Elizabethtown College Lecture Series - Carl Zimmer

Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives, from planning vacations to editing photos. But biologists are using the same underlying software to explore some of the deepest mysteries of life. These foundation models, as they're called, can learn by themselves how proteins fold into their intricately complex structures. They can make up new proteins from scratch. Even more ambitiously, foundation models are making sense of how thousands of genes work together inside our cells to keep us alive. In a few weeks, computers can analyze data from millions of cells and teach themselves some of the most fundamental principles of biology. What will they discover next? Zimmer takes us on a mind-bending trip into the not-so-distant future, when computers can discover how to make new kinds of cells, and maybe new kinds of life.

Our free Lecture Series continues a rich tradition of hosting speakers who…