Harry and Professor Alison Woollard discuss the problems GM technology might face in the future. Remember to hit subscribe...

If you are interested in helping The Biotech Podcast please take 30 seconds to take the following survey: https://harry852843.typeform.com/to/caV6cMzG

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.

Full synopsis:

0:00 - Introduction
2:24 - P4 medicine - what it is and how it will play a role in the future
17:10 - Systems Biology - A new approach for biological research
25:15 - Thriving in the future of Biology
30:25 - Noise in biology
37:04 - Neuroplasticity and coronavirus
38:37 - The institute of systems biology
42:34 - Future novels
43:24 - Developing scientific tools - How they has affected Lee and how to go about developing them
01:05:10 - The human genome project
01:12:24 - Book recommendations and advice

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!

Full synopsis:

0:00 - Intro
1:20 - Emergence and emergent systems
13:20 - Evolution and its algorithms
23:40 - Theory of facilitated variation
31:30 - Neural Information vs Synthetic Information
41:30 - Evolutionary computation vs Neural networks
48:25 - Re-enforcement learning
1:02:15 - Building intelligence - neural net architectures
1:07:00 - Advice and Book recommendations

From digitising chemistry to looking for inorganic aliens, Lee gives us his fascinating insight into new, revolutionary ideas in Chemistry.

Full synopsis:

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Defining life
13:20 - Testing life with Polyoxometalates
16:20 - The Markov model
19:48 - Inorganic life and space exploration
25:08 - Chemputers and using them to search for inorganic life
32:52 - The uses of Chemputers in the future
40:00 - Turning Chemistry into an information science
47:37 - Using past data in digital chemistry
51:09 - Extro

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.

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.

If you are interested in helping The Biotech Podcast please take 30 seconds to take the following survey: https://harry852843.typeform.com/to/caV6cMzG

Full synopsis below:

00:00 - Intro
1:25 - Nematode Worms
10:33 - Developmental biology
15:54 - Meiosis, Differentiation and Pluripotency
22:47 - Cancers and Transcription factors
34:10 - Mutations and Coronavirus
42:17 - Heredity and Evolution
50:20 - Deepmind and Alphafold
55:03 - Genetic engineering
1:05:39 - Book recommendations
1:09:37 - Extro

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.

If you are interested in helping The Biotech Podcast please take 30 seconds to take the following survey: https://harry852843.typeform.com/to/caV6cMzG

Full synopsis:

00:00 - Intro
01:30 - The scientific process
09:51 - Scientific thinking and education
24:25 - Writing 'Molecular biology of the cell', its intentions and its impacts
41:32 - DNA replication - mechanisms, evolution and discovering the biochemistry
1:03:54 - Book recommendations and advice
1:08.09 - Freeman Dyson, Leroy Hood and the Human Genome project

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.

If you are interested in helping The Biotech Podcast please take 30 seconds to take the following survey: https://harry852843.typeform.com/to/caV6cMzG

Full Synopsis:
00:00 - Intro
01:40 - Beautiful statistics
05:51 - Bootstrapping
08:39 - Struggles of learning statistics
17:43 - Knowing your data
20:03 - Bioinformatics
21:41 - Machine learning as a microscope
24:25 - The exciting futures of statistics
29:38 - StatQuest and what makes a good explanation
39:22 - Music and Maths
48:06 - Education changing in the future
52:12 - Lies, damned lies and statistics
55:14 - What lies ahead
1:00:07 - Extro

Episode Links:
Neural Networks or Big Fancy Squiggle Fitting Machines (BFSFM) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqOfi41LfDw

StatQuest Website - https://statquest.org/about/
StatQuest Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtYLUTtgS3k1Fg4y5tAhLbw