George Church: AI, Biology, and Why Smart People Underestimate Other Fields - Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Michelle Chen, CEO of Form Bio, sits down with George Church — Harvard geneticist, serial entrepreneur, and one of the founding minds behind personal genomics, synthetic biology, and de-extinction — for a wide-ranging conversation on where biology is headed next. Church reflects on picking research problems that only look hard from the outside (multiplex editing, nanopore sequencing, virus-resistant recoded organisms), and explains why he measures success less by publications and more by whether an idea actually gets used.The conversation turns to AI's growing role in biology. Church explains how protein design became one of AI's most surprising wins, and why synthetic biology is becoming more predictable even as natural biology resists it. He also discusses what it will take for AI to help manage the complexity of multiplex genetic interventions, from humanized pig organs for transplant to gene therapies targeting polygenic conditions. Underlying it all is Church's view that aging, not any single disease, is the biggest lever for extending healthy human life.