Lily James Olds

I'm thinking about a conversation we had before, Cesar, where you spoke about kind of being inspired by snails and being inspired by natural processes and then putting that into your work in the lab.

I love that so much.

I remember that with snails in the backyard as well.

I'm curious, is there a particular local challenge in Chile or Latin America that you think protein engineering is especially well suited to tackle?

And what's a new protein designer structure that you are really excited about right now and why and what will it help to change or make better, do you think?

The advances that I've learned about from you are just so incredible.

I'm curious, with all of these examples you're giving and how much AI is making protein design more successful, where do you see the field of protein design in three to five years from now?

What do you think will be possible?

You've outlined a little bit of that, but what does that future look like in your best imagination?

Yeah.

I think the place that my mind and I'm sure many others go is like, what are the risks and the dangers and unintended consequences of designing proteins that nature hasn't made before?

Is this something that you're thinking about?

just to go a step further, how do we regulate it?

You know, I mean, obviously regulation always lags behind innovation, but I'm just curious, can you speak to the current relationship between your work and the policy and protections in place?

And, you know, what do you hope this relationship will look like as this technology continues to grow that both allows for the innovation that is obviously creating the possibilities for incredible problem solving for humanity and also those dangers that you're touching on?

Yeah, I mean, obviously so much work still to be done, but it's always comforting to hear the things that are in place in terms of that kind of thinking and rigor.

I guess that leads me to think also, you know, things are shifting so much, obviously, right now in the global landscape of science, you know, recent policy changes in the U.S.

around climate science and otherwise.

The example that you just gave of, you know, who needs to be doing this work in terms of regulation around AI.

Do you see this as an opportunity for other countries to kind of step in?