Alex Rives joins faculty of ӳý and MIT
A computer scientist, Rives will develop AI models to support scientific research.
ӳý of MIT and Harvard has appointed Alex Rives, a leading computer scientist and pioneering artificial intelligence researcher, as a core institute member. Rives will also serve as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Rives is a co-founder and chief scientist at EvolutionaryScale, a public-benefit startup dedicated to developing AI to accelerate scientific discovery.
“Alex is one of the most imaginative and inventive thinkers in artificial intelligence and biology,” said Todd Golub, director of the ӳý. “His bold vision, deep interest in the intersection of biology and AI, and collaborative spirit make him a perfect new member of our scientific community.”
Rives earned his B.S. in philosophy and biology from Yale University and his Ph.D. in computer science from New York University. He founded and led the Evolutionary Scale Modeling (ESM) project at Meta’s fundamental AI research lab that developed the first large transformer language models for proteins.
The ESM language models are widely recognized as a breakthrough achievement in the development of artificial intelligence for the life sciences and have been widely adopted by the scientific community. The models have enabled applications that include designing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies, predicting the clinical effect of mutations in the human genome, illuminating evolutionary history, and creating models of the cell.
At the ӳý, Rives will continue his work developing novel, transformative AI systems and applications for the benefit of the global scientific community.
