Pushmeet Kohli Explained

Pushmeet Kohli
Workplaces:	Google DeepMind
Doctoral Advisor:	Philip Torr
Thesis Year:	2007
Thesis Url:	https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.444300
Thesis Title:	Minimizing dynamic and higher order energy functions using graph cuts
Alma Mater:	Oxford Brookes University (PhD) National Institute of Technology, Warangal (Undergraduate)
Fields:	Machine learning Artificial intelligence Computer vision

Pushmeet Kohli is highly regarded Computer and Machine Learning scientist and at Google DeepMind where he holds the position of Vice President of research for the "Secure and Reliable AI" and "AI for Science and Sustainability".^[1] Before joining DeepMind, he was partner scientist and director of research at Microsoft Research and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. Kohli's research investigates applications of machine learning and computer vision. He has also made contributions in game theory, discrete algorithms and psychometrics.^[2]

Education

Kohli was educated at National Institute of Technology, Warangal and Oxford Brookes University where his PhD awarded in 2007^[3] was supervised by . He was a Postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge.^[4]

Career and research

Current and previous research projects include:

• AlphaFold - breakthrough AI system for protein structure prediction
• AlphaTensor - a reinforcement learning agent that found new efficient algorithms for matrix multiplication^[5]
• SynthID - system for watermarking AI generated images.^[6]
• AlphaMissense - AI model for predicting the effect of missense mutations in the genome ^{[7] [8]}
• AlphaCode - Competition-level code generation with AI^[9]
• FunSearch - Discovering algorithms by using LLMs to search over program space.^[10]
• Neural Program Synthesis^[11]
• Probabilistic Programming^[12]
• 3D-scene Reconstruction and Understanding
• Community based Crowdsourcing of Data for Training AI Models^[13]
• Behavioral analysis and Personality prediction using on Online networks^{[14] [15]}
• Human Pose Estimation using the Kinect^[16]
• Video Editing (Unwrap Mosaics)^[17]

Other AI for Science projects include

• Learnt Magnetic confinement control for Fusion ^[18]
• Learnt Density Functional for solving the fractional electron problem ^[19]

Awards and Honors

Kohli was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in AI.^[20]

The impact of AlphaFold has seen it result its leads, Demise Hassabis and John Jumper, being awarded by numerous prizes including the prestigious Breakthrough prize, Lasker award, and Wolfe prize.

Pushmeet's research in computer vision and machine learning has been recognized by a number of scientific awards and prizes. Some notable ones include:

• Koenderink Prize (test of time award) by the European Conference of Computer Vision^[21]
• British Machine Vision Association and Society for Pattern Recognition (BMVA) Sullivan Prize for the best PhD thesis.^[22]
• IEEE Mixed Augmented Reality (ISMAR) Impact Paper award^[23]
• Lasting Impact Award by the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology^[24]
• Best paper award at the International World Wide Web Conference 2014^[25]
• Best paper award in the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2010^[26]
• Best paper award in the Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI)^[27]

Notes and References

1. 2023-09-07 . TIME100 AI 2023: Pushmeet Kohli . 2023-11-11 . Time . en.
2. Web site: Microsoft Uses Facebook As Giant 'Lab' To Study Game Theory. Parmy Olson. 12 October 2011. Forbes.
3. PhD. Oxford Brookes University. Pushmeet. Kohli. 2007. . 1043101069.
4. Web site: IEEE . Pushmeet Kohli - IEEE author profile . 2023-11-12 . IEEE.
5. 2023-09-07 . TIME100 AI 2023: Pushmeet Kohli . 2023-11-11 . Time . en.
6. Web site: Google DeepMind has launched a watermarking tool for AI-generated images . 2023-11-11 . MIT Technology Review . en.
7. Cheng . Jun . Novati . Guido . Pan . Joshua . Bycroft . Clare . Žemgulytė . Akvilė . Applebaum . Taylor . Pritzel . Alexander . Wong . Lai Hong . Zielinski . Michal . Sargeant . Tobias . Schneider . Rosalia G. . Senior . Andrew W. . Jumper . John . Hassabis . Demis . Kohli . Pushmeet . 2023-09-22 . Accurate proteome-wide missense variant effect prediction with AlphaMissense . Science . en . 381 . 6664 . eadg7492 . 10.1126/science.adg7492 . 37733863 . 262084527 . 0036-8075. free .
8. News: 2023-09-19 . Google DeepMind AI speeds up search for disease genes . en-GB . BBC News . 2023-11-11.
9. Li . Yujia . Choi . David . Chung . Junyoung . Kushman . Nate . Schrittwieser . Julian . Leblond . Rémi . Eccles . Tom . Keeling . James . Gimeno . Felix . Dal Lago . Agustin . Hubert . Thomas . Choy . Peter . de Masson d’Autume . Cyprien . Babuschkin . Igor . Chen . Xinyun . 2022-12-09 . Competition-level code generation with AlphaCode . Science . en . 378 . 6624 . 1092–1097 . 10.1126/science.abq1158 . 36480631 . 0036-8075. 2203.07814 . 2022Sci...378.1092L . 246527904 .
10. Romera-Paredes . Bernardino . Barekatain . Mohammadamin . Novikov . Alexander . Balog . Matej . Kumar . M. Pawan . Dupont . Emilien . Ruiz . Francisco J. R. . Ellenberg . Jordan S. . Wang . Pengming . Fawzi . Omar . Kohli . Pushmeet . Fawzi . Alhussein . 2023-12-14 . Mathematical discoveries from program search with large language models . Nature . 625 . 7995 . en . 468–475 . 10.1038/s41586-023-06924-6 . 1476-4687. free . 38096900 . 10794145 .
11. Web site: Neural Program Synthesis. Microsoft Research. en-US. 2019-12-26.
12. Web site: Picture: A Probabilistic Programming Language for Scene Perception. mrkulk.github.io. 1 August 2015.
13. Web site: MSDN Blogs. Microsoft.
14. Web site: Research Games - Microsoft Research. Microsoft. microsoft.com.
15. Kosinski . Michal . Stillwell . David . Kohli . Pushmeet . Bachrach . Yoram . Graepel . Thore . January 2012 . Personality and Website Choice . ACM Web Sciences . en-US.
16. Web site: Human Pose Estimation for Kinect.
17. Web site: Unwrap Mosaics. Microsoft. microsoft.com.
18. Degrave . Jonas . Felici . Federico . Buchli . Jonas . Neunert . Michael . Tracey . Brendan . Carpanese . Francesco . Ewalds . Timo . Hafner . Roland . Abdolmaleki . Abbas . de las Casas . Diego . Donner . Craig . Fritz . Leslie . Galperti . Cristian . Huber . Andrea . Keeling . James . February 2022 . Magnetic control of tokamak plasmas through deep reinforcement learning . Nature . en . 602 . 7897 . 414–419 . 10.1038/s41586-021-04301-9 . 35173339 . 8850200 . 2022Natur.602..414D . 1476-4687. free .
19. Kirkpatrick . James . McMorrow . Brendan . Turban . David H. P. . Gaunt . Alexander L. . Spencer . James S. . Matthews . Alexander G. D. G. . Obika . Annette . Thiry . Louis . Fortunato . Meire . Pfau . David . Castellanos . Lara Román . Petersen . Stig . Nelson . Alexander W. R. . Kohli . Pushmeet . Mori-Sánchez . Paula . 2021-12-10 . Pushing the frontiers of density functionals by solving the fractional electron problem . Science . en . 374 . 6573 . 1385–1389 . 10.1126/science.abj6511 . 34882476 . 2021Sci...374.1385K . 245012496 . 0036-8075.
20. 2023-09-07 . TIME100 AI 2023: Pushmeet Kohli . 2023-11-11 . Time . en.
21. Web site: Computer Vision Awards – The Computer Vision Foundation . 2023-11-18 . www.thecvf.com.
22. Web site: The British Machine Vision Association : The Sullivan Doctoral Thesis Prize . 2023-11-11 . www.bmva.org.
23. Web site: Awards – Ismar 2021 . 2023-11-18 . ismar2021.vgtc.org.
24. Web site: UIST 2021 - Home . 2023-11-18 . uist.acm.org.
25. Web site: 안녕하세요! . www2014.
26. Web site: ECCV 2010, 11th European Conference on Computer Vision - awards . forth.gr.
27. Web site: Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence . 2019-12-26 . UAI . en.