IACS Kolkata - The Saga of Indian Science

The 2024 in Chemistry has been awarded for groundbreaking research on proteins done with computaional tools and artificial intelligence. One half of the award went to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

Sir Demis Hassabis is the Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, and Dr. John Jumper is a Google DeepMind Senior Research Scientist. Both computer scientists, they led the teams developing AlphaFold, a groundbreaking AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. David Baker, a Professor at the University of Washington, made seminal contributions to the development of computational methods for predicting and designing the structures and functions of proteins.

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with one half to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential.

The diversity of life testifies to proteins’ amazing capacity as chemical tools. They control and drive all the chemical reactions that together are the basis of life. Proteins also function as hormones, signal substances, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues.

Proteins generally consist of 20 different amino acids, which can be described as life’s building blocks. In 2003, David Baker succeeded in using these blocks to design a new protein that was unlike any other protein. Since then, his research group has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

The second discovery concerns the prediction of protein structures. In proteins, amino acids are linked together in long strings that fold up to make a three-dimensional structure, which is decisive for the protein’s function. Since the 1970s, researchers had tried to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences, but this was notoriously difficult. However, four years ago, there was a stunning breakthrough.

In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper presented an AI model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries. Among a myriad of scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic.

Life could not exist without proteins. That we can now predict protein structures and design our own proteins confers the greatest benefit to humankind.

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The 2024 in Physics has been awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
Nature news: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03213-8

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

This year’s two Nobel Prize laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.

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The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

BREAKING NEWS
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

This year’s Nobel Prize honours two scientists for their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.

The information stored within our chromosomes can be likened to an instruction manual for all cells in our body. Every cell contains the same chromosomes, so every cell contains exactly the same set of genes and exactly the same set of instructions. Yet, different cell types, such as muscle and nerve cells, have very distinct characteristics. How do these differences arise? The answer lies in gene regulation, which allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions. This ensures that only the correct set of genes is active in each cell type.

This year’s medicine laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were interested in how different cell types develop. They discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.

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Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor at the School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, is the recipient of the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award for "foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science".
Wigderson and colleagues proved that, under standard and widely believed computational assumptions, every efficient randomized algorithm can be fully derandomized. In other words, randomness is not necessary for efficient computation. He also made seminal contributions to zero-knowledge proofs (which allow someone to show they know some information while keeping that information secret), that are extremely useful in cryptography.

Prof. Wigderson has earlier received the Nevanlinna Prize (1994), Gödel Prize (2009), Knuth Prize (2019), and Abel Prize (2021) for his remarkable contributions to theoretical computer science.

Here is the coverage of the news in the Quanta magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/avi-wigderson-complexity-theory-pioneer-wins-turing-award-20240410/

CACM has published an interview with him: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/specifying-the-power-and-limitations-of-randomness/

Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award | Quanta Magazine The prolific researcher found deep connections between randomness and computation and spent a career influencing cryptographers, complexity researchers and more.

"Shattering Stars", directed by Peter Galison, a historian of science at Harvard University, tells the story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-95).

It explores how Chandrasekhar’s groundbreaking theories would draw both the attention and ridicule of Arthur Eddington, who was then perhaps the world’s preeminent astronomer. In doing so, Eddington likely set back progress in his field, and certainly altered the trajectory of Chandrasekhar’s life and career. Chandrasekhar would ultimately win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his work on stellar evolution – albeit some 50 years after he’d presented his ideas to the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge | Aeon Videos When scientific pursuits are subject to human shortcomings: the Indian scientist made to wait 50 years for his Nobel Prize

National Science Day, 2024 @ IACS, Kolkata

Prof. Indra Dasgupta IACS Kolkata - The Saga of Indian Science will be giving physics colloquium on "The Challenges and Prospects in Modeling Quantum Materials" at Harish-Chandra Research Institute Allahabad