Past Events

Darwin Day: Kevin Esvelt, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Whether, When, and How to Sculpt the Evolution of Populations”

Monday, February 10, 2020, 12:00pm - 01:00pm

KevinEsvelt photoKevin Esvelt, Ph.D.


Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Hosted by David Axelrod,  

Noon, Monday February 10, 2020
Auditorium, Life Sciences Building
145 Bevier Rd. Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ 08854

Whether, When, and How to Sculpt the Evolution of Populations

Seven years ago, no one imagined that a single researcher could set in motion a process capable of eventually driving an alteration through an entire species. Today, the challenges are ones of safety, localization, and especially stability, for we have never before engineered constructs anticipated to evolve outside of our control. In the laboratory and in silico, harnessing evolution can produce molecular tools ever more quickly, even as the digital targeting afforded by CRISPR privileges engineering over evolutionary escape. Together, these increasingly powerful technologies for harnessing and controlling evolution promise to save lives and species and prevent tremendous animal suffering, but the iron law holds: you get what you select for, which is not necessarily what you want. If we're lucky, biology may offer useful lessons for the greater challenge now confronting us: to sculpt the evolution of technology.