A podcast playlist on design for emerging technologies — from the IoT and AI to genomics and synthetic biology.

Emerging Technologies

Jonathan Follett, editor of Designing for Emerging Technologies, chats with Scott Stropkay, founding partner at Essential Design Service, and Bill Hartman, director of research at Essential Design Service to talk about the relationship dynamic between humans and robots, and ways designers are being stretched in an interesting new direction.

Designing the Dynamic Human-Robot Relationship

The age of bio-inspired technology is upon us. Whether it's DNA as data storage, transparent displays based on mollusk shells, or surveillance robots modeled after swarming bees, the possibilities abound for natural systems to serve as patterns for the products of the future.

In this episode of The Digital Life we consider the evolution of the designer as technologist and engineer in conjunction with the ever expanding importance of bio-inspired technologies.

Get the full transcript: 
http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/designing-bio-inspired-technology



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Designing Bio-inspired Technology

Jon Follett, editor of Designing for Emerging Technologies, chats with Matt Nish-Lapidus, partner and design director at Normative, about the evolution of design, characteristics of post-Industrial design, and aesthetic intricacies of designing in networked systems.

Design's Return to Artisan, at Scale

Angela Rufino chats with Jonathan Follett, principal of Involution Studios, about creative class workers, product life cycles, and enhancing company-customer relationships.

Emerging Technologies are Disrupting Product Design Life Cycles

What sorts of breakthroughs are possible by modifying an organism’s genome – something researchers are now able to do ever more cheaply and efficiently? Researchers around the world are already able to program microbes to treat wastewater, generate electricity, manufacture jet fuel, create hemoglobin, and fabricate new drugs. What sounds like science fiction to most of us might be a reality in our lifetimes: the ability to build diagnostic tools that live within our bodies, or find ways to eradicate malaria from mosquito lines, or possibly even to make genetic improvements in humans that are passed down to future generations. Wyss Institute Founding Core Faculty Members Pam Silver and George Church discuss the high-impact benefits of their synthetic biology work, as well as how they manage the potential of unintended consequences.

Transcript: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wyss-prod/app/uploads/2015/05/26123354/Ep001_Disruptive_SyntheticBiology.pdf

Disruptive: Synthetic Biology | Wyss Institute

In part 1 of the Bioinspired Robotics episode, Wyss Founding Core Faculty Member Radhika Nagpal discusses swarm collectives, as well as the challenges faced by women in the engineering and computer science fields.

Our bodies — and all living systems — accomplish tasks far more complex and dynamic than anything yet designed by humans.  Many of the most advanced robots in use today are still far less sophisticated than ants that "self-organize" to build an ant hill, or termites that work together to build impressive, massive mounds in Africa. From insects in your backyard, to creatures in the sea, to what we see in the mirror, engineers and scientists at the Wyss Institute are drawing inspiration from nature to design whole new classes of smart swarm, soft, wearable and popup robotic devices. In this three part episode, Wyss Institute Core Faculty Members Radhika Nagpal, Robert Wood and Conor Walsh discuss the high-impact benefits of their bioinspired robotic work, as well as what drove them to this cutting-edge field.

Disruptive: Bioinspired Robotics (pt. 1 - Swarm Collectives)

Sepsis is a bloodstream infection caused by an uncontrolled spread of pathogens and release of toxins that can lead to systemic inflammation and multi-organ failure. Sepsis is the leading cause of hospital deaths and kills at least eight million people worldwide each year. Current treatment is to administer patients broad-spectrum antibiotics because there is often not enough time to identify the specific cause of infection. Diagnosis takes two to five days and every hour one waits can increase the risk of death by 5-9%.

In this episode of Disruptive, Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber and Senior Staff Scientist Mike Super discuss how their team developed a new therapeutic device inspired by the human spleen. This blood-cleansing approach can remove sepsis-causing pathogens from circulating blood without ever needing to know their identity. In animal studies, treatment with this device reduced the number of targeted pathogens and toxins circulating in the bloodstream by more than 99%. This device may radically transform the way sepsis is treated.

Transcript: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wyss-prod/app/uploads/2017/08/09180758/Ep3_Disruptive_Confronting_Sepsis.pdf

Disruptive: Confronting Sepsis | Wyss Institute

How can a materials science approach lead to medical breakthroughs?
In this episode of Disruptive, Wyss Core Faculty Member Dave Mooney discusses programmable nanomaterials approaches to fighting disease. Mooney explains how a cancer vaccine, developed by his team and currently in a clinical trial at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, can train one’s own immune system to target specific cancer cells. He also describes the development of novel hydrogels that find application in drug delivery systems and tissue regeneration. Chris Gemmiti, a member of the Wyss Institute’s Business Development team, joins the conversation to discuss the Wyss process of translation and what is involved in bringing the hydrogel drug delivery technology from bench-to-bedside.

Transcript: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wyss-prod/app/uploads/2017/08/10130728/Ep4_Disruptive_Cancer_Vaccine__Hydrogel_Drug_Delivery.pdf

Disruptive: Cancer Vaccine & Hydrogel Drug Delivery | Wyss Institute

How can DNA be programmed to build novel structures, devices, and robots?

We have taken our understanding of DNA to another level, beginning to take advantage of some of DNA’s properties that have served nature so well, but in ways nature itself may have never pursued. Humans can now use DNA as a medium for nano-scale engineering. The resulting newly programmed and built DNA structures can enhance our ability to see and study molecular interactions and the inner-life of cells. As these structures become increasingly complex and versatile, they have the potential to spawn entirely new and revolutionary technologies for biological monitoring, therapeutic delivery, and applications scientists have not even thought of yet.

In this episode of Disruptive, Wyss faculty members William Shih, Wesley Wong, and Peng Yin discuss what it is like being on the frontier of science, and the potential applications of their DNA-programming work.

Transcript: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wyss-prod/app/uploads/2017/08/09175352/Ep5_Disruptive_Molecular-Robotics.pdf

Disruptive: Molecular Robotics | Wyss Institute

On this episode of The Digital Life podcast we discuss how bio-inspired technology is beginning to intersect with information technology in big ways. With the exponential increase of digital data, we face an ongoing problem of information storage. Today most digital information is stored on media that will expire relatively quickly, lasting a few decades at most. Because of this, we require new methods for long-term data storage, and biotech might just have the answer. DNA could be the storage media of the future: It can last thousands, even potentially tens of thousands of years. And the tech industry has taken notice. For instance, last month Microsoft agreed to purchase millions of strands of synthetic DNA, from San Francisco based Twist Bioscience to encode digital data. Of course we may be years away from a commercial DNA storage product, but the potential for a revolutionary, even disaster proof media is there.

DNA As Data Storage

A bionic leaf combines advanced catalysts with engineered bacteria to produce hydrocarbon fuels from light, water, and carbon dioxide.

Melding Biology and Chemistry in a Bionic Leaf

Why do we use mice for medical research? As I-Hub’s Caroline Lester found out, it all started with fancy mice.

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4'33" - Discovery Download

The Modest Mouse: Why We Use Mice in Medicine

Robots - The Podcast for News and Views on Robotics

Soft Robotics Toolkit

Michael Super, PhD, of the Wyss Institute, shares his story of how the spread of infectious disease throughout South Africa and London inspired him to pursue human health and combat disease.

Protein Engineering: Editing Functionality

The Digital Life http://www.thedigitalife.com is an online radio show that explores important, timely topics in the world of design and emerging technologies like genomics, robotics, and the Internet of Things.

The show is created by GoInvo http://www.goinvo.com, a studio designing the future of healthcare, whose clients include market leaders like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Walgreens, as well as micro startups that will create the markets of the future.

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tdlpodcast

The Wyss Institute uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired technologies that will revolutionize medicine and create a more sustainable world.

Disruptive: Bioinspired Robotics (pt. 1 - Swarm Collectives)

Wyss Institute

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