University of Chicago alumnus John Jumper has been awarded a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The accolade, announced on October 9, recognizes his contribution to developing an AI model that predicts the complex folded structures of proteins.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored Jumper alongside Demis Hassabis for their work on "protein structure prediction." They share the prize with Professor David Baker from the University of Washington "for computational protein design."
Jumper is now the 100th scholar associated with the University to receive a Nobel Prize. He expressed his excitement about this achievement: "It's absolutely extraordinary," he said. "I’ve been a computational biologist a long time, and I like to say in talks: we need this to work. We need computation to solve the problems of biology, and I just love that it’s starting to work."
Jumper and Hassabis co-invented AlphaFold, a system released by Google DeepMind. According to the Nobel committee, they "have utilised artificial intelligence to successfully solve a problem that chemists wrestled with for over 50 years: predicting the three-dimensional structure of a protein from a sequence of amino acids."
Understanding protein shapes is essential for grasping cellular functions and designing drugs for diseases. Despite assembling genetic sequences for various organisms, predicting protein folding based solely on genetic data had remained challenging until AlphaFold's release.
Since its open-source release in July 2021, AlphaFold has been used by over half a million researchers worldwide and contributed to thousands of scientific papers on diverse topics such as antibiotic resistance and crop resilience.
Jumper remarked on this impact: "What I love about all of this is…we could draw a straight line from what we do to people being healthy because of what we learn about biology in the cell and everything else, and it’s just extraordinary."
He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from UChicago in 2017 under advisors Profs. Karl Freed and Tobin Sosnick before joining Google DeepMind as a postdoctoral researcher.
Professors Freed and Sosnick praised Jumper's achievements; Sosnick noted how AlphaFold transformed biological sciences: "Following the July 2021 online publication...the expression 'I alphafolded it' is now something I hear almost every day...This transformation mirrors the revolution that has occurred in biological sciences over the past two and a half years."
John Jumper becomes UChicago's 19th Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Previously, Moungi Bawendi received it in 2023 for quantum dots discovery; John Goodenough was recognized in 2019 for inventing lithium batteries.
Professor Jiwoong Park expressed pride at seeing alumni like Jumper honored consecutively with Nobel Prizes: "Dr. Jumper's Nobel recognition is testamentary proof showing pioneering research conducted at UChicago chemistry leading towards real-world impacts..."
Jumper will deliver UChicago’s Bloch Lecture scheduled next year—a visit eagerly anticipated by faculty members eager welcome him back onto campus grounds once more after winning such prestigious acknowledgment within field today!