sense and interpret their digital and physical environment, to enable the long-distance exchange of people’s emotions and perceptions, to augment and improve the human experience in a digitally connected world.”

Julie Byrne, Head of External Collaboration Programs at Nokia Bell Labs, said: “We established our Distinguished Academic Partner Program to bring together the best and brightest minds to solve human need challenges by delivering disruptive innovations. We are delighted to be a founding partner of this new Centre and to bring the world-leading Department of Computer Science and Technology at Cambridge to our collaboration program.”

More about the impact of philanthropic giving

Read other examples of the positive impact of philanthropy at Cambridge

̽��ֱ��long-sought dream of wearable and mobile devices that will interpret, replicate and influence people’s emotions and perceptions will soon be a reality thanks to a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� and Nokia Bell Labs.

Markus Spiske

Computer code

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Paranoid Android? Get connected to a new study…

amb206 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:59:16 +0000

Launched only six weeks ago, the research project is being carried out by PhD student Daniel Wagner at the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Computer Laboratory and will give both individual participants and the smartphone industry with valuable information about usage patterns.

Called Device Analyzer, the research is attracting more participants on a daily basis. It will provide detailed information about the usage of Android phones which currently take the largest share of the smartphone market, representing 36 per cent of sales in the US according to a recent survey. In April alone, Android added 28,000 new applications, with users now able to access more than 100,000 applications in total.

Users opting into the Device Analyzer study agree to give Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� researchers access to data about certain aspects of their mobile phone usage, including how often they charge their phones, numbers and lengths of phone calls and texts, which applications they use, which networks they are connected to, their usage of Wifi and Bluetooth devices, as well as choice of operating system settings.

Participants are able to access information about their own usage on a continuous basis. This provides them with information they can use to optimise their battery use and make the best choice of payment plan. They are also able to contribute to an exciting project that will lead to further sharing of knowledge and information.

Data from all participants is gathered to provide a global picture of how people are using Android phones. This data, which will be publicly available at no cost, could be extremely valuable to the development of the next generation of smartphones.

All direct personal identifiers such as telephone numbers are removed from the data before it is uploaded to the study’s server. When participants sign up to take part, they are given detailed information about the scheme. They can elect to drop out at any point and retroactively have their data removed from the servers.

Public release of data will occur only if participants agree, and only once it is at least three months old. During this three-month “cooling off” period, participants are able to opt out of data collection, with no record of their participation.

“This is a pragmatic trade-off” said Dr Alastair Beresford. “We know we can't provide the participants with a guarantee of anonymity, however we do remove strongly identifying data before publicly releasing it, and we are giving participants information about what we collect and the means to opt-out retroactively. If the data collection concerns or worries you, it is easy to have your data removed permanently.”

̽��ֱ��significance of the study lies in its sheer scale as well as in the detailed information it is gathering. “Our study already contains an order of magnitude of more participants than any study we have seen so far, which is quite surprising given the size and value of the smartphone market,” said Dr Andrew Rice who oversees the project. “As a neutral, research-based organisation we are well-placed to undertake a study like this which will be a useful tool for both the participants and the industry. At the moment developers do not have access to meaningful data to guide them in terms of new developments. For example, which features and functionality are most important when designing a low-cost phone?”

Participants from 81 countries around the world are taking part in the survey. “Numbers are rising on a daily basis” said Daniel Wagner, the PhD student who invented Device Analyzer. “People are taking part because they find it both fascinating and helpful to see an analysis of their own phone usage, and also because they also like the fact that they are contributing to research that helps to build a bigger picture right across the world.”

More than 1,000 people around the world have signed up to take part in the biggest ever public study of Android phone usage.

Our study already contains an order of magnitude of more participants than any study we have seen so far.

Dr Andrew Rice

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Android

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