A theoretical physicist by training, IBM's Simone Bianco believes that the 21st century will be the century when the synergy between AI and biology will be fully realized.

Why you should listen

Simone Bianco, PhD, is research staff member and IBM rock star at IBM Research – Almaden, where he leads the Cellular Engineering group. He's passionate about making biology a quantitative science by using tools from mathematics, physics, engineering and computer science. He believes this interdisciplinary approach will not only impact biological and medical fields but also will advance biologically inspired engineering and computer science. His research spans many scientific fields, from genomic and evolutionary biology to bioengineering, epidemiology, statistical physics and computer science. 

Bianco studied physics at the University of Pisa, Italy, the school of Galileo Galilei and Enrico Fermi, and he got his PhD from the University of North Texas. He held research appointments at the College of William and Mary and at the University of California San Francisco. Bianco is a founding principal investigator of the Center for Cellular Construction, an NSF funded multi-institution initiative which aims to build self-organized devices from living organisms.

Simone Bianco’s TED talk