Demis Hassabis is a prominent figure in the field of artificial intelligence. He is the co-founder and former CEO of DeepMind, a neuroscience-inspired AI company that was acquired by Google in January 2014 in their largest European acquisition to date. Currently, he serves as the Vice President of Engineering at Google DeepMind and leads Google's general AI efforts. One of his notable achievements is leading the development of AlphaGo, the first program to ever defeat a professional player in the complex game of Go.

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Before venturing into AI, Demis displayed exceptional talent as a child chess prodigy and completed his A-levels two years ahead of his peers. He also coded a multi-million selling simulation game called Theme Park at the age of 17. After graduating with a Double First in Computer Science from Cambridge University, he founded the videogames company Elixir Studios, producing award-winning games for global publishers.

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Despite his success in the technology startup industry, Demis pursued further education and earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCL. He also completed postdoctoral studies at prestigious institutions such as MIT and Harvard before establishing DeepMind.

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Demis's research on the connection between memory and imagination was recognized as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007 by the journal Science. Beyond his contributions to AI, he is a five-times World Games Champion and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Moreover, he received the Royal Society's prestigious Mullard Award in 2014.

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