Christina Agapakis is the Creative Director at Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism design company that is bringing biology to industrial engineering. She is a biologist, writer, and artist interested in microbes, fermentation, and the future of biotechnology. At Ginkgo Bioworks, Agapakis works with teams developing cultured ingredients for fashion, fragrance, and food, from fermented sweeteners to the scent of extinct flowers. Agapakis holds a PhD from Harvard University, where she worked on producing hydrogen fuel in bacteria, creating customizable plants, and making photosynthetic animals. She has taught designers at the Art Center College of Design and biomolecular engineers at UCLA and she once made cheese using bacteria from the human body.
Hunger, Health and the Future of Food
Session Description: Feeding the world is, according to some, well within our grasp. Vast new indoor farms are being built around the world. Some say it will allow us to “program plants.” And genetic alteration of food sources opens other new horizons. For now, distribution remains the biggest challenge–how will we get the food where […]
Conferences
Techonomy 15
Technology as scapegoat has driven fears since at least the industrial revolution. That is as true as ever today, with fears of privacy intrusion, our devices inducing inattention, withdrawal from human contact into screens, job-killing robots, and innumerable business models being destroyed.
