Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

researcher and entrepreneur. In his early career he was a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

AI programmer and designer, and an expert player of

board games Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a co ...

. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

and co-founder of DeepMind and

Isomorphic Labs Isomorphic Labs is a drug discovery company launched in the United Kingdom in November 2021. The company was established under Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google. It is led by Demis Hassabis. Isomorphic Labs was incorporated in Februa ...

, and a UK Government AI Advisor.

Early life and education

Hassabis was born to a

Greek Cypriot Greek Cypriots or Cypriot Greeks ( el, Ελληνοκύπριοι, Ellinokýprioi, tr, Kıbrıs Rumları) are the ethnic Greek population of Cyprus, forming the island's largest ethnolinguistic community. According to the 2011 census, 659,115 r ...

father and a

Chinese Singaporean Chinese Singaporeans () are Singaporeans of Chinese descent. Chinese Singaporeans constitute 75.9% of the Singaporean citizen population according to the official census, making them the largest ethnic group among them. As early as the 10th ...

mother and grew up in

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshire. The term ''nor ...

. A child prodigy in chess from the age of 4, Hassabis reached master standard at the age of 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 and captained many of the

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

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. Hassabis was briefly 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 that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

48K funded from chess winnings, and taught himself how to program from books. He went on to be educated at

Christ's College, Finchley Christ's College is a secondary school with academy status in East Finchley, London, United Kingdom. It falls under the London Borough of Barnet Local Education Authority for admissions. Since September 2018, Christ’s College Finchley has off ...

, a state-funded

comprehensive school A comprehensive school typically describes a secondary school for pupils aged approximately 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 res ...

East Finchley East Finchley is an area in North London, immediately north of Hampstead Heath. Like neighbouring Muswell Hill it straddles the London Boroughs of Barnet and Haringey, with most of East Finchley falling into the London Borough of Barnet. It ha ...

, North London. He completed his

A-levels 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 au ...

and scholarship level exams two years early at the ages of 15 and 16 respectively.

Bullfrog

Asked by Cambridge University to take a

gap year A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is typically a year-long break before or after college/university during which students engage in various educational and developmental activities, such as travel or some type of regular work. Gap yea ...

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'', and is also well know ...

, first-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 ''syndicat ...

'', 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, as well as other events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central ...

'', with the games 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 over ten million copies and won a

Golden Joystick Award The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be voted ...

, and inspired a whole genre of simulation sandbox games. He earned enough from his gap year to pay his own way through university.

University of Cambridge

Hassabis then left Bullfrog to study at

Queens' College, Cambridge Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light s ...

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

Double First The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

from the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

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

, 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 '' Black & White.

Elixir Studios

Hassabis left Lionhead in 1998 to found

Elixir Studios Elixir Studios was a British video game developer. The company was founded in 1998 by Demis Hassabis, formerly a prominent figure at Lionhead Studios. At its height, it employed around sixty people, and was based in London London is th ...

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

Eidos Interactive Square Enix Limited (formerly Domark Limited and Eidos Interactive Limited) is a British subsidiary of the Japanese video game company Square Enix, acting as their European publishing arm. The company formerly owned ''Tomb Raider'', which was in ...

Vivendi Universal Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. In addition to managing the company, Hassabis served as executive designer of the BAFTA-nominated games '' Republic: The Revolution'' and '' Evil Genius''. 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 a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

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 in

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

from

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL) in 2009 supervised by

Eleanor Maguire Eleanor Anne Maguire (born 27 March 1970) is an Irish neuroscientist. Since 2007, she has been Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. Early life and educat ...

. He sought to find inspiration in the

human brain The human brain is the central organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. The brain consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. It controls most of the activities of the ...

for new AI algorithms. He continued his neuroscience and artificial intelligence research as a visiting scientist jointly at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(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 Scien ...

, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, before earning a

Henry Wellcome Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (August 21, 1853 – July 25, 1936) was an American pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He founded the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Company with his colleague Silas Burroughs in 1880, which is one of the fo ...

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). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

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

Peter Dayan Peter Dayan is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. He is co-author of ''Theoretical Neuroscience'', an influential textbook on computational neuroscience. He is known for applying Bayesian metho ...

. 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 remembered, ...

and

amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,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 caused temporarily by the use ...

, 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 Scien ...

''. 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 (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, a ...

, 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 or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...

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 endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

''. 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, a

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

AI startup, founded in London in 2010 with

Shane Legg Shane Legg is a machine learning research director and digital technology entrepreneur who did an AI-related postdoctoral fellowship at University College London's Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, after doctoral work at the Istituto Da ...

and

Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman (born August 1984) is the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google and now owned by Alphabet. His current venture is Inflection AI. Early life Suleyman's fath ...

. 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. 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) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...

(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 games at a superhuman level by only using 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 technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

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 is a branch of Google started in 2006, originally designed as an to attempt to create a repository of health records and data (personal health record services) in order to connect doctors, hospitals and pharmacies directly. The pr ...

. 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 (game), Go. It was developed by DeepMind Technologies a subsidiary of Google (now Alphabet Inc.). Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that ...

, a program that defeated world champion

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

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 Champio ...

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 umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

(NHS) of the United Kingdom and

Moorfields Eye Hospital Moorfields Eye Hospital is a specialist 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 Ophthalmology, which is adjacen ...

to improve medical service and identify the onset of degenerative eye conditions. More recently, DeepMind turned its artificial intelligence to

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduci ...

, 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 hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...

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. 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. The program is designed as a deep learning system. AlphaFold AI software has had two major ve ...

won the 13th Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (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 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''. In November 2020, DeepMind again announced world-beating results in the CASP14 edition of the competition, with 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 structu ...

(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, making it competitive with experimental methods. DeepMind has also been responsible for technical advancements in machine learning, having produced a number of award-winning papers. In particular, the company has made significant advances in

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

and

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...

, 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.

Personal life

Hassabis lives in London, and is a lifelong supporter 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 p ...

Awards and honours

Entrepreneurial and scientific

* 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 the ...

for developing

, which accurately predicts the structure of protein * 2022 -

Princess of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards ( es, Premios Princesa de Asturias, links=no, ast, Premios Princesa d'Asturies, links=no), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 ( es, Premios Príncipe de Asturias, links=no), are a series of a ...

(with

Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université ...

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on a ...

, and

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

) for Technical and Scientific Research * 2021 -

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 * 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 (abbreviation: AAA&S) 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 ...

* 2020 -

Pius XI Medal The Pius XI Medal is an award presented every second year by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to a promising scientist under the age of 45. Winners of the Pius XI Medal (1939-2020) * 1939 Corneille Heymans (Belgium) Physiology * 1942 Harlow Sh ...

from the

Pontifical Academy of Sciences The Pontifical Academy of Sciences ( it, Pontificia accademia delle scienze, la, Pontificia Academia Scientiarum) is a Academy of sciences, scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the ...

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

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is a major international award that recognizes and supports outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. It awards nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding ...

- 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. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 45 years. Topics covered within the magazine include outs ...

* 2018 - Elected a

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

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

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

* 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 contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(CBE) in the

2018 New Year Honours The 2018 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebratio ...

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 Asian community which takes place in the United Kingdom, with 14 categories that include business, philanthropy, entertainment, culture and sport. Nominees are selected by an independen ...

: 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 fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from aroun ...

(FREng) * 2017 -

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...

: Golden Plate Award * 2016 -

Honorary Fellow Honorary titles (professor, 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 well as in m ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

* 2016 - ''

London Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' 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 senior ...

Silver Medal * 2016 - ''

WIRED ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'' Leadership in Innovation * 2016 - '' Nature's'' "top ten scientists of the year" * 2016 - ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

'' Digital Entrepreneur of the Year * 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 ...

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 (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...

(FRSA)

Research

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

Science Magazine ''Science'', also widely referred to as ''Science Magazine'', 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, ...

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 The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 15 ...

Company of the Year (2014) * Six ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

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

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

from Korean Baduk Association (2016) and Chinese Weiqi Association (2017) * Cannes Lion Grand Prix for AlphaGo (2016) * WIRED Innovation in AI Award (2016) * City AM 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. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund''Mind Sports Olympiad Supp ...

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

Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

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

Judit Polgar Judit is a feminine given name related to Judith. Notable people with the name include: *Judit Bar-Ilan (1958–2019), Israeli computer scientist *Judit Elek (born 1937), Hungarian film director and screenwriter *Judit Földing-Nagy (born 1965), ...

). * ''Diplomacy'': World Team Champion in 2004, 4th in 2006 World Championship, 3rd in 2004 European Championship. *

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

: 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 Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker pla ...

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-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund''Mind Sports Olympiad Su ...

: World

Champion (a record 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 Artificial intelligence researchers British chess players British computer programmers British people of Greek Cypriot descent British people of Chinese descent British people of Singaporean descent British video game designers British video game programmers Bullfrog Productions Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society Lionhead Studios Machine learning researchers People educated at Christ's College, Finchley