CRACKING UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD BY NEW BIOLOGY

Insights shared by Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, and Founder - Biocon Limited, and Chairperson of Vision Group on Biotechnology- Government of Karnataka during the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024.

Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Executive Chairperson, & Founder Biocon Limited, &Chairperson, Vision Group on BiotechnologyGovernment of Karnataka

I'm excited about the technology-driven biology. We previously could never do anything like what we can do today with biology. Thanks to the computational power that we have today to understand, sort, and infer from what we see and analyze. Let’s take the example of the human body itself, which is the most complex data lake you can ever imagine. In nano-seconds, you can look at all the data out there, sort, segregate, analyze, and annotate it. This is the marvel of biological systems. If you understand how biology works, you can crack many of the unsolved problems in the world.

The Challenge for Human Beings

There are many unsolved problems in the world. One is energy storage. In nature, plants have been storing solar energy through photosynthesis from the start. Solar power today is one of the biggest renewable energy sources we are looking at, combined with wind energy, but the biggest challenge is storage. The storage problem can be solved by converting energy into big biotechnology. For this, we need a modern understanding of technology. Currently, AI is playing a big role. AI is an iterative, large language. It's based on existing knowledge and data. But living systems don't just rely on existing, iterative information. They have genetic data and genetic memory. That's how birds know where to migrate and how to migrate.

AI for Better Living