Xapiens at MIT

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with Harvard Professor Donald Ingber. Founder of the Wyss Institute. You can learn more about him here:

https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/core-faculty/donald-ingber/

and check out our website!

https://xapiens.mit.edu/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 11:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Bobby Johnston in a discussion with Fei Chen. Fei is a core institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and an assistant professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. During the course of his doctoral research, Chen co-invented Expansion Microscopy. He completed his undergraduate degree at CalTech in EE before coming to MIT for his Ph.D. in biological engineering. Fei can sometimes be found playing basketball around MIT, which is how Bobby first met him, and eventually convinced him to talk on the podcast.

Check out the Xapiens podcast on our website!

https://xapiens-at-mit.captivate.fm/

Or listen to us on google podcast, spotify, amazon, apple podcasts or wherever you listen!

RSS feed:

https://feeds.captivate.fm/xapiens-at-mit/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/12FjwjYf6NahxAuRwg7JUT

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Xapiens-at-MIT/dp/B08JJS62YW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=xapiens+at+mit&qid=1647018254&sr=8-1

google podcasts:

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly94YXBpZW5zLWF0LW1pdC5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vcnNzZmVlZA?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiY8KaYrND2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ

Other Xapiens Info:

XPC Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCp2QLDdzA3nuhdkRkJwXQ

Xapiens Home: https://xapiens.mit.edu/

RELEVANT LINKS:

Fei Chen Lab: https://www.broadinstitute.org/bios/fei-chen

DNA Dark Matter Detectors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.6809.pdf

Ticker Tape Paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.5709.pdf

Bionumbers: https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/search.aspx?trm=ribosome+coli

Inflation Calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Expansion Microscopy in 120 seconds

2:12 - Introduction

3:12 - From EE to Biology

6:37 - Transition to Graduate School

9:53 - The Chen Lab

11:17 - What Do You Look for In Undergrads?

13:53 - Working as a Mentor

16:15 - Overview of Expansion Microscopy

26:02 - Does the Exact Expansion Factor Matter?

28:05 - ExMic + Electron Microscopy?

31:11 - Feeling of Discovery as a Grad Student

34:08 - Difficulties Along the Way

35:46 - From Grad School to Chen Lab

39:19 - How are Abundances of Genes Measured?

45:27 - The Cell as a State Machine

53:40 - Where is the ROM?

58:35 - Temporal Genomics and Dynamic Videos

1:07:19 - Overview of Slide Seq

1:19:31 - Are There Enough Tools in This Field?

1:24:00 - Sources of Inspiration

1:26:53 - OpenWetWare

1:33:00 - Advice to Young People

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 10:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Bobby Johnston in a discussion with Mark Phillips, VP of Business Development at Helium. We discuss the hardware and software behind the project, as well as the technical challenges and overall goals. We look forward to a future where information flows effortlessly across the globe, and it seems Helium and the decentralized wireless network building blueprint they have developed will be integral to realizing that future.

Check out the Xapiens podcast on our website!

https://xapiens-at-mit.captivate.fm/

Or listen to us on google podcast, spotify, amazon, apple podcasts or wherever you listen!

RSS feed:

https://feeds.captivate.fm/xapiens-at...

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/12FjwjY...

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B...

google podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...

Other Xapiens Info:

XPC Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCp...

Xapiens Home: https://xapiens.mit.edu/

RELEVANT LINKS:

Helium website: https://www.helium.com/

Helium Github: https://github.com/helium

Helium Discord: https://discord.com/invite/helium

Helium on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HeliumNetwork/

Helium on Twitter: https://twitter.com/helium

Mark Phillips on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pharkmillups

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HoneyBadgerBFT paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/199.pdf

Motivation for honeybadgerBFT naming: https://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg

filecoin: https://filecoin.io

rndr: https://www.rendertoken.com/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 8:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with MIT professor Hugh Herr. After his own double amputation, Herr was driven to make some of the most advanced bionics in the world. He currently is one of the leads of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics. You can learn more about him here:

https://www.media.mit.edu/people/hherr/overview/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 8:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with MIT professor Ed Boyden. Founder of the MIT Synthetic Neurobiology Group, The K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, and inventor of optogenetics. You can learn more about him here:

https://mcgovern.mit.edu/profile/ed-boyden/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 7:

After fleeing the Nazis with his family as a child, Rai Weiss went on to fix radios outside of Harlem. He went to MIT, later flunking out after a rough love story, before returning, completing his PhD, and becoming a full professor and Winning a Nobel Prize.

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with Nobel Prize Winner Rai Weiss, the man who discovered gravitational waves using LIGO. More info on him here:

https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/raine...

Check out the Xapiens podcast on our website!

https://xapiens-at-mit.captivate.fm/

Or listen to us on google podcast, spotify, amazon, apple podcasts or wherever you listen!

RSS feed:

https://feeds.captivate.fm/xapiens-at...

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/12FjwjY...

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B...

google podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...

Other Xapiens Info:

XPC Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCp...

Xapiens Home: https://xapiens.mit.edu/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 6:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with Adam Marblestone and Anastasia Gammick. You can learn more about convergent research and their other efforts here: https://convergentresearch.org/

Check out Xapiens on youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/c/XapiensatMIT/videos

Check out the Xapiens podcast on our website!

https://xapiens-at-mit.captivate.fm/

Or listen to us on google podcast, spotify, amazon, apple podcasts or wherever you listen!

RSS feed:

https://feeds.captivate.fm/xapiens-at-mit/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/12FjwjYf6NahxAuRwg7JUT

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B08JJS62YW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XHBRXE1PBVFX&dchild=1&keywords=xapiens+at+mit+podcast&qid=1635954528&qsid=133-3533827-8746125&sprefix=xapiens+at+mit+podcast%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1&sres=B08JJS62YW%2CB07NHZP4FW%2CB09BFPNW2J%2CB08LB4656J%2CB004MQSV04%2CB06XCKGLTP%2CB0006H92QK%2CB08G7RG9ML%2CB07GQT8879%2CB08XXM6DRS%2CB07GY4WWP3%2CB089JLLDQB%2CB091CHFJYN%2CB095YTSZ8Y%2CB08N66WGMP%2CB06XKNZT1P

google podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0veGFwaWVucy1hdC1taXQv?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjD8u6Ayf3zAhWkM1kFHXobDHgQ9sEGegQIARAC

Other Xapiens Info:

XPC Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCp2QLDdzA3nuhdkRkJwXQ

Xapiens Home: https://xapiens.mit.edu/

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

1:47 - Research Overview (Neuralink, Deepmind, Kernal, COVID)

6:54 - What makes an FRO different from DARPA

8:07 - How to start a Focused Research Organization

12:12 - Lessons learned for FROs

13:42 - FRO interaction

19:18 - Current FROs

25:07 - What is the Rejuvenome?

30:02 - Any Time for Research?

31:38 - Stand Out Stories and Working with Covid Testing

36:48 - Kernal and Brain Machine Interfaces

40:25 - Biologically Inspired Machine Learning and Cooperation

44:43 - Existential Risk

51:00 - Personal Lives

53:20 - Are you a Transhumanist?

56:27 - The Path to Consciousness

1:04:49 - How would FROs change with Limitless Funding

1:10:18 - Advice to Students

1:12:15 - Closing

Other Xapiens Info:

XPC Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCp...

Xapiens Home: https://xapiens.mit.edu/

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 5:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Bobby Johnston in a discussion with Alex (Sandy) Pentland. Sandy is a professor at the MIT Media lab, is on the advisory board for the UN Secretary General, UN Foundation, Consumers Union, and OECD, co-led the World Economic Forum leading to GDPR, and has delivered keynote addresses for OECD, G20, World Bank, and JP Morgan. He has co-founded a long list of companies (for example https://cogitocorp.com/, https://www.ginger.com/, and https://www.endor.com/).

He is the author of several books, the two discussed in this podcast are Social Physics (https://www.amazon.com/Social-Physics...) and Building the New Economy (https://www.amazon.com/Building-New-E...) which was published in October 2021.

We did not have enough time to cover in the breadth nor depth necessary to really understand all of his ideas, so I highly encourage you to read his books (social physics is also available as an audiobook), or watch some of his great video content available online, for example: https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/re...

REFERENCE LINKS:

Paper discussing social physics as spin glass: https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1357

Crowd sourced rare disease website: https://www.patientslikeme.com/

Why healthcare doesn't screen healthy patients: https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...

We don't know the mechanism of action for Tylenol (acetaminophen / paracetamol): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21054...

US Healthcare spending as percent of GDP: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statisti...

Links to 1980s China Diet Study:

https://www.cornell.edu/video/playlis...

http://web.archive.org/web/2009022322...

https://nutritionstudies.org/the-chin...

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 4:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Bobby Johnston in a discussion with MIT Media lab professor Pattie Maes. Pattie is the head of the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT, focusing on building devices that integrate seamlessly (hence, 'fluid') and is involved with dozens of exciting projects that help people with attention, cognition, memory, focus, and much more. You can find a full list of her projects here: https://www.media.mit.edu/people/patt.... She is also a successful entrepreneur, having sold Firefly Networks to Microsoft in the 90s and recently had the startup Tulip Co. valuated at $1B. As a core principle she focuses on practically improving peoples lives using existing advanced digital technology. Hopefully we will get to talk again soon in the near future.

The Xapiens Podcast (XPC) Episode 3:

Join Xapiens Co-Director Loyd Waites in a discussion with Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek about his wide ranging work in particle physics and technology. Frank is a MIT professor of physics, Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center. You can find more information about his lab and current work here: https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/frank...