John Michael Jumper is an American senior research scientist at

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was List of mergers and acquisitions by Google, acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsid ...

Technologies. Jumper and his colleagues created

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 ...

, an

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 ...

(AI) model to predict

protein structure Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers specifically polypeptides formed from sequences of amino acids, the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid monomer ma ...

s from their

amino acid sequence Protein primary structure is the linear sequence of amino acids in a peptide or protein. By convention, the primary structure of a protein is reported starting from the amino-terminal (N) end to the carboxyl-terminal (C) end. Protein biosynthe ...

with high accuracy. Jumper has stated that the AlphaFold team plans to release 100 million protein structures. The scientific journal ''

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. ...

'' included Jumper as one of the ten "people who mattered" in science in their annual listing of

Nature's 10 ''Nature'' 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal ''Nature (journal), Nature''. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad. Reporters and editorial s ...

in 2021.

Education

Jumper was educated at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

where he was awarded a PhD in 2017 for research on using machine learning to simulate

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 ...

and dynamics, being co-supervised by Tobin R Sosnick and

Karl Freed Karl Frederick Freed (born September 25, 1942) is an American theoretical chemist recognized for his research in polymer physics. Freed has spent his academic career in the department of chemistry and the James Frank Institute at the University o ...

. Jumper also studied physics at 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 ...

, where he was on the

Marshall Scholarship The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...

, and holds a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in Physics and Mathematics from

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

Career and research

Jumper's research investigates algorithms for

protein structure prediction Protein structure prediction is the inference of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence—that is, the prediction of its secondary and tertiary structure from primary structure. Structure prediction is different ...

AlphaFold

AlphaFold is a

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 ...

algorithm developed by Jumper and his team at DeepMind, a research lab acquired by Google's parent company

Alphabet Inc Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and se ...

. It is an artificial intelligence program which performs predictions of protein structure.

Awards and honours

In November 2020, AlphaFold was named the winner of the

Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), sometimes called Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. CASP prov ...

(CASP) competition. This international competition benchmarks algorithms to determine which one can best predict the 3D structure of proteins. AlphaFold won the competition, out performing other algorithms and making it the first machine learning algorithm to be able to accurately predict the 3D structure of proteins. In 2021 Jumper was awarded the

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in the category "Biology and Biomedicine". In 2022 Jumper received the

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 and for 2023 the

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 AlphaFold, which accurately predicts the structure of a protein. In 2023 he was awarded the

Canada Gairdner International Award The Canada Gairdner International Award is given annually by the Gairdner Foundation at a special dinner to five individuals for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science. Receipt of the Gairdner is traditionally considered a p ...

and the

Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is one of the prizes awarded by the Lasker Foundation for a fundamental discovery that opens up a new area of biomedical science. The award frequently precedes a Nobel Prize in Medicine; almost 5 ...

.Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research 2023
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References

Living people Computational biologists Artificial intelligence researchers Molecular biology Proteomics Applications of artificial intelligence Applied machine learning Protein folding Year of birth missing (living people) {{compu-ai-stub