BlueYard Conversation: Operating Systems for Life — Agenda and Speakers

Technological advances are permeating our culture, but following recent scientific breakthroughs a new frontier is emerging: the ability to author life. Historically, these breakthroughs have been random and empirically driven, but we are now at a time where frameworks and methods are being simultaneously discovered that will allow us to understand, augment, and engineer life forms at a new level. Our new capabilities will have a profound — and partially unimaginable — impact on both our planet’s and humanity’s ecosystem, ranging from plants, animals, materials, medicine and how we evolve as a species ourselves.

Our next BlueYard Conversation will center around these new “Operating Systems for Life”, and the opportunities and challenges they bring with them. As always, this will be an invite-only gathering of intellectually curious and open-minded people, from leading researchers and entrepreneurs, to representatives from large companies, and investors who are taking the human ecosystem to the next level. We want to discuss the frameworks, tools, operating systems and methods for solving some of our biggest problems — while not ignoring the potential challenges, ethical or otherwise.

We are now only a few days away from our next BlueYard Conversation “Operating Systems For Life” on November 7th in Berlin, Germany. We are excited to announce our agenda and confirmed speakers, including the creator of programmable meat cells, a pioneer in gene editing, an evolutionary biologist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and many others committed to guiding the conversations during the day.

Agenda

We will begin with breakfast at 9:30am.

Talks will begin at 10:30am and run as follows:

Fireside Chat

With Emmanuelle Charpentier: A Pioneer In Gene Editing and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology

Keynote

Mark Kotter (University of Cambridge/Elpis BioMed) “When Biology Becomes Engineering: Ripples Of The Future”

Enhancing Humans

Nikolai Eroshenko (Helix Nano) “How To Cure Cancer”

Martin Borch Jensen (Gordian.bio) “Mapping Our Cells’ Command Line Parameters”

Erwin Estigarribia (Girihlet) “Are You Healthy? Reading Your Immune System”

Emil Hewage (CBAS) “Open Standard To Connect To The Nervous System”

Group conversation with Nikolai Eroshenko, Martin Borch Jensen, and Emil Hewage, moderated by Irina Haivas (Atomico)

Lunch

Frameworks for Design

Lynn Rothschild (NASA) “Synthetic Biology And NASA’s Missions”

Daan Luining (Meatable) “One Cell To Feed The World”

Hana Janebdar (June.bio) “Designing A Biome From Scratch”

James Field (LabGenius) “Building an Empirical Computation Engine For Protein Engineering”

Group conversation with Daan Luining, Hana Janebdar, James Field, and Lynn Rothschild, moderated by Christina Quensel (Campus Berlin-Buch)

The Outsider Perspective

Serge Faguet “Optimising Mind and Body”

Anish Mohammed (Ethisnet and Ontici) “Understanding The Global Risks Of Synthetic Biology And Gene Editing”

Investing in Life

Group conversation with Alice Bentinck (Entrepreneur First), Edward Kliphius (Merck Ventures) and John Carrigan (RebelBio)
Moderated by Niccolo Manzoni (Five Seasons Ventures)

We will end at 6:00pm with dinner and drinks.

As always, this will be an invite-only gathering of intellectually curious and open-minded people, from leading researchers and entrepreneurs, to representatives from large companies, and investors who are taking the human ecosystem to the next level. We want to discuss the frameworks, tools, operating systems and methods for solving some of our biggest problems — while not ignoring the potential challenges, ethical or otherwise.

Are you an entrepreneur working on the future of operating systems for life and want to join us? We have a few slots left we would love to allocate to the most promising teams. Head here to apply.

BlueYard is committed to keeping our events safe and open to all. View our Code of Conduct here.