David Baker

Yes, I think we start off on with the methods we develop.

We make those widely available.

And so that's start.

We're pretty interested in enabling protein design in countries where there isn't as much advanced infrastructure for

you know large-scale drug screening for example because with protein design really cuts down the cost in making uh proteins that to deal with uh with it with a challenge for example if you are a farmer in um in africa for example and you're dealing with a new type of of pests say a fungus or an insect we want to empower scientists and researchers in the

in the country that has the problem to actually use our methods to develop their own solutions to those problems, which may be pretty local.

As things come out of here,

One of the things that we do is when we license things that we have created to other entities, we always require that there be a carve out for

for global health applications.

And that's something that the Gates Foundation is really pioneered.

And so we try in every way we can to make sure that things we develop will be as broadly applicable as possible.

I think

It's a challenge currently that goes well beyond protein design to motivate the world to put the resources into ways of combating things like global warming and

and the accumulating plastic, there's been a lot of talk, but it's gonna take a lot of resources too, and we can't really control that.

I'll give you an example of something that I am disappointed in.

During the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about

how we needed better methods for rapidly creating ways to deal with pandemic viruses.

And immediately after the pandemic or during the end of the pandemic, there were even some initiatives started to work on sort of faster approaches to develop ways to protect against new pathogens if they emerged.

But within six months of the pandemic ending, the world kind of forgot about it.

So there are some issues with the way that the pull from the outside world in different areas is different, depending on how much profit can be made, which is a little bit too bad.