PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Madeleine Leach

Also known as Maddy Leach

Madeleine Leach is a former DeepMind program manager who worked on AlphaGo, the Go program that beat Lee Sedol in 2016. She co-authored the 2016 Nature paper that introduced AlphaGo, which reports a 5 games to 0 win over the European Go champion. In March 2016 she sat in the playing room in Seoul as the first game against Lee Sedol began, and in 2017 she appeared as herself in the documentary AlphaGo. By 2023, she had left DeepMind and was training as a psychologist, and she recalls AlphaGo's win as the moment everything changed for modern AI.

Timeline

  1. By 2016

    Program manager on AlphaGo

    By 2016, she is the program manager at DeepMind, the team that builds AlphaGo, and she works on its Go team.

  2. January 2016

    The AlphaGo paper in Nature

    She is a co-author of "Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search", published in Nature in January 2016. The paper reports that AlphaGo defeated the European Go champion by 5 games to 0.

  3. March 2016

    AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol

    She is in the playing room with Lee Sedol in Seoul when the first game begins in March 2016. AlphaGo wins the five-game series four to one.

  4. 2017

    The AlphaGo documentary

    She appears as herself in Greg Kohs's documentary AlphaGo, released in 2017, which follows the program from its games against the European champion to the match with Lee Sedol in Seoul in March 2016.

  5. 2023

    Training as a psychologist

    In 2023, she is a former DeepMind program manager who is training as a psychologist. She recalls AlphaGo's win as the moment everything changed for the trajectory of modern AI.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Google. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Google. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Madeleine Leach yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. The decades long feud of mind vs brain in AI - ABC listen abc.net.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. AlphaGo marked the birth of modern AI. This is the moment the world changed - ABC News abc.net.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search | Nature nature.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. AlphaGo - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Where to Watch AlphaGo (2017) Online - Plex watch.plex.tv. Checked 22 October 2026.