Gaming the System: NVIDIA's Vega Shah on Accelerating Biotech Breakthroughs.
Erum and Karl sit down with Vega Shah from NVIDIA to explore the role of AI in healthcare and life sciences, and how it's driving major advances in drug discovery and biotechnology. Vega shares real-world examples, from lab-grown cotton to using AI to discover new proteins in the gut microbiome. She also discusses the challenges of modeling complex biological systems and how tools like generative AI are changing the way we approach these problems. This episode is a look at how cutting-edge tech, with NVIDIA at the forefront, is making biology more accessible and impactful.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Unpacking the Company’s Ethos: Where Innovation Begins
00:00:19 - Biotech Breakthrough: See-Through Mice and the Wild World of Research
00:03:11 - Lab-Grown Cotton: Redefining Sustainability in Fashion
00:04:05 - Inside the Apple Vision Pro: A New Frontier for Cellular Visualization
00:09:57 - How NVIDIA is Transforming Healthcare and Life Sciences
00:10:35 - In Conversation with Dr. Vega Shah: NVIDIA’s Vision for the Future of Medicine
00:12:42 - The Role of GPUs in Accelerating Healthcare and Life Sciences
00:16:28 - AI’s Impact on Drug Discovery: From Digital Biology to Genomics
00:20:17 - How NVIDIA’s Tools Are Helping Clinicians and Improving Patient Care
00:24:10 - Partnering with Cloud Providers: How NVIDIA is Expanding Access to AI Tools
00:28:05 - BioNemo: Revolutionizing Drug Discovery with Large Language Models
00:31:32 - Gut Microbiome Discoveries: The Search for Novel Proteins
00:33:09 - The Challenge of Culturing Gut Bacteria: What We Still Don’t Know
00:35:49 - NVIDIA’s Pioneering Role in Image Analysis and Biological Modeling
00:38:31 - Why User Interfaces Matter: Making Biotech Accessible for Scientists
00:40:38 - Tech Bio Startups: Navigating the Platform Play and Scaling Challenges
00:43:06 - AI-Driven Drug Discovery: What’s Next for FDA Approvals?
00:45:29 - The Bigger Picture: NVIDIA’s Lasting Impact on Life Sciences
00:48:39 - Gamifying Biology: The Future of Healthcare Through Play
00:50:00 - Reflecting on the Journey: What Lies Ahead in Biotech and AI
00:57:46 - Final Thoughts: Engaging the Community in the Next Wave of Innovation
Topics Covered: biotech, bioengineering, precision fermentation, epigenetics, optogenetics, light, biosolutions, cellular control, photomolecular biology
Episode Links
Scientists use food dye found in Doritos to make see-through mice
