Pushmeet Kohli

Career

Kohli was formerly Director of Research for the Cognition group at Microsoft Research. At Google DeepMind, Kohli is a Vice President and leads the AI for Science and Strategic Initiatives Unit, whose work spans biology, materials, fusion, mathematics, software and cybersecurity. Google also names Kohli as Chief Scientist of Google Cloud.¹³

Research

Kohli is a co-author of the 2021 Nature paper describing AlphaFold's highly accurate protein structure prediction. With colleagues at Google DeepMind, Kohli also co-authored FunSearch, published in Nature in December 2023, which paired a large language model with an evaluator to search for programs that yield new mathematical results.²⁴

Google lists the 2025 AI co-scientist among Kohli's key work, a multi-agent system built on Gemini to help scientists generate research hypotheses, along with AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent that uses language models to improve algorithms for open scientific problems and computing infrastructure.¹⁵⁶

Work and contributions

• AlphaFold Published research

  Co-author of Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold (Nature, 2021); Google's author page lists AlphaFold among Kohli's key work.²¹

• AlphaEvolve and AI co-scientist Proprietary product

  Google's author page lists the language-model-based agents AlphaEvolve and AI co-scientist among Kohli's key work.¹

• SynthID Text Open-source code

  Co-author of the 2024 Nature paper on SynthID Text watermarking, which the repository README asks users to cite.⁷

• SynthID Bio Open-source code

  Co-author of the Nature paper on function-preserving watermarking of AI-generated proteins, which the SynthID Bio README asks users to cite.⁸

• AlphaProtein Novo Published research

  Co-author of the bioRxiv paper on designing enzymes with AlphaProtein Novo, which the repository README asks users to cite.⁹

Timeline

1. Jul 15, 2021Co-authored the Nature paper on highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold.²
2. Dec 14, 2023Co-authored the FunSearch paper on mathematical discoveries from program search with language models.⁴
3. Feb 26, 2025Co-authored the paper introducing Google's AI co-scientist system.⁵
4. Jun 16, 2025Co-authored the AlphaEvolve white paper on a coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery.⁶
5. Feb 18, 2026Co-wrote a Google post on accelerating discovery in India through AI-powered science and education.³

Other documented roles

Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.

• Director of Research, Cognition group, Microsoft Research¹

Where they work

• Google DeepMind 64 people in the wiki
• Google 121 people in the wiki

Related people

• Shimon WhitesonAlso at Google DeepMind
• Jeff CluneAlso at Google DeepMind
• David WaddenAlso at Google DeepMind
• Gabe PereyraAlso at Google DeepMind
• Philipp SchmidAlso at Google DeepMind
• Sam RodriquesAI for science · Agents
• Andrew WhiteAI for science · Agents
• James BrazaAI for science · Agents
• Siddharth NarayananAI for science · Agents
• Arvind JainAgents