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 been struck by his clarity of vision and sense of responsibility. He’s building tools that don’t just help us understand life, but help us shape it wisely. The future of biology won’t be siloed—it will be collaborative, interdisciplinary, and deeply creative. Demis is helping us get there faster.
Doudna is a Nobel Prize–winning biochemist, the founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute, and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley
