WINNERS OF THE 2023 BREAKTHROUGH PRIZES IN LIFE SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS AND FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS ANNOUNCED
PR97995
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2022 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --
-- $15.75 Million in Prizes Awarded for Predicting Protein Structure with Deep
Learning, Pioneering Field of Quantum Information, and Discoveries with
Applications from Treating Neurodegenerative Disease to Optimizing Video
Transmission
-- Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Awarded to Clifford P. Brangwynne and
Anthony A. Hyman; Demis Hassabis and John Jumper; Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi
Yanagisawa
-- Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics Awarded to Daniel A. Spielman
-- Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to Charles H. Bennett,
Gilles Brassard, David Deutsch and Peter Shor
-- Six New Horizons Prizes Awarded for Early-Career Achievements in Physics and
Mathematics
-- Three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes Awarded to Women Mathematicians
for Early-Career Achievements
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founding sponsors – Sergey Brin,
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki –
today announced the 2023 Breakthrough Prize laureates, recognized for their
game-changing discoveries in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and
Mathematics, along with early-career scientists who have made significant
contributions to their fields.
Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1905431/Breakthrough.jpg
Three Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences are awarded to: Clifford P.
Brangwynne and Anthony A. Hyman for discovering a new mechanism of cellular
organization; Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for developing AlphaFold, which
accurately predicts the structure of proteins; and to Emmanuel Mignot and
Masashi Yanagisawa for discovering the causes of narcolepsy. The Breakthrough
Prize in Mathematics goes to Daniel A. Spielman, for multiple discoveries in
theoretical computer science and mathematics. The Breakthrough Prize in
Fundamental Physics is shared by Charles H. Bennett, Gilles Brassard, David
Deutsch and Peter Shor for their foundational work in quantum information. And
important contributions from early-career scientists are also recognized, with
six New Horizons Prizes in Physics and Mathematics and three Maryam Mirzakhani
New Frontiers Prizes awarded for women mathematicians who have recently
completed their doctorates.
"Neurodegenerative disease breakthroughs, quantum computing, AI solving protein
structure, and more…" said Sergey Brin, "These are incredible advances that
deserve to be celebrated."
"Congratulations to all of the Breakthrough Prize winners, whose incredible
discoveries will pave the way for scientific discovery and spur innovation,"
said CZI Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. "These
laureates and early-career scientists are pushing the boundaries of what's
possible in research and science, and we're thrilled to honor their
accomplishments."
"The laureates honored today embody the remarkable power of fundamental
science," said Yuri Milner, "both to reveal deep truths about the Universe, and
to improve human lives."
"The 2023 laureates have produced absolutely stellar science," said Anne
Wojcicki. "The creativity, ingenuity and sheer perseverance that went into this
work is awe-inspiring."
In the Life Sciences, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper are the leaders behind
AlphaFold 2, the AI system that has largely solved the protein structure
prediction problem – one of the biggest challenges in biology. Proteins are the
nano-machines that run cells, and predicting their 3D structure from the
sequence of their amino acids is central to understanding the workings of life.
With their team at DeepMind, Hassabis and Jumper conceived and constructed a
deep learning system that accurately and rapidly models the structure of
proteins. AlphaFold has already had a revolutionary impact in the life
sciences: this summer DeepMind uploaded the structures of 200 million proteins
– nearly every known protein from across the tree of life – to a public
database. The program reduces the time scientists typically spend determining
protein structure from months or years to hours or minutes. It holds immense
promise of future benefits, from drug design to synthetic biology,
nanomaterials, and fundamental understanding of cellular processes. A short
video about their achievement can be found here (
).
The discovery of a new cellular process is recognized by another of the Life
Sciences prizes. Until recently, it was thought that most of the work in a cell
goes on in organelles – specialized subunits enclosed by membranes. But Anthony
Hyman and Clifford Brangwynne discovered an entirely new physical principle
that concentrates cellular interactions between proteins and other
biomolecules, in the absence of membranes. They described dynamic liquid-like
droplets that form rapidly by phase separation – similar to oil droplets
forming in water – producing temporary structures protected from the molecular
turmoil of the watery cell interior. Since their discovery, they and others
have shown that these membraneless liquid condensates play a role in numerous
cellular processes, including signalling, cell division, the nested structure
of nucleoli in the cell nucleus, and the regulation of DNA. Their discovery is
a fundamental advance in our understanding of cellular organization, and is
likely to lead to clinical applications in the future, including for
neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS. A short video about their achievement
can be found here (
).
Another neurodegenerative disease, narcolepsy, was little understood before
Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa, running separate labs and pursuing
different research programs, converged on a new understanding of its causes.
They showed that central to the disease is the protein orexin (also called
hypocretin), which ordinarily regulates wakefulness. In some animals, such as
dogs, narcolepsy is caused by a mutation affecting the neural receptor that
orexin binds to; while in humans, the disease is triggered by the immune system
attacking the cells that produce orexin (probably "mistaking" it for a viral
particle). Mignot and Yanagisawa's discoveries have led to treatments shown to
relieve the symptoms of narcolepsy, as well as enabling the design of
sleep-inducing drugs. They revealed that narcolepsy is a neurodegenerative
disease with autoimmune origins, and raise the possibility that other
neurodegenerative diseases may be caused by selective loss of neurons. And they
shed light on a central mechanism of sleep and waking, an area of behavior that
still holds many mysteries. A short video about their achievement can be found
here (
).
In Mathematics, Daniel A. Spielman's insights and algorithms have been
significant not only for mathematics, but for highly practical problems in
computing, signal processing, engineering, and even the design of clinical
trials. Among many other results, he and his collaborators solved the
Kadison-Singer problem, which arose in quantum mechanics but turned out to be
equivalent to major unsolved problems across numerous mathematical fields –
from linear algebra (the study of equations featuring vectors and matrices) to
higher-dimensional geometry, combinatorial optimization (for example, versions
of the travelling salesman problem), and the mathematics of signal processing.
A short video about his achievement can be found here (
).
In Fundamental Physics, the prize goes to four pioneers in the field of quantum
information.
With their BB84 protocol, Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard, building on
Stephen Wiesner's seminal but impractical idea of quantum money, initiated
quantum cryptography by devising a practical way to send secret messages
between users who share no secret information initially. Unlike methods
commonly used in e-commerce, it cannot be broken even by an eavesdropper with
unlimited computing power. Their 1993 discovery, with collaborators, of quantum
teleportation, showed that entanglement is a useful quantifiable resource
despite having no communication capacity of its own, thereby helping launch the
new science of quantum information processing.
David Deutsch laid the foundations of quantum computation. He defined the
quantum version of a Turing machine – a universal quantum computer – and proved
that it could simulate to arbitrary accuracy any physical system that obeys the
laws of quantum mechanics. He showed that such a computer is equivalent to a
network of surprisingly few quantum gates – logic gates that leverage the
quantum phenomena of entanglement and superposition of many states at once. And
he designed the first quantum algorithm that can perform a calculation faster
than the best equivalent classical algorithm.
Peter Shor went on to invent the first quantum computer algorithm that was
clearly useful. Shor's algorithm can find the factors of large numbers
exponentially faster than is thought to be possible for any classical
algorithm. He also designed techniques for error-correction in quantum
computers – a much harder feat than in classical computers, where simple
redundancy will suffice. These ideas not only paved the way for today's
fast-developing quantum computers; they are now also at the frontiers of
fundamental physics, especially in the study of metrology – the science of
measurement – and of quantum gravity.
A short video about the physicists' achievement can be found here (
).
Beyond the main prizes, 6 New Horizons Prizes, each of $100,000, were
distributed between 11 early-career scientists and mathematicians who have
already made a substantial impact on their fields. In addition, 3 Maryam
Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes, of $50,000 each, were awarded to women
mathematicians who have recently completed their PhDs and produced important
results.
The Breakthrough Prizes are the world's largest science awards. Each of the
five main prizes is $3 million, and the addition of the early-career awards
brings this year's total prizes to $15.75 million.
Full citations for all the 2023 laureates can be found below:
2023 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences
Clifford P. Brangwynne
Princeton University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Marine Biological
Laboratory
Anthony A. Hyman
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics
For discovering a fundamental mechanism of cellular organization mediated by
phase separation of proteins and RNA into membraneless liquid droplets.
________________
Demis Hassabis
DeepMind
John Jumper
DeepMind
For developing a deep learning AI method that rapidly and accurately predicts
the three-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino acid sequence.
________________
Emmanuel Mignot
Stanford University School of Medicine
Masashi Yanagisawa
University of Tsukuba
For discovering that narcolepsy is caused by the loss of a small population of
brain cells that make a wake-promoting substance, paving the way for the
development of new treatments for sleep disorders.
________________
2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Charles H. Bennett
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Gilles Brassard
Université de Montréal
David Deutsch
Oxford University
Peter W. Shor
MIT
For foundational work in the field of quantum information.
________________
2023 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics
Daniel A. Spielman ¬¬
Yale University
For breakthrough contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics,
including to spectral graph theory, the Kadison-Singer problem, numerical
linear algebra, optimization, and coding theory.
________________
2023 New Horizons in Physics Prize
David Simmons-Duffin
Caltech
For the development of analytical and numerical techniques to study conformal
field theories, including the ones describing the liquid vapor critical point
and the superfluid phase transition.
________________
Anna Grassellino
Fermilab
For the discovery of major performance enhancements to niobium superconducting
radio-frequency cavities, with applications ranging from accelerator physics to
quantum devices.
________________
Hannes Bernien
University of Chicago
Manuel Endres
Caltech
Adam M. Kaufman
JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado
Kang-Kuen Ni
Harvard University
Hannes Pichler
University of Innsbruck and Austrian Academy of Sciences
Jeff Thompson
Princeton University
For the development of optical tweezer arrays to realize control of individual
atoms for applications in quantum information science, metrology, and molecular
physics.
________________
2023 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize
Ana Caraiani
Imperial College London and University of Bonn
For diverse transformative contributions to the Langlands program, and in
particular for work with Peter Scholze on the Hodge-Tate period map for Shimura
varieties and its applications.
________________
Ronen Eldan
Weizmann Institute of Science and Microsoft Research
For the creation of the stochastic localization method, that has led to
significant progress in several open problems in high-dimensional geometry and
probability, including Jean Bourgain's slicing problem and the KLS conjecture.
________________
James Maynard
Oxford University and Institute for Advanced Study
For multiple contributions to analytic number theory, and in particular to the
distribution of prime numbers.
________________
2023 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize
Maggie Miller
Stanford University and Clay Mathematics Institute
(PhD Princeton University 2020)
For work on fibered ribbon knots and surfaces in 4-dimensional manifolds.
________________
Jinyoung Park
Stanford University
(PhD Rutgers University 2020)
For contributions to the resolution of several major conjectures on thresholds
and selector processes.
________________
Vera Traub
University of Bonn
(PhD University of Bonn 2020)
For advances in approximation results in classical combinatorial optimization
problems, including the traveling salesman problem and network design.
________________
# # #
About The Breakthrough Prize
For the eleventh year, the Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the "Oscars of
Science," recognizes the world's top scientists. Each prize is $3 million and
presented in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics.
In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics Prizes, up to three New
Horizons in Mathematics Prizes and up to three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers
Prizes are given out to early-career researchers each year. Laureates attend a
gala award ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and inspire the
next generation of scientists. As part of the ceremony schedule, they also
engage in a program of lectures and discussions.
The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark
Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki and have been sponsored by
foundations established by them. Selection Committees composed of previous
Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field choose the winners. Information on
the Breakthrough Prize is available at breakthroughprize.org.
SOURCE: The Breakthrough Prize
CONTACT: media@breakthroughprize.org OR Rubenstein Communications, Inc., New
York, New York, Janet Wootten, jwootten@rubenstein.com, +1-212 -843-8024,
Kristen Bothwell, kbothwell@rubenstein.com, +1-212-843-9227 - NOTE TO EDITORS:
Videos and Photos Can Be Downloaded Here, Address: files.rubenstein.com, User:
BPMedia23, Password: press
本プレスリリースは発表元が入力した原稿をそのまま掲載しております。また、プレスリリースへのお問い合わせは発表元に直接お願いいたします。
このプレスリリースには、報道機関向けの情報があります。
プレス会員登録を行うと、広報担当者の連絡先や、イベント・記者会見の情報など、報道機関だけに公開する情報が閲覧できるようになります。