Loading...

Our Work

Designing Away the Side Effects of a Former Wonder-Drug

"We make drugs that look like what your body would make itself," says Dr. Way. Epo is a naturally-occurring protein in the body which triggers red blood cell (RBC) production by binding to RBC stem cells in the bone marrow. The problem is that Epo ..

CRISPR: A Billion-Dollar Pie, But Not the Only One

Pharmaceutical companies make money in two ways: drug sales and royalties on intellectual property. Investors are betting that gene therapeutics will be profitable, and patents for CRISPR/Cas9 are held until 2033. Usually companies receive...

Drug Design Re-Emerges With Potential to Lower Pharma Costs

“If we designed airplanes like we design drugs…” alludes Walter Woltosz, CEO and Chairman of Simulations Plus, then you probably wouldn’t feel very safe on an airplane!

Giving Food a Second Chance

When food is lost, many Americans go hungry. How technology can make sure that food gets into bellies and stays out of landfills. or every 6 Americans, one goes hungry. For every 9 humans on this planet, one sleeps on an empty stomach. And for every meal that makes it from the farm to your plate, 4 meals worth of food are lost — either left in the field, wasted in restaurants, or spoiled in transit.

Delving Into Consciousness, The Mind of Matter

The study of consciousness for humans, is like the study of water for fish. It's currently impossible with human-made technologies to objectively observe and scientifically study... the way in which we observe and experience. It's a circular...

Technologies and Us, Who is the Creator?

Tech leadership now holds more power than any government agency or group of people on this planet. Why? Because they drive the creation and distribution of new and powerful technologies.

How Alzheimer's and Diabetes Work at the Nano-Scale

It might not seem that way because our bodies feel so unpredictable, but there is a sublime order underneath the chaos: how molecules talk to each other, what turns certain genes on and off, why some cells become blood cells and others platelets.

The Many Faces of a Neuron: Cell, Wire, and Computer

It seems that somehow, from a dense spaghetti-network of over 100 billion neurons and glial cells* that the experience of consciousness arises. Continuing from last week’s newsletter on the subjective experience of consciousness, today we look at...

Why Big Ol' Enterprise Companies Still Can't Use Big Data

"Like bills making it to the Congressional floor, 99.9% of predictive models never make it to use,” Kalyan says. His startup FeatureLabs aims to make rapid prototyping of predictive models accessible to enterprise customers.

The Anatomy of Machines, the Chemistry of Transistors

Fundamentally, computing is a all about controlling and managing information over time. Brains can compute, and so can your smartphone. The information that flows through both is fundamentally the same. Today we’re starting with the most commonly...

World’s First iPSC Factory Opened in Japan

The world’s first commercial induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) factory, named the Sumitomo Dainippon Manufacturing Plant for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Therapy (SMaRT), was opened in March in Osaka, Japan.

Algorithm Serves as Togolese ‘Village Elder’ for Flood Prediction

Each year in West Africa floods take lives dozens of lives, displace thousands of families, and destroy tens of thousands of hectares of cropland. The plus side of all this water is that it has enormous potential for electricity production, making...

Using AI to Cut Waste, Naturally and Invisibly: Tech You Can Talk To

The race is now fiercely on for who can deliver value with minimal imposition on the customer. Whatever products and solutions such AI delivers, the interface needs to respect the sanctity of the human action flow by bending the machine to...

Taking Alzheimer's Drugs from the Lab to your Nightstand

In 1996, Dewji and Singer began researching pre-senelins, large molecules associated with amyloid beta reduction [4]. They noticed that certain peptide groups prevented amyloid beta from forming. Over time, they narrowed down the peptide group to...

Part 1: Understanding how software works for non-technical people

This article will break down the high-level overview of how software works in today’s world — and what all those terms mean that you probably often hear in conversations.

Tea Ceremony Positions Boston as Harbour for U.S.-China Robotics Cooperation

Coming out of the “Made in China” era of heavy industrial and manufacturing growth, China is now grasping onto emerging technologies and making moves towards creating the future, not just manufacturing it. Xing Jijun, Counselor of Science and Tech...

Part 4: Intro to Ethical, Data, and Privacy Concerns in Software

Connecting the world via the internet has opened up a near infinite number of ethical and privacy concerns. What do we do about legal gray areas where companies are bending the law for profits while governments move much more slowly?

The Low-Down on Gene Editing: CRISPR and Gene Regulation

Long before complex multi-cellular organisms like humans were in the picture, single-celled bacteria were our planet's dominant form of life. These bacteria competed and formed alliances with each other, and fought to protect themselves from viral...

From Wolf to Puppy: Building the Staircase of Life

We've been genetically engineering for over 10,000 years, taking advantage of random genetic mutations and exerting human selection in the animals and plants around us. Only in the last 50 years have we developed the tools to exert greater...

Thoughts On Technology after 100 Hours of Meditation

Vipassana means to “to see things as they really are.” As one of many creators in technology, I raise the challenge to all creators: can we figure out a way to profit from engaged users by fostering enthusiasm, joy, and health?

Part 2: The Stack & Frameworks

When building an application developers can choose which tools and technologies to use for each part of the stack (remember the stack is the 3 pieces that make up the application: front-end, back-end, & the database).

From Father to Son: How Fear Changes Your DNA

Can we inherit memories? In 2014, Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler conducted an experiment to test this. They exposed male mice to an aromatic compound (acetophenone) whose receptor gene (Olfr151) had been sequenced. The mice were not born with a blank..

As genetic engineering improves, what role will race play?

Why would a police officer mistakenly shoot an unarmed black man? In seeking answers, science comes to our aide, showing that racism is deeply rooted in our minds beyond our own awareness. We form thoughts and biases in two ways: the first from...

Part 3: Domains, Hosting, and how the Web works

This article will help you understand what's really going on under the hood of the Internet. What happens when you open a browser, type a URL, and go to a webpage.

Transistor, Meet Neuron

Imagine a syringe with a mesh of 16 wires crumpled inside. At the end of each wire is a field-effect transistor, which can measure electrical outputs from individual neurons. The syringe narrows at the very tip to an 80µm needle, the width of a...

It’s Time to Reconsider String Theory

The evidence is quickly mounting that when it comes to theories of quantum gravity, string theory is the only game in town. It is not far-fetched to imagine that in our lifetimes, physicists could prove string theory mathematically—no experiments...

Let’s work together :)

Make a Donation

On a Monthly or One-Time Basis