David Baker, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2024

David Baker (born October 6, 1962) is an American biochemist and computational biologist who has pioneered methods to design proteins and predict their three-dimensional structures. He is the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry, an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. He was awarded half of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on computational protein design.

Artificial intelligence programs developed by Baker and others have now largely solved the problem of protein structure prediction. Baker is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the director of the University of Washington's Institute for Protein Design. He has co-founded more than a dozen biotechnology companies and was included in Time magazine's inaugural list of the 100 Most Influential People in health in 2024.

Life
Baker was born into a Jewish family in Seattle, Washington on October 6, 1962, the son of physicist Marshall Baker and geophysicist Marcia (née Bourgin) Baker. He graduated from Seattle's Garfield High School.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1984. He completed his doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 in the laboratory of Randy Schekman, where he worked predominantly on protein transport and trafficking in yeast. In 1993, he completed his postdoctoral training in biophysics with David Agard at the University of California, San Francisco.

Baker joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine as faculty in 1993. He became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2000. Baker was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. He is married to Hannele Ruohola-Baker, another biochemist at UW. They have two children.

Research
Although primarily known for the development of computational methods for predicting and designing the structures and functions of proteins, Baker maintains an active experimental biochemistry group. He has authored over 600 scientific papers.

Baker's group developed the Rosetta algorithm for ab initio protein structure prediction, which has been extended into a tool for protein design, a distributed computing project called Rosetta@Home, and the computer game Foldit. Baker served as the director of the Rosetta Commons, a consortium of labs and researchers that develop biomolecular structure prediction and design software. Baker's group has regularly competed in the CASP structure prediction competition, specializing in abinitio methods, including both manually assisted and automated variants of the Rosetta protocol.

Baker's group is also active in the field of protein design; they are noted for designing Top7, the first artificial protein with a novel fold.

In 2017, Baker's Institute for Protein Design received over $11 million from Open Philanthropy, followed by an additional $3 million donation in 2021.

Baker has co-founded several biotechnology companies, including Prospect Genomics which was acquired by an Eli Lilly subsidiary in 2001, Icosavax which was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2023, Sana Biotechnology, Lyell Immunotherapeutics, and Xaira Therapeutics.

Awards

• 2002: Overton Prize
• 2004: Newcomb Cleveland Prize
• 2004: Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology
• 2008: Sackler International Prize in Biophysics
• 2021: Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
• 2022: Wiley Prize
• 2022: BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Biology and Biomedicine"
• 2024: Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baker_(biochemist)

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2024/baker/facts/

דייוויד בייקר (באנגלית: David Baker; נולד ב-6 באוקטובר 1962).
ביוכימאי וביולוג חישובי אמריקאי שהיה חלוץ בשיטות לתכנון עיצוב מולקולות חלבונים ולנבוי המבנים התלת מימדיים שלהם. הוא מכהן כ ״הנרייטה ואוברי דייויס״ פרופסור לביוכימיה, חוקר במכון הרפואי הווארד יוז ופרופסור נלווה למדעי הגנום, לביו-הנדסה, להנדסה כימית, ולמדעי המחשב ופיזיקה באוניברסיטת וושינגטון בסיאטל, וושינגטון בארה״ב.. הוא זכה בפרסים רבים ולאחרונה במחצית פרס נובל לכימיה לשנת 2024 על עבודתו על מיחשוב עיצוב חלבונים.

פרסים

• 2002: Overton Prize
• 2004: Newcomb Cleveland Prize
• 2004: Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology
• 2008: Sackler International Prize in Biophysics
• 2021: Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
• 2022: Wiley Prize
• 2022: BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Biology and Biomedicine"
• 2024: Nobel Prize in Chemistry - פרס נובל בכימיה 2024