Interviews with Experts

Guy Salvesen and Giovanni Paternostro have interviewed Talmo Pereira, a Fellow and Principal Investigator at the Salk Institute. His lab builds computational tools that leverage deep learning and computer vision to study complex biological systems. He has developed widely used tools that track movements for animal studies of behavior (1).

Dear Talmo,

What could be achieved if there was a public or nonprofit AI effort with the same scale and level of funding as the current large private efforts? What would be the benefits for society? 

Talmo:

Anindya Bagchi is an Associate Professor at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and an expert in cancer genetics. He is also the founder of several biotech companies.

Dear Anindya,

What could be achieved if there was a public or nonprofit AI effort with the same scale and level of funding as the current large private efforts? What would be the benefits for society?

Anindya:

Christopher (Chris) Wills is Professor Emeritus of Biology at UCSD. He is the recipient of the 1999 Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology, given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an evolutionary biologist and his most recent book, on why ecosystems matter, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024 (1).

Dear Chris,

What could be achieved if there was a public or nonprofit AI effort with the same scale and level of funding as the current large private efforts? What would be the benefits for society? 

Chris:

Napoleone Ferrara and Giovanni Paternostro have spoken with Andrea Califano. Andrea is the President of the Chan Zuckerberg New York Biohub. He is also Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at Columbia University. From 2013 to 2023, he was the Founding Chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University and Director of the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center. Among numerous awards he has received are the 2015 and 2022 NCI Outstanding Investigator Award, the 2019 Ruth Leff Award in Pancreatic Cancer, and the 2023 NCI Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics.

Dear Andrea,

What could be achieved if there was a public or nonprofit AI effort with the same scale and level of funding as the current large private efforts? What would be the benefits for society?

Andrea: