Heaptalk, Jakarta — Google.org announced grants of $20 million in funding and $2 million in Cloud Credits to support academic and nonprofit organizations worldwide using AI for scientific breakthroughs (11/18).
The grants target several research fields, including rare and neglected disease research, experimental biology, material science, and sustainability. AI is expected to address increasingly complex problems at the intersections of different scientific disciplines. The announcement was made at the inaugural AI for Science Forum hosted by Google DeepMind and the Royal Society which took place in London, UK.
“We’ll work with leaders internally across our Google DeepMind, Google Research, and other AI-focused teams as well as external experts to identify and announce organizations,” said Maggie Johnson, VP and Global Head of Google.org, in a written statement (11/18).
Using AI systems to predict protein 3D structure
More than 2 million researchers across 190 countries have leveraged AlphaFold to help accelerate the fight against malaria and widespread and deadly parasitic disease and pave the way for new Parkinson’s treatments. AlphaFold is an AI system developed by Google DeepMind that predicts a protein’s 3D structure from its amino acid sequence.
Google’s philanthropy arm acknowledged that for AI to enable the next generation of scientific breakthroughs, scientists need necessary funding, computing power, cross-domain expertise, and access to infrastructure, including foundational datasets.
This funding builds on the more than $200 million Google.org has provided to organizations using AI to accelerate their scientific work over the last five years, including Materiom, which is building novel plastics; the Women’s Cancer Institute (coordinated by Institut Curie), which is improving the detection, treatment, and understanding of women’s cancer; and Doctors Without Borders, which is helping to stamp out antibiotic resistance.
“We’re hopeful that this new funding helps incubate more Nobel-level achievements that will improve the lives of millions of people—and that other philanthropic, public, and private funders join us by investing in long-term, meaningful outcomes that exemplify AI’s ability to enable science at digital speed,” Johnson concluded.
