In her new book,\u00a0The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution<\/em><\/a>, Susan Hockfield, a former president of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that we have entered a new era of scientific innovation in America.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s innovations, says the first female president of MIT, depend on the intersection of biology and engineering. This would include developing biology-based technologies like aquaporin\u2014water that has been purified through the injection of a protein\u2014or self-made biological viruses that can create natural batteries.<\/p>\n She recently spoke to\u00a0Undark Five<\/a>\u00a0about how biological tools can sustain our planet and the challenges for women in science and tech today, among other topics. The complete article by\u00a0Hope Reese is available at FastCompany.<\/a><\/p>\n [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”3,4,5,6″ ihc_mb_template=”3″ ]<\/p>\n Undark:<\/strong> Why is biology so instrumental, and is it being overlooked?<\/p>\n Susan Hockfield:<\/strong>\u00a0New technologies are increasingly being built out of biological parts. The idea of biological engineering, or using inspiration from biological structures to build things, has been in people\u2019s hands and minds for a while. What\u2019s new is the acceleration of these kinds of technologies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s important because when we look at the challenges we\u2019re facing, in terms of population growth and our food resources and our water resources and our healthcare resources, it\u2019s pretty clear that if we\u2019re going to go from our current 7.7 billion [people] to over 9.7 billion by 2050, we\u2019re going to need some new technologies in order to increase productivity without using up all the resources on earth.<\/p>\n We need to be looking out to see where the new technologies will come from. Where are the new technologies that will allow us to double the productivity of the land we\u2019re currently farming? Where are the technologies that will allow us to purify enough fresh water, so we\u2019ll be able to have enough to drink, enough to water our crops? What are the technologies that will be able to turn medicine into a practice that\u2019s more efficient, less expensive?<\/p>\n Undark<\/strong>: Can you describe one of the most innovative technologies you\u2019re seeing right now and how it\u2019s making an impact?<\/p>\n Susan Hockfield:<\/strong>\u00a0One of the earliest examples of the convergence of biology with engineering is the use of nanotechnology to deliver drugs. Professor Robert Langer pioneered the development of new kinds of materials that can release drugs over extended periods. That means that the dose of a drug can be more carefully controlled, and one dose can last a much longer time.<\/p>\n There are many emerging examples of the concept of using advanced engineering to design new methods for drug delivery and disease detection, with enormous promise. Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia has designed \u201csynthetic nanoparticles\u201d that detect disease-specific molecules and produce a signal in the urine (much like an over-the-counter pregnancy test). Her technology can detect tumors in experimental animals that are one-tenth the size that current detection methods can find.<\/p>\n Undark<\/strong>: As you note in the book, earth\u2019s population is about to expand to over 9.7 billion by 2050. How can biology help solve the new demands of a larger population?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Susan Hockfield:<\/strong> The world\u2019s energy needs are anticipated to double by 2050. Not only will there be more people, but if the current trends continue that larger population will be wealthier and will want the kind of energy-intensive lifestyle that we enjoy in the United States\u2014refrigerators, cars, air-conditioning, for example. Already, our use of fossil fuels threatens our environment. The rate-limiting technology for the alternative energy technologies we love, like wind and solar, is energy storage, [which we need] to use the energy they produce when the sun doesn\u2019t shine, or the wind doesn\u2019t blow.<\/p>\n Current battery manufacturing consumes lots of energy by requiring high temperatures and produces toxic byproducts. One convergence technology that offers a more sustainable battery uses biological viruses to organize the components of batteries. These virus-built batteries, developed by Professor Angela Belcher at MIT, have a charge density and recharging lifetime equivalent to state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. Most importantly, they are assembled at room temperature and without toxic byproducts.<\/p>\n Undark:<\/strong>\u00a0World War II, you argue, led to unexpected innovation. How would you describe our current situation?<\/p>\n Susan Hockfield:<\/strong> For the U.S., this is a very difficult and quite challenging moment. Our investments in the foundations of new technologies have fallen off. The plan to use federal dollars to fuel the next cycle of technology development and industrial growth came from Vannevar Bush\u2019s\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0to FDR following World War II. FDR and Bush realized that the massive federal investments in research during the war had really changed the technology game. The idea was, could we invest in similar technologies for peace?<\/p>\n Those investments started a bit slowly after [the war], because FDR died, and his successors were not as committed to it as FDR had been. But when Sputnik launched, the U.S. decided that we really needed to double down on this idea of building technologies, because we were losing the space race.<\/p>\n Following World War II, the U.S. was essentially alone in developing the technologies for the 20th century. The other nations that could have been in that game with us were rebuilding themselves after [the war], so they weren\u2019t playing at the same level.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ceo-na.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/ok-240x300.jpg\")
The first great wave of innovation arose during World War II, when the government concentrated its resources on developing the technology that would power rockets, aircraft, and other tools of warfare by combining physics and engineering.<\/p>\n