2. The Biotech Century with Megan Palmer

[00:00:00] Megan: So we want you to be one of the first, but we also hope that we. Get you to come back and tell us more of your story. But why don't we just start by talking about where you are and what are you doing now, and then we can get into some of the questions that we were asking. But tell us Where were you and what are you working on, ? Well, physically right now I am sitting in my brand new apartment in Washington DC and organizationally, I am currently the executive director of bio Policy and leadership initiatives. Stanford University that is a initiative. The Bio Policy and Leadership in Society or Bio initiative is what I, I lead at Stanford.

[00:00:39] Megan: it's an initiative of our Department of Bioengineering where I'm an adjunct professor, but also working with our Institute for International Studies. So I was a, research scholar in the, Center for International Security and Cooperation for many years as senior research scholar.

[00:00:55] Megan: So we're working with the Institute for International affairs in which that lives, and the university's ethics society and technology hub and initiative. that's quite a lot. But basically it's recognizing. We need to be working across all of these different groups to understand, how to responsibly advance biotechnology and what does that mean?

[00:01:17] Megan: So I really work on the intersection of research to understand, that question what it means and how will we would know if we're advancing biotechnology responsibly educating a next generation of leaders. Can wisely navigate those issues and working on what we call sort of strategic engagements, which are working with the growing community that really needs to figure out what is biotechnology, what does it mean, how do we advance it in ways that are wise and good for all people in the planet.

[00:01:47] Megan: So I think this conversation comes at a really interesting time so we're talking mid octo, mid late October, 2022. And just a month ago, the Biden administration announced this executive. Order to advance the Biocon. I saw that you were in the audience of the panel that was held the next day, but it feels like just in the last four weeks a lot has happened.

[00:02:09] Megan: I mean, you also moved physically, but from a policy and industry development point of view, it just feels like a lot has happened in a very short period of time. Do you agree and what are some of the high have been, some of the highlights for. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really exciting time for biotechnology and biotechnology policy.

[00:02:26] Megan: Uh, At large, as you said a month ago was this executive order on the biocon and specifically biotechnology and biomanufacturing for the, Biocon. And that has been, Many years and multiple administrations in the making. It's a very sort of complex in initiative that was launched.

[00:02:44] Megan: But I think many people were excited to see it. happen. But there's so much more work to do and so that's what you see is in the last month. People are really. Getting to work saying, okay, we've been sort of charged with doing this this work to coordinate and really make a plan, to make a strategy to advance the bio economy.

[00:03:02] Megan: but there's still a lot to be sorted out and it's not just what's happening in the executive order. There was before then a law so the chips and science act that went and articulated a function to coordinate biocon research and development. So that's another piece of this.

[00:03:21] Megan: And then there's all these other strategies coming out, and that's just in the us so there's other countries dialogues between c. That are trying to figure out, okay, we, recognize that biotechnology and the enabling tools and frameworks of synthetic biology are world changing and important.

[00:03:38] Megan: So we gotta get our act together quickly. I mean, just off the top of my head, and I'm gonna miss some, but it just seems like there was chips, then there was the Biocon order. and right before that was the ARPA H announcement. And then we had this biosecurity.

[00:03:55] Megan: I apa announcement that Ginko made with I want to say who was the other third party? It was Ginko. I apa, I wanna say Danaher. It wasn't Danaher Apa. No, no. And this Draper. Sorry. Draper. Draper, yeah. and then I know you've also been involved with. Stuff with the World Economic Forum. so this kind of intersectionality between policy, ethics, government industry, it starts to get very complicated very quickly.

[00:04:18] Megan: But from your point of view, where are the places where we can simplify it for people to understand what's going on? Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is, it is just very complex and a lot of the same complexities you're seeing come out, not just in bio, but in other areas of sort of critical and emerging technologies.

[00:04:34] Megan: And then also just on the big challenges we face as a society, ? the climate crisis, You think about how can we make that simple? There's a reality that this isn't simple . but you can't distill some things down, which is like, clearly there is something.

[00:04:47] Megan: at stake. And we need to be sort of boldly building alliances that can, figure this out. Not just now, but for the many, many decades to come. So I think that some of these pieces of policy though, they can be really useful to read through in detail, right? So the executive order, for instance, you can read through and you look.

[00:05:07] Megan: Each of these different agencies, right? You have commerce our health and human services or different parts of whether it's security. And what's neat is you can go through each of these different groups and say, okay. What part of the bio economy strategy do they need to work on?

[00:05:25] Megan: Right? They all need to talk to each other, and that coordinating function is in it, but also biology manifests in all of these different portfolios. So those policies, while they can be really complex, they can also be kind of a step by step guide if they're thoughtfully crafted to understand the way that biology is affecting, right?

[00:05:43] Megan: Nearly every part of our. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that to me was interesting about that executive order was seeing, number one, what you said, all these different agencies that have this responsibility to, come up with a strategy. But then number two is the fact that they all kind of have a deadline in six months.

[00:06:01] Megan: We expect this, you're to deliver that, and then we'll come together and deliver X, Y, or Z at a certain point. Yeah, I mean we've just been trying to build sort of trackers and spreadsheets to look at all of the different deadlines, and try to build those tools to help folks know how and when and where they can engage.

[00:06:21] Megan: And there's some really short deadlines, right? Where you said we're, about a month in. The first deadline, I think, in that executive order is 90 days, right? Yeah. And the 90 day deadline is the lexicon, right? To kind of help us figure out even what are the terminology that we're using across each of these groups.

[00:06:39] Megan: Now that itself will probably have to be a feedback. Loop , right? Cause we're, going to discover over time that we will need new terminology and there'll be clarifications needed. So my one wish really is that this is, starting something, but it will need refining and updating and involvement over time.

[00:07:00] Megan: and we will need lots of people to contribute great ideas to and effort to that. it's super interesting that you say lexicon is one of the first things , as I said, for us in this podcast about growing everything, we feel like part of the reason why, for example, that, it got news in our bubble, but I don't feel like it got it.

[00:07:18] Megan: It really made the impact that I would've expected it to have outside of us. And I think, again, it's one of these things where people just don't have the lexicon to talk about this or to even understand it. And so that's one of the things that we really wanna work on is , how do we help more people understand why this matters?

[00:07:34] Megan: Yeah. And even you look at the term bio economy, I'm not sure if I love the term bio economy, it is right, the next iteration of the ways that we've tried to combine sort of biology and some proxy for value, right? and clearly sort of economy and that type of value is needed. but we also need even a higher level, in some ways, higher level and more grounded conversation about how do we represent the value of, and the values intrinsic in biology.

[00:08:04] Megan: So there's, various forms and definitions of the word bio economy used in different places as well. So we're gonna have to get really specific in different. I agree we've been talking a lot about that in terms of most people don't know what Biocon is, and I actually went and I looked a couple of different blueprints from different places and it's interesting cuz ours definitely starts off with commerce at the beginning or value creation at the beginning, whereas the other ones are a little bit more.

[00:08:30] Megan: Subtle in terms of let's define what the bio economy means. And I do remember that Rodrigo Martinez had told me many years ago, Hey, the bio economy eventually just becomes the economy. And at the beginning of the digital revolution, say in the early two thousands, late nineties, people were saying, the digital economy, we don't say that anymore because the whole economy is digital.

[00:08:51] Megan: So I think we'll also, what he's saying is true. We will see that. Over time. could you just give us a little bit of background on, how you got to where you are? What's your backstory, your origin story? Oh, no, how long do we have? I'll give you, give you the short version

[00:09:07] Megan: so I was a chemist and a chemical engineer. in my undergraduate training, really interested in biology, but there was no bioengineering program at that time. And ended up just taking a summer research assistantship in bioengineering and working on, stem cell bioengineering.

[00:09:23] Megan: And that's what got my interest in. Sort of the scientific and technical elements of this, but also its social context. Which, depending on where I'd gone to grad school, it would've shaped what types of questions and what types of settings. I could ask those questions within, depending on the stem cell policies at, at that point in time, in 2003, 2004.

[00:09:43] Megan: So I ended up going to mit in 2004 to do my bioengineering PhD. And that's where I first learned about synthetic biology as synthetic biology and its sort of current form and understanding was really being sort of developed at MIT at that time. The i e competition was just getting started as well.

[00:10:03] Megan: So Actually back in 2004 worked with drew Indy and a group called the Technology and Culture Forum around discussions on synthetic biology and society. So that got my interest. I did a systems biology PhD, basically working in immunology. And again, using those systems engineering skills.

[00:10:21] Megan: But I was always interested in these policy topics and social topics. So at the end of my PhD I was looking for postdocs. I was out at Stanford. On a postdoc interview and I met up with Drew Indy who had moved there. At the time I said, I really love doing science and technology. I love engineering, but I really wanna work on these policy and social issues too.

[00:10:40] Megan: how do I go about doing that? And he gave me Amazing offer that I couldn't refuse, which was to work with him and many other investigators on leading the integrated human practices element of a multi university research center in synthetic biology supported by the nsf. So for five years I co-directed that element of that multi university center.

[00:11:02] Megan: It was a fascinating role. Really that whole center kind of built synthetic biology as a field and much of the community. And our role was to figure out what are all of the questions and problems adjacent to the science and technology that we need to be asking and answering.

[00:11:19] Megan: So everything from how do we think about ownership? How do we think about safety and security of these technologies? How do we think about organization and governance of the field? And I had the chance to build collaborations and fund work in that area. I also funded and helped design a leadership program in that space for emerging leaders.

[00:11:39] Megan: So it was called the Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program, SY Bio Leap. That has many of, I'm sure sort of friends and now family like. In the synthetic biology community that'll be on this show I imagine, friends of the pod for sure. Friends of the pod. We also supported work on i e so I led a lot of the programs around social responsibility at i e for about a decade.

[00:12:00] Megan: In that. And then some of the most perplexing issues that came up were actually around security. So at that time there was actually a lot of concern that not just then, but before that a lot of these tools might actually pose security concerns. And I didn't know how to get my head wrapped around that question, frankly.

[00:12:18] Megan: But I was invited to join as a fellow, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. And that is a center that has social science and natural science and engineering co-leaders. And they actually bring together folks who look at applied. Policy research on critical questions around technology and security and, cooperation.

[00:12:42] Megan: So I was a fellow there and then a senior research scholar for many years. And then just two years ago ended up switching into this new role, leading an initiative that brings back my bioengineering roots, with this international. Affairs focus. So maybe that was a medium length version but really an arc of about now two decades working at this intersection of, biotechnology policy and society.

[00:13:08] Megan: Megan, I actually have a question. So when did you start interacting with the government and working with them on initiatives and how has that relationship evolved? Oh, when did I start? I mean I feel like Probably it was early in days at mit. So I, mentioned the technology and culture forum, but there was a group of students primarily and postdocs that came together at MIT who were.

[00:13:33] Megan: Interested in, policy and we didn't really, frankly, know what that meant. . There was recruitment of the m i t Washington office director, bill Bon Villian at that time. These were students right before me that helped to develop that. And. Bill Bon Villian helped to teach a bootcamp over a week.

[00:13:51] Megan: It's a science policy bootcamp to know Right. the nuts and bolts to your previous point. The, the sort of lexicon, the terminology around policy. So that was one of my first sort of formal engagements. We did a bootcamp and then there was a congressional visits stay. And I remember going, because I was like, okay, go and contact your representative so you can meet, with them.

[00:14:11] Megan: But I'm Canadian and I didn't. Have a representative, . And so a lot of my points when I was going into these meetings was trying to compare like what were the reasons why somebody would come to the US to study? And in my case, it was around bioengineering still being somewhat more nascent in, in Canada than it was in the us though frankly it was really early days, anywhere.

[00:14:36] Megan: One tidbit from those early engagements that I recall when I go and work with my students now is remember early on going and meeting with representatives and it was like, oh, at that point, Competes, I think was, just out in past and it was sort of thanking people for renewing funding in, science.

[00:14:51] Megan: There was a simple message of like, just fund more science . Right? And of course there's a lot of belief in that bipartisanship, a lot of evidence or it's growing evidence that really helps to fuel the economy and other types of things. But since. Had to get a lot more nuanced, right?

[00:15:07] Megan: It's not just fun science, it's sort of how you do that. What are the things are coupled to it. But that was my first exposure and it kind of grew from there. So now you're a US citizen. I seem to remember that's fairly recent, but you've had a couple of decades to engage with policy makers both in the US and globally.

[00:15:26] Megan: How would you say that has evolved over that time? that's a good question. I. think the biggest thing I've realized is that at the end of the day, it's all just people. . Yes. at a profound level, all of these organizations, all our governance structures, there's institutional structures around it, but it's just people.

[00:15:44] Megan: And so, and policy also occurs, at all scales, right? Individual organizations have their policies right. They're not sort of formal government policy in that way. But when you start seeing things through the lens of sort of like basically rules, right? Rules and norms that we follow to organize our society, then everything sort of has a policy angle to.

[00:16:07] Megan: So I certainly have become more skilled frankly through just practice of engaging in the sort of different types of policy discussions from like looking at legislation to going to different briefings. I testified in the Senate in the early days of the pandemic, that was a sort new experience trying to figure.

[00:16:26] Megan: How to do that what it means, and what it should look like. But I think a lot of policy is just getting engaged, finding friends and colleagues who can help you refine frankly your assumptions, but also your practice over time. and realizing that at the end of the day, it's just people.

[00:16:42] Megan: I think that makes sense. I wanted to ask you a follow up to that and then I and I are texting each other so I forgot. So Iran, please ask the question. Cause I'm like, I'm a burning question about your work with the W E F. talking to people from all over the world.

[00:16:57] Megan: So my question to you is which countries have advanced their SY bio or biotech policy, which has the most advanced SY biotech policies and like, and even just a syn bio practice. Is it the US or other countries? What's your perspective on that? Yeah. so you mentioned the work with the World Economic Forum that we did.

[00:17:15] Megan: I was co-chairing a Global Future Council for nearly two years. Actually over the course of the Pandemic and late 2020 until just recently. But for me, this was again, just Trying to learn through practice. Right? , it was a good opportunity to work with. Sort of a leading platform for public private partnerships to engage with various communities that are trying to figure out, again, not just within countries, but also companies and alliances, what their biotechnology strategy entails and looks like and what it's for.

[00:17:50] Megan: So I think we still don. Frankly, great. Public information that's easily digestible on, what countries have well developed biotechnology, synthetic biology, engineering, biology, bio economy strategies, right? Use your use, whatever your favorite terminology is here. But what's clear is that these are very quickly getting developed, right?

[00:18:10] Megan: Not just through individual countries, but also through. Some of these alliances between different groups. So, there's one upcoming opportunity, for instance, is the Engineering Biology Research consortium, which I am on the council of, and which came after Syk, which I helped co.

[00:18:29] Megan: Part of, they're actually hosting the second global roadmaps meeting in which many of the countries, I think the first roadmaps meeting in late 2019, I believe, had somewhere between sort of 12 and 20 different countries that came together. That wasn't all of the countries that have strategies, but the ones that showed up at that time.

[00:18:49] Megan: when it comes to then assessing sort of. Who's ahead? ? I don't always love those questions either, because it really depends on what element of a strategy countries are ahead on. Certainly a lot of folks point to the US as. Having help develop the field being advanced in many ways.

[00:19:05] Megan: But then there's also countries that are developing either much more broad biotechnology strategies or they're focusing on particular application areas right, in which they can exceed. I remember in Canada many years ago there was that feeling of like, okay, let's choose some of the areas that we can really exceed on.

[00:19:23] Megan: And so it is difficult question. I can share perhaps a few different reports and strategies that outline what we know now. I think that'd be great. I have two questions that are related to that. So, you mentioned that it's hard to measure from a, let's say Biocon blueprint point of view.

[00:19:40] Megan: It's hard to measure who's ahead or who's, ahead in what area. And I wonder if you can imagine that. There would be some companies that could just leap Prague, just kind of like the way that people did with cell phones. it's like, oh, we don't need to build a wired infrastructure. We'll just put in cell towers, and all of a sudden the entire population has, access to the world through their cell phones.

[00:20:00] Megan: Do you think that there is a possibility that certain countries could leap Prague? those that are currently what we would consider to be the most advanced. Yeah, I, and I think we're gonna see different strategies across different sectors. One of the hard things about biology is it touches so many different sectors, right?

[00:20:18] Megan: And depending on where. There are particular problems in a region that folks are working on, or depending on the structure of the investments in that space or the regulatory strategies, you might see different types of, leapfrogging, if you will. So I think we'll see some interesting things happen in agriculture, right?

[00:20:38] Megan: Agriculture continues to be such a huge pressing problem. In this area, I'm not sure we're gonna see the same sort of types. Digital strategies leapfrogging as we've seen in other areas, but perhaps that's the limit of my conception at the moment. But I, I think if there's anything I've learned from places like i e m where you are, it's an observatory of innovation across all of these different places in the world.

[00:21:03] Megan: It's just like prepare to be surprised by the different types of approaches that communities come up with to advance this technology. I think that's a super interesting observation. I mean, I feel like anytime I've interacted with or been a part of IgM, I'm always just blown away by the imagination sometimes things where I'm just like, Oh, where did you come from?

[00:21:25] Megan: and it has nothing to do with the place I come from. It really is much more like the mindset. So kind of going back to the policy thing, I also wonder there's this kind of saying, I'm gonna get it wrong, that. A lot of the challenges that we face as a society are the fact that, we're dealing with technology that's advancing at an exponential rate.

[00:21:43] Megan: We basically have a human mindset that is still in many cases, stuck in the 20th century, but we're butting up against bureaucracies and bureaucratic systems that were designed, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Do you think that that's also the case with this technology because these technologies are advancing so quickly?

[00:21:59] Megan: Do you think that people are prepared? Is bureaucracy prepared? I've written a few pieces with others that have helped me sort of think through the ways that Different technologies and bio technologies in particular, like pose questions around the sort of novelty and also the way we categorize different technologies.

[00:22:18] Megan: So one of the pieces I've written a lot about is around gene draws that are used as sort of an extreme example of something that doesn't fit quite right into our existing. Regulatory schemes and there's, sort of politics behind whether or not you adjust a regulatory system to accommodate.

[00:22:38] Megan: Right that thing or you decide it's the time to like reinvent the whole system, . And so I think we're gonna see a lot of those choices being made about are the types of things that are showing up in biotechnology so different that we revisit the system itself. And so now even within some of the things that have come up within the US context, but elsewhere, they sort need to revisit many decades old regulatory frameworks are coming up.

[00:23:10] Megan: Again, as maybe we can actually readjust things. So I, I often think that. bureaucracy can provide clarity, that can accelerate efforts. They don't just hinder them. And it also comes through like investment, right? So regulation and oversight also is the positive side. How do we provide incentives on things?

[00:23:27] Megan: So being able to provide some sort of bureaucracy that identifies, oh, this is something important that we wanna enable. We don't wanna make a sort of stop in the system. We wanna make a groove . That can also be helpful. But in general, I mean, Organizations take time. Technologies often surprise us and there's always sort of an accommodating dynamic over, over.

[00:23:47] Megan: Again, can you define what a gene drive is and share an example? Cause that'll help us put all this into context. Yeah. Maybe just at a high level, think about your Mendelian inheritance. You're going to have sort of a 50% chance that you're gonna pass. Your trait, right? Some, heritable trait onto your offspring.

[00:24:07] Megan: And then gene drive, essentially like an engineered dream gene drive at least, is a, molecular trick that allows you to make that near a hundred percent. And so it, within basically like seven generations, you're going to have that particular trait spread through a population and it will matter a lot.

[00:24:27] Megan: The particular organism reproduces fairly quickly, . So mosquitoes are often used as the example where, they're giving birth to many offspring quite quickly. That's in opposition to say, humans that are not . Going to do that quite, quickly. And so there's been some consideration of, well, is this a hundred percent?

[00:24:45] Megan: Are they stable? And just as one example of this interplay between. Technologies and what technologies can accommodate and what policy and regulatory systems can accommodate. There's this back and forth where gene drives, if they really spread quickly through a population, say, of mosquitoes as you're trying to eradicate Saint Malaria through malaria, stopping malaria transmission.

[00:25:11] Megan: They're causing us to reconsider from a regulatory standpoint. Who's a stakeholder and how do you engage those stakeholders when you have that type of spread? At the same time that dialogue has then gone and informed, oh, well maybe we need to like redesign our technologies. So they can accommodate various pauses that you need in regulation to reassess.

[00:25:34] Megan: So that back and forth is really interesting. Sam Feis Evans, who's longtime colleague and friend of mine who works in science technology studies helped develop some of these pieces with me and, is very thoughtful when it comes to thinking about the choices not just in technology design, but policy design and their inter.

[00:25:52] Megan: And it seems like I mean you mentioned mosquitoes in particular. And I also think of Is it the mice that they're talking about on Nantucket, engineering them with gene drives. It seems like in all of those cases there's been a lot of community dialogue by necessity and by design so that the people in the community understand what's being proposed before it's done.

[00:26:11] Megan: And I don't know if there's been any widespread, like especially on the mosquito side, if there has been any deployment of these engineered mosquitoes prevent to prevent. Well, I think what you're highlighting here is this is an area where there's a lot of innovation and experimentation needed on.

[00:26:28] Megan: Like how do you do that engagement? How do you know if it's effective? What are the outcomes that you're looking for? What are the attributes of a process? So there have been Examples of sort of engineered mosquito release and also funded projects both in the us and elsewhere in the world that are doing both technology development and this type of stakeholder engagement work.

[00:26:51] Megan: But I think much more of that is, needed. And that's some of the work that we did with i e m is, how do you sort of scale, experiment. and in that, by that Measure really like test these types of engagement strategies, but in many different contexts with many different types of applications of, biotechnology.

[00:27:11] Megan: And that's what really drew me back to research was really not being satisfied with the types of work that was, being done in this area. That there needed to be more work, especially. Social sciences and others coupled to technology development and needed to ask much more robust questions about the process by which technologies are really brought into this world.

[00:27:31] Megan: you've worked at social responsibly programs at I G M. For a long time, maybe from the beginning. Maybe you can talk little bit about those, because I do remember that in my interactions with IgM, I was really very, very impressed by the fact that, if you're gonna put a team together, that's also a part of what you do.

[00:27:47] Megan: So maybe describe what that process looks like and how you've been involved, and why do they matter? Yeah, I mean conception of this really predates me. I was around MIT as i e was getting started. But my first role with i e m was actually as one of the photographers for the competition,

[00:28:05] Megan: And I recognized the power of the competition in part because when I was in high school, I was. The first robotics competition. We had a high school team that first you get a sort of kit of parts that you mechanical, electrical parts, and you have to build a robot to play a game against another.

[00:28:26] Megan: Team's robot, because I'm Canadian, of course, we had to build a robot that plays hockey and against another robot. And it was in, very empowering, fun experience of engineering and, team based work. So I recognized I e early on. But what was cool about i e and its early design, it wasn't sort of survival of the fittest and having the, two teams engineer a microbe to see which one would win.

[00:28:50] Megan: That would be a terrible idea. But rather the challenge really for the competition embeds these questions in it, which is like, make something useful. With biology, right, with the tools of synthetic biology and approaches and. My question already bakes in like, how do you know something's useful and that question has matured over time into sets of programs that try to parse apart different elements of that challenge and incentivize and recognize good work. So I ended up really engaging as a judge at i e m in I guess it must have. 2010 for the first time. So right.

[00:29:30] Megan: Many years later. But at that time they'd started a program called Human Practices. And the term Human Practices actually came from anthropologists and were involved in that other NSF center Sindberg. It was and Gayman Bennett and, Paul Rael that were really trying to diagnose what was the problem of responsibly advancing synthetic biology And they thought I, GM was this amazing place to situate those questions and begin seeing if teams might contribute to the answers. So they suggested having a prize or some sort of recognition adjacent to the competition on human practice's work.

[00:30:09] Megan: And in early, that took the form of having maybe one member of the team who was in anthropology, for instance, who would write maybe something about the team's project. And then there was an award that some judges gave. Over time, part of what I and several others, not just Sam Evans who is now at Harvard, but also Todd Cookin and Pierce Milit and many others.

[00:30:32] Megan: Emma fro as one example. Over the next sort of 10 years, , we went through multiple rounds of experimenting. With different types of incentives and reward systems for those teams. So what I ended up leading for many years was this sort of criteria that we gave to teams. Like what should you do as part of this competition to ask and try to answer these questions about it, what it means to responsibly advance your technology development.

[00:31:02] Megan: And then also we now actually study a lot of the data from the competition to try and understand like how did teams respond to those questions. So in practice what that meant is now it's sort of it is. Essentially a norm that like every i e team, they have to innovate not just in creating a cool technology, but innovating in, how they go about doing the engagement and how they demonstrate to their peers and others.

[00:31:31] Megan: That they have done so in a way that is safe, responsible, and good for the world. It's not expected to be a clean answer and it's not expected to be answered, once it's a sort of process. Have you shown us, you have innovated and been excellent in a process to explore those questions and show that it actually changed what you did

[00:31:50] Megan: Yeah. Can you share like an example of an application that came out of i e and that went through that process? Like what was a risk, what do they have to think through to make it responsible? That'd be great if you can share that. Yeah, so actually the I e m website has a whole bunch of, different examples of teams.

[00:32:08] Megan: So I would maybe break it into like sort of categories of activities that teams go through so often. Let's say I'm not gonna name specific teams cuz I don't like to choose , but I'll give you examples that are sort of general categories. a team wants to develop a remediation technology, right?

[00:32:27] Megan: So they have some sort of sensor something that is like helping to, detect and then, clean up. In this case, like collect or aggregate or, process some, toxin or something in the environment, right? but usually there's some other types of technology that is already used, right?

[00:32:43] Megan: Like a, mechanical approach or a chemical approach. And so a lot of the strategy is, let's go talk to the people who have the alternative solution. So looking like, what would biology have to do to be a better solution? And walking through all of the features of that, right? Is it cost, is it some of the other negative attributes that might come from it?

[00:33:02] Megan: Is there a concern that like, we talk about release, but like, what specifically is the harm that would come from release? so you see a lot of those engagements in like, okay. Let's see if we can investigate whether or not a bio-based solution would be better than an alternative solution.

[00:33:17] Megan: Some of the types of things that teams work on have to do with their research process. So we've seen some of those on safety and security um, issues where they're like, okay, we're gonna take apart from an organism, let, let's say, I'll give an example of. From early days, like a cancer, right?

[00:33:36] Megan: Like detecting or like a cancer killing, right? Bacteria that goes in and they find a cancer in your body, a cancer of cells, and they detect it and then they like abl it. Right? That sounds really cool. It also sounds really scary, . So and they might take parts from one organism that's like, thought to be innocuous, and then another part from an organism that's thought to have some sort of useful but potentially dangerous properties.

[00:34:00] Megan: And they bring them together and it's like, how do they evaluate the safety level of that new organism? So there's an innovation to happen and some engagement that says, How do we be in some ways like rational and methodical to say, what are the safety precautions we need to take in the course of research?

[00:34:17] Megan: And then they might work with their institutional oversight bodies to actually co-develop improved, safety policies and procedures to make sure that their research is done in an adequate way. that's the type of work that we've seen as well. a team sees that there's a gap in the policies surrounding their work.

[00:34:36] Megan: And rather than like duck and cover , we try to give incentives and recognition to say, work with whoever else has a shared responsibility to say like, Hey, there's a gap here. Can we figure out like a smart solution that allows this work to proceed safely not just proceed and not gonna be shut down, but like a path forward.

[00:34:57] Megan: I mean, I've always been, like I said earlier, you called it an observatory into how the technology is advancing and I feel like it's fascinating to see how these teams, who in many cases how our very, how very scan resources are able to, come up with these really creative ideas.

[00:35:12] Megan: not just across remediation, but in, many other area. yeah, you need to come to i e m, like, don't, ever discount the kids. Right. . And they're not kids, right? Many of them are young adults. Some of them are kids now, right? They're in high school, middle school. But again, if you give platforms some recognition and critically like community, to improve ideas.

[00:35:33] Megan: Then amazing things can happen. And I think the I GM spirit also gives that, community of continual improvement. The thought is like, you're not gonna get it right every year. And, but you can observe, do some experiments, revisit them over time and hopefully we, sort of work slowly towards, an improved system.

[00:35:54] Megan: I do have two things I did wanna cover. One is you worked on that project, the bio stories project at the WF with Na Kisa. Could you talk a little bit about that project and why it was important?

[00:36:05] Megan: she's also a friend of the pod and will be here soon, I'm a huge fan of NASA and she will probably be able to speak even more eloquently. To this project, but maybe I'll, take a step back with the council work and then talk about how that fit in. this World Economic Forum council was an experiment as well which we brought together a whole I guess two dozen people from various places in the world with different disciplines.

[00:36:31] Megan: And in some ways this forum was kind of like late to the game in synthetic biology. But it was also arriving and I think an, opportune time in some ways, two decades into the field to revisit what's needed now. It's a very different stage. So we went through as a council, a reflective exercise to look at.

[00:36:49] Megan: what are the types of values and the types of practices we need to be guiding synthetic biology with really a global lens and a global focus. And we did some work that's now out there to actually revisit the past present and future through the lenses of equity humility solidarity and sustainability in the.

[00:37:09] Megan: And one of the things that came out of that work as well was a real feeling that we need to revisit the narratives and the rhetorics that we, use to understand not just our future relationship with biology, but our, like, present and past relationship with biology. And this is very much inspired and definitely implemented by not.

[00:37:28] Megan: Team. the thing we thought about as well was this is a small council and our vision is everybody has a stake in our shared biological futures. And we need to think creatively about how do we engage right everyone in different ways to contend with our biological future.

[00:37:47] Megan: So that led to bio stories, which ended up being a sort of multi-stakeholder engagement strategy, to invite folks to have conversations about how they thought about biology today and what their aspirations were for the future. And we did it through a few d. Innovations that I, think are important.

[00:38:07] Megan: They're actually quite simple. . One of them was have people bring in an artifact from their daily lives. Helps them explain to themselves and to others what they want their relationship with the living world to be. And then we set up these dialogues between people from different parts of the ecosystem and different parts of the world to explain to each other those stories.

[00:38:30] Megan: And then each of those dialogues, we then did two things with them, . So these dialogues occurred virtually and also in person in Idaho. Hoen as an experiment, we're continuing to experiment with them. But those dialogues, two things were done with them. One was to synthesize a shared story using all of these individual stories and their.

[00:38:50] Megan: A very talented writer, Claire Evans. She wrote a story called The Museum of Symbiosis, and it really takes a look at you know, a potential future and looks back at the way we described it in the present. And I think it's a really is a. Sort of powerfully emotional story in reading it that we hope intervenes at a different level than like a market report , right?

[00:39:14] Megan: It's really about what speaks to our soul. And then a second thing was a very talented anthropologist looked at really what are all of the types of stories that show up in these dialogues and the types of rhetorics and characters. And and then she presents that as well. So we have a report that just came out in this, but we're continuing to experiment.

[00:39:37] Megan: And what was striking is that the council, which has folks. Business and investment and other folks who are like, we need to solve These problems yesterday. We need to be working on strategies immediately. They all recognized the foundational power of really revisiting our cultural narratives that are going to be shaping our, dreams, our visions, and our relationships that are going to, usher us into our biological futures.

[00:40:07] Megan: So I think that that's a perfect segue and thank you for explaining and giving us a preview of that, cuz when then when we talk to notation, we'll have her kind of explain it as well. But I think it's a perfect segue for our final questions, , which is, you know, you've said we need to, build a world where everyone can build with biology.

[00:40:23] Megan: and that's, , really the thesis of this podcast. So what does that look like and why is it important? Where do we need to make some progress faster? What are some near term opportunities? what are your thoughts? Yeah. I think it's stepping back and saying, we really think about biology, it's not like any other technology, right?

[00:40:39] Megan: We are of, biology. And if we really take that seriously, then, biology is. You raise an empowering technology that can solve many of the problems we have as a society, but it also. Engaging with it also helps us understand our role in the living world. So there's something more important, so more awesome, if you will, and at stake here.

[00:41:00] Megan: But as you said, coming into this conversation right there is also, a lot of fear about the. Biology, what does it mean to live in a biology based future? And often those fears make us wanna constrain it, right? Only a few people should be able to have right access to this powerful technology.

[00:41:19] Megan: But if we're really bold, if we're really ambitious, we say like, oh, actually we need to, we do need to build a world in which we can trust everyone to Right. Safeguard. Our shared futures, right? Not just humans, frankly, but also the broader, living world. And if we're serious about that, it means we can't just Right.

[00:41:39] Megan: Design technologies and tools, right? we have to think about how are we designing our societies, That's like a fundamental political question, right? It's a question of how we build our systems of governance. And so it manifests through biology as the most important technology of which we are made, but it is really about how we relate to each other.

[00:41:59] Megan: And that's why we also have to learn from all of these different fields and communities that focus on understanding society and our role within it as the foundation. And thinking about how, as we're learning to engineer with life that we really are engineering a world in which we, we wish to.

[00:42:20] Megan: that's fantastic. I mean, Thank you Megan. I don't know around, was there anything that we missed that we wanted to ask Megan, that, while we still have her. We have a million questions for Megan, but I think we'll have to bring her back on. I mean, you're amazing. there's so much that you said.

[00:42:34] Megan: I think it's just going to be helpful putting things into context for this podcast. And thanks for, keeping it relatively not super loaded with like jargon. I think you did a great job. You speak to the people, so it was wonderful. Thank you so much. And Megan, was there anything that you wanted to cover that we didn't ask you today?

[00:42:52] Megan: No, I'm, there's so many other things we could dive into, but I mean, this is wonderful and I'm sorry my answers were so long. No, no, no. They're not at all. No, they're perfect. They're good. They're really good. Very. No, I think, we covered a lot of the topics. We can have other conversations around sort of the security topics or all that other stuff, but this is the stuff that really makes my heart sing.

[00:43:16] Megan: Okay. Well we will definitely follow up with you on that and I mean, thank you. I know your schedule is packed and I so appreciate we so appreciate that you took the time. , to speak with us after moving cross country and spending time in Canada, setting up a new apartment, moving into new office.

[00:43:33] Megan: It's a lot of stuff. So thank you so much, Megan. We really look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you so much. It's been a joy, and thank you for doing this. Yeah. Okay, we'll talk to you soon. Sounds good. Take care. Bye