Last year's award went to two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a third from Harvard University, for their groundbreaking research into efforts to reduce global poverty.
Prosecutors said they would have recommended a harsher sentence for Yeo, who pleaded guilty to acting as an agent of a foreign government, but for his cooperation.
Alter, Houghton and Rice made seminal discoveries that led to the identification of the Hepatitis C virus, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet said.