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Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

nobelprize.org

21–30 of 343 posts

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#22
post #19

The AlphaFold paper has countless authors, many researchers and company resources underlying it. Hassabis’ contribution is management of resources and entrepreneurship, not the actual science. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists out there doing deep technical work, and they aren’t recognized. I think we might be the end of it, as the emphasis shifts to commercialization and product development. These AI dem…

Hasn't it always been like that? The lab director gets to receive the prize, not the whole team (which could have hundreds or thousands of people).

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#24
Here's a direct quote from the Alphafold paper:

"These authors contributed equally: John Jumper, Richard Evans, Alexander Pritzel, Tim Green, Michael Figurnov, Olaf Ronneberger, Kathryn Tunyasuvunakool, Russ Bates, Augustin Žídek, Anna Potapenko, Alex Bridgland, Clemens Meyer, Simon A. A. Kohl, Andrew J. Ballard, Andrew Cowie, Bernardino Romera-Paredes, Stanislav Nikolov, Rishub Jain, Demis Hassabis"

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#25
post #19

The AlphaFold paper has countless authors, many researchers and company resources underlying it. Hassabis’ contribution is management of resources and entrepreneurship, not the actual science. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists out there doing deep technical work, and they aren’t recognized. I think we might be the end of it, as the emphasis shifts to commercialization and product development. These AI dem…

The Nobel prize is aimed at the general public. It has a kind of late 19th century progressive humanistic ethos. It's science outreach. This way, at least once a year, the everyday layperson hears about scientific discoveries.

The Nobel isn't a vehicle to recognize hundreds of thousands of deeply technical scientific researchers. How could it be? They have to pick a symbolic figurehead to represent a breakthrough.

They could also simply give it to "DeepMind" similar to how they give the peace prize to orgs sometimes, or how the Time Person of the Year is sometimes something abstract as well (like the cutesy "You" of 2006). But it would be silly. Just deal with it, we can't "recognize" hundreds of thousands, and we want to see a personal face, not a logo of a company getting the award. That's how we are, better learn to deal with it.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#26
post #17

While I am skeptical about yesterdays award in physics, these are totally deserved and spot on. There are few approaches that will accelerate the field of drug development and chemistry as a whole in a way that the works of these three people will. Congratulations!

Are they? What did Demis do?

He's founder and CEO of the AI lab that build Alphafold?

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#27
post #16

Now this one makes more sense. Chemistry Nobel for advancing chemistry using AI. Contrast that with Phyics Nobel for advancing AI using physics.

AlphaFold is also a high impact discovery, while Hopfield networks have very little to do with modern AI and they are only a very interesting toy model right now.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#28
post #19

The AlphaFold paper has countless authors, many researchers and company resources underlying it. Hassabis’ contribution is management of resources and entrepreneurship, not the actual science. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists out there doing deep technical work, and they aren’t recognized. I think we might be the end of it, as the emphasis shifts to commercialization and product development. These AI dem…

The paper has a mention : "These authors contributed equally: ..."

However, it appears that some the authors were more equal than others.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#29
post #19

The AlphaFold paper has countless authors, many researchers and company resources underlying it. Hassabis’ contribution is management of resources and entrepreneurship, not the actual science. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists out there doing deep technical work, and they aren’t recognized. I think we might be the end of it, as the emphasis shifts to commercialization and product development. These AI dem…

The Nobel prize cannot go to a team so they have to pick individuals. This is true for many (most?) nobel prize awards. Consider for example the discovery of gravity waves - the team that built and operated LIGO was huge, but they have to pick. This has commonly been the case since the inception of the prizes - the professor gets the prize, the PhD students and postdocs don't usually. Not saying this is right, but it's the way it is.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? What did Demis do?

He's founder and CEO of the AI lab that build Alphafold?

Then maybe Sergey and Larry should also get the prize since they founded Google, which owns Deepmind?
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