One of the most exciting conversations I have had all year. Abhi, co-founder and CEO of roots is is a software engineer turned farmer who is really pushing LLMs to the edge of their abilities. 

In this interview, we discover how he has been using Google Gemini’s large context windows to feed it thousands of agriculture science papers and discover insights relevant for his agriculture startup Living Roots. His insights have already generated 30% yield increases for smallhold farmers in the first season, at very limited cost!

At roots, Abhi and the team are even going so far as to combine Reinforcement Learning with LLMs reasoning abilities to predict the outcome of agricultural interventions.

During this interview, I really got to think that every research lab on the planet should have the pipeline that Abhi has built. Please watch for a really insightful and fun conversation

Check out roots
https://roots.ag/

Follow Abhi on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhimagarwal/

Follow Flavio on LinkedIn for more great content on the intersection of AI and Agriculture/Climate
https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaviorump/

Medium: https://medium.com/@flaviorump
Twitter: https://twitter.com/flaviorump

In Bio2040’s latest episode we had the chance to talk to Sam Lee, a long-time veteran of the biotech space. 

This episode covers some of the history and fundamentals of the synthetic biology and biomanufacturing space.

What are the main challenges in translating scientific innovation from the bench-side to the bedside? Physician and long-term Pharma executive Nadine Martin is now in charge of innovation management at sitem-insel AG. A translational unit of the Inselspital in Bern. 

SEED2019 is a scrappy conference targeting innovation within the science publishing & funding process. It will bring together a diverse set of stakeholders and be followed by an incubator to implement the best ideas. We discuss problems and ideas on how to best solve the most pressing problems of academia.