Dr Demis Hassabis CBE FREng FRS

Demis Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, the world’s leading AI research company. Best-known for developing AlphaGo, the first program to beat a world champion at the complex game of Go, DeepMind has published over 1000 research papers - including more than a dozen in Nature and Science - and achieved breakthrough results in many challenging AI domains from StarCraft II to protein folding.

A child chess prodigy, Demis coded the classic game Theme Park aged 17. After graduating from Cambridge University in computer science, he founded pioneering videogames company Elixir Studios, and completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London. The journal Science listed his research on imagination and memory as one of 2007’s top ten breakthroughs.

He is a five-time World Games Champion, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2017 he featured in the Time 100 list of most influential people, and in 2018 he was awarded a CBE. In 2020, he was awarded the Dan David Prize Future Award for his work on AI.

Professional position

  • Founder and CEO, DeepMind

Subject groups

  • Computer sciences

    Computer science (excl engineering aspects)

  • Anatomy, physiology and neurosciences

    Behavioural neuroscience

Awards

  • Royal Society Mullard Award

    For his pioneering use of machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms, delivering a significant contribution to national prosperity.

Dr Demis Hassabis CBE FREng FRS
Elected 2018