Explore every episode of the podcast The Biotech Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| #25 - The Future of Food - The Rural Economy | 24 May 2022 | 01:22:35 | |
As exciting technologies emerge, we need to ensure that policies and regulations are in place to ensure practices remain safe, sustainable and help the transition towards a circular economy. Dr Ian Hodge, professor of rural economy at Cambridge, describes how we can manage agriculture in the future; from offering subsidies to introducing carbon credits. | |||
| #24 - The Future of Food - Genetic Engineering | 10 May 2022 | 00:51:01 | |
Many crops currently grown in the developing world are limited by their nitrogen potential rather than their water or light potential. Difficult supply chains and high costs make using nitrogen fertilisers difficult in these regions and the use of these fertilisers brings about its own issues. | |||
| #15 - Dr Yoav Freund on Intelligence Amplification in Healthcare | 26 Mar 2021 | 00:53:15 | |
AI is often described as a hugely exciting and media-friendly field in computer science, however, parts of it often forget the goals we are trying to achieve. Intelligence Amplification, or IA, is a more realistic goal, where computers are used for augmenting intelligence rather than replacing it. Dr Yoav Freund takes us through this fascinating field and outlines its possible applications in medicine specifically.
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| #14 - Dr Giovanni Traverso on Ingestible Medicine | 19 Mar 2021 | 01:29:38 | |
One of the biggest challenges to medicine is non-adherence. From micro-needle injectors to once-a-month oral pills; Dr Giovanni Traverso tells us about some exiting prospects coming out of MIT which challenge this issue. | |||
| #13 - Dr Jason Moore on Automated Machine Learning | 04 Mar 2021 | 00:52:38 | |
This week Dr Jason Moore tells us about the exciting strides forward that AI is taking; might everyone one day have their own machine learning 'toolbox' at home? Jason is the creator of PennAI, an accessible, user-friendly artificial intelligence system and he explains how machine learning will change the future of medicine and many other fields of science.
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| #12 - Dr Laura Jackisch on the Future of Lab-Grown Meat | 25 Feb 2021 | 00:48:55 | |
By striving to produce burgers which taste, look and smell the same as farmed beef from cultured stem cells in a lab, Mosa meat aims to change the way we look at agriculture. This week we talk to Dr Laura Jackisch from Mosa meat about the techniques used and the impacts that this technology can have on our future. | |||
| #11 - Professor Peter Hammond - Carbon Capture and Fertilisers | 18 Feb 2021 | 00:51:19 | |
The founder of CCm technologies, Peter Hammond, talks to us this week on carbon capture machines, along with their use in producing organic fertilisers to improve soil health. | |||
| #10 - Dr Rattan Lal - Using soil to combat climate change | 11 Feb 2021 | 00:45:47 | |
Soil is one of the most powerful carbon sequestering tools known to man, and protecting it will lead to greater food security with higher nutritional content, better water quality and of course can also play a huge part in reducing global warming. This week Dr Ratan Lal, winner of the 2020 world food prize, talks passionately about his life's work with soil and how we need to harness this incredible ecosystem for good. | |||
| #9 - Professor Bob Langer - Vaccines, Nanotech and Transforming Medicine | 04 Feb 2021 | 00:45:31 | |
From the delivery of the mRNA vaccines into cells to the delivery of chemotherapy directly to tumours, it is fair to say Professor Bob Langer has revolutionised modern medicine. Bob is the 4th most cited individual of all time and having founded over 40 biotechnology companies including Moderna, Bob is, without doubt, one of the most influential scientists alive today. | |||
| #8 - Professor Greg Gibson - The Kerplunk Model, Covid Testing and Scientific Publication | 21 Jan 2021 | 01:06:27 | |
A professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Greg has theorised interesting genetic ideas such as the 'Kerplunk Model' and more recently has been influential in coordinating effective Covid testing strategies. Today we talk about the heredity of traits, the importance of robustness in evolution and the current state of scientific publication. Greg also writes a monthly blog called The Genome's Take, which I highly recommend reading. | |||
| #7 - Dr Josh Starmer: Bioinformatics, StatQuest, and Education | 14 Jan 2021 | 01:01:09 | |
Josh Starmer is the founder and CEO of StatQuest, a channel which breaks down complex mathematics into easy, visual, bitesize content. Today we talk about his success with StatQuest, his career in music and tips on how to effectively explain complex topics. | |||
| #6 - Dr Bruce Alberts: Scientific education, DNA replication and Watson and Crick | 07 Jan 2021 | 01:11:54 | |
Having worked with the likes of Freeman Dyson, we hear about the incredible achievements of Dr Bruce Alberts, winner of both the National medal of science in 2014 and the Lasker award in 2016. | |||
| #23 - The Future of Food - Robotic Farming | 26 Apr 2022 | 00:46:58 | |
As agriculture scales up it brings a host of problems. Larger tractors lead to soil compaction and lack of precision, more workers are required to ensure harvests come in on time and food waste is reduced, and corners are cut more often with increased use of herbicides and pesticides. Using autonomous vehicles can help solve many of these problems. | |||
| #5 Professor Alison Woollard - Mutants, Darwin and Genetic Engineering | 27 Dec 2020 | 01:10:45 | |
This week we talk to Alison Woollard, a professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, about her life's work in Developmental Biology. She offers her thoughts on the new, mutated coronavirus strain, the history of evolution and what GM technology might offer in the future. | |||
| #4 - Dr Peter Clark: The Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence and the Aristo Project | 18 Dec 2020 | 01:00:51 | |
This week we talk to Dr Peter Clark, Peter is the Senior Research Manager for AI2. His work focuses upon natural language processing, machine reasoning, and large knowledge bases, and the interplay between these three areas. He has received several awards including a AAAI Best Paper (1997), Boeing Associate Technical Fellowship (2004), and AAAI Senior Member (2014). Peter received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1991, and has researched these topics for 30 years with more than 80 refereed publications. We talk to peter about what makes a good test for intelligence, the nature of intelligence and his work over the last 20 years on the aristo project, which last year featured in the New York times as well as other new outlets across the world as a breakthrough in AI. | |||
| #3 - Professor Lee Cronin - Inorganic life, 'Chemputers' and Evolution | 10 Dec 2020 | 00:52:06 | |
From digitising chemistry to looking for inorganic aliens, Lee gives us his fascinating insight into new, revolutionary ideas in Chemistry. | |||
| #2 - Professor Keith Downing - Emergent Intelligence, Evolutionary Algorithms and Computational Neuroscience | 03 Dec 2020 | 01:12:46 | |
4 billion years ago the earth was bombarded with photons, a short while later a Tesla got launched into space. This week I'm speaking to Professor Keith Downing about emergent phenomena; which the above scenario is a prime example of, alongside the formation of a baby from a fertilised egg, economies from individual interactions and for good measure alcohol from respiring yeast! | |||
| #1 - Dr Leroy Hood: 21st Century Medicine, The Human Genome Project and Systems Biology | 26 Nov 2020 | 01:20:09 | |
Dr Leroy Hood is a world renowned biotechnologist, geneticist and author. From the future of medicine to the human genome project, Lee tells about his fascinating life and his views for the scientific future. | |||
| Trailer - The Biotech Podcast | 19 Nov 2020 | 00:02:01 | |
Harry and Professor Alison Woollard discuss the problems GM technology might face in the future. Remember to hit subscribe... | |||
| #22 - The Future of Food - Frugal Innovation | 12 Apr 2022 | 00:48:26 | |
A third of global food is produced by smallholder farms. High tech innovations will always make the big headlines, but if want to truly provide for the future then we must also empower those most at risk with more frugal strategies. | |||
| #21 - The Future of Food - The History of Agriculture | 29 Mar 2022 | 01:00:39 | |
In the first episode of this new season on food security we first look at what lessons we can draw from the history of agriculture and how we might expect it to change as we look into the future. | |||
| #20 - Dr Joaquin Vanschoren on Making Data Public | 05 May 2021 | 00:43:54 | |
Having founded OpenML, Dr Joaquin Vanschoren wants scientists to make their data public. OpenML aims to use this data to train many machine learning models and therefore create huge advances in this field. | |||
| #19 - Dr Andrei Lupas on Proteins | 21 Apr 2021 | 00:49:01 | |
Dr Andrei Lupas takes us through the fundamental building blocks of life: proteins. We analyse what they are, how they've evolved and how they might change in the future. Andrei was also one of the first to see Alphafold in action as he judged them at the CASP protein folding competition, so we explore the possibilities that Alphafold brings. | |||
| #18 - Dr Risto Miikkulainen on Evolutionary Computation | 14 Apr 2021 | 00:46:38 | |
Computer scientist, Dr Risto Miikkulainen, shows us how we can come up with novel solutions in science by simulating evolution using computers. From bioinformatics to webpage design, the applications of this field are huge.
Evolutionary Computation software: | |||
| #17 - Professor Jim Collins on Synthetic Biology | 07 Apr 2021 | 00:39:22 | |
Professor Jim Collins talks to us this week about his endeavours in biodetection using Synthetic riboregulators, which have played a significant role in Sars-Cov2 detection. He also brings us through CellNet, which applies network biology to stem cell engineering. | |||
| #16 - Dr Wolfgang Busch - Getting to the Root of Roots | 31 Mar 2021 | 00:52:38 | |
This week Dr Wolfgang Busch, from the Salk Institute, talks to us about the importance of root systems. Can roots make decisions? And if so could they be optimised for distinct functions? Salk Institute: https://www.salk.edu/scientist/wolfgang-busch/ | |||