Computational biologist David Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine and director of the UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design.
Baker and his team are pioneers in using computing power and AI to learn how chains of amino acids fold into protein structures, which have led to breakthroughs in predicting protein structures and contributed to the world’s first computationally designed protein medicine, a vaccine for COVID-19 developed at UW Medicine.
He shares the Nobel Prize with Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of DeepMind, who were honored for protein structure prediction.
The award, announced October 9, 2024, by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was presented in a ceremony on December 10, 2024, in Stockholm.
To date, Baker has published more than 640 peer-reviewed research papers, been awarded over 100 patents, and co-founded 21 biotechnology companies. Ninety of his doctoral and postdoctoral trainees have gone on to independent faculty positions. His dedication to open science has fostered a collaborative community of researchers worldwide, and he has ensured that the most advanced tools and insights developed through his work are shared freely to accelerate scientific discovery.
Baker was recently named one of the 100 Most Influential People in health by TIME and a Clarivate Citation Laureate for the influence of his published research on the work of other scientists. STAT News also listed Baker among its 50 influential leaders and changemakers in the life sciences in 2024.
He is the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UW Medicine. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Baker completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard University in 1984 and earned his doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 under Randy Schekman, who won a Nobel Prize in 2013. Baker completed his postdoctoral training in biophysics with David Agard at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1993. Baker has been a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine since 1993.
