93. Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, on the future of autonomous laboratories episode artwork

EPISODE · Feb 25, 2026 · 42 MIN

93. Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, on the future of autonomous laboratories

from Once a Scientist · host Nick Edwards

Episode 93. Jason Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. He has a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.References:https://www.ginkgo.bio/autonomous-labOUTLINE:00:00 – From Jurassic Park Pilled to MIT03:00 – Founding Ginkgo During the 2008 Crash07:00 – Tom Knight & Thinking About Biology Like Software11:00 – Why Biology Lacked Abstraction (Until Now)16:00 – The Foundry Model: Centralizing Biology20:00 – The 5 Levels of Lab Automation23:00 – Automation vs. Autonomy (Subway vs. Waymo)27:00 – The Technical Bottleneck: Connecting 150+ Machines34:30 – The Zymergen Acquisition & Strategic Pivot38:00 – Level 4 & 5 Labs: The Future of Programmable Biology

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Feb 25, 2026

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Episode 93. Jason Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. He has a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. References: https://www.ginkgo.bio/autonomous-lab OUTLINE: 00:00 – From Jurassic Park Pilled to MIT 03:00 – Founding Ginkgo During the 2008 Crash 07:00 – Tom Knight & Thinking About Biology Like Software 11:00 – Why Biology Lacked Abstraction (Until Now) 16:00 – The Foundry Model: Centr...

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93. Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, on the future of autonomous laboratories

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