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Kevin Slavin

  • Biotech Innovator Ginkgo Bioworks — Biosecurity Project Leader
  • Principal Investigator, MIT Media Lab

About

Kevin Slavin works to make life healthier for all as a serial entrepreneur at the intersection of biotech and environmental sciences. Noted for his years working with AI, including his quip “It's a bright future, if you're an algorithm,” Kevin applies his talents to emerging technologies for advances in public health. His role at Ginkgo Bioworks centers on biosecurity projects. Kevin focuses on making the world safe from both natural and engineered biothreats, helping humans make sense of the smallest matter in the world.

Kevin offers his understanding into the steps for greater well-being:

The role of sensing and mitigating environmental pathogens is crucial as we build tools for better health safeguards. It can be alarming to think about all the ways biothreats loom as risks to national safety. Science is critical to public good, detecting novel viruses and neutralizing threats before reaching pandemic or other mass outbreak stages with immediate response and defense anyplace on earth. Throughout my career I’ve been an advocate for pioneering techniques in this arena.

Skilled in both academic and clinical settings, Kevin's work combines physical matter knowledge with predictive analytics to build new capabilities and processes for detecting the paths of pathogens. His insights into environmental sensing and genetic engineering have been featured in publications including Wired and The Atlantic. Kevin's work with the MIT Media Lab includes his role as founding editor of the Journal of Design and Science.

A longtime expert in public health and safety, Kevin is notable for his ability to engage with wide-ranging audiences using thoughtful yet easy-to-understand presentations. He effortlessly combines deft storytelling with clever commentary, synthesizing complex ideas into engaging and resonating talks that inform and entertain.

Content

Subculture: Microbial Metrics and the Multi-Species City is the new exhibition that will be held at New York City’s Storefront for Art and Architecture starting Tuesday, September…
Article, The Architects Newspaper

Topics

  • Integrating Machine Learning and Human Knowledge to Build the Future of Healthcare. As the use of Artificial Intelligence or AI becomes more prevalent in clinical practice, an area of great impact involves the use of computers to recognize people, diagnoses, and interventions. While this promises new benefits to health and health care, new problems and unanticipated consequences may also result. In this talk, Kevin Slavin will review the strengths and challenges of both computational and human approaches to providing health care, and how the strongest systems integrate these approaches to achieve optimal results. Ultimately, the most effective systems will use both machine and human learning to achieve the best outcomes in research and clinical practice.
  • Detecting COVID Before It Appears in the Workplace: Making the Invisible, Visible. Is it safe to breathe in our workplace? In a world where COVID lurks between us and our spaces, Kevin has become an expert in detecting and mitigating environmental pathogens to help keep us safe as we head back to the workplace and life. In his role as a strategic healthcare advisor to Poppy, a commercial pathogen sensing and security system that monitors indoor environments, Kevin combines his experience with the science and technology of microbial sensing to explain how we can create healthy spaces. In building critical new tools in the intersections between architecture, people, and microbial environments, he is reshaping not just our ability to mitigate the risks of infection and contagion in common areas, but the overall understanding of the built environment.
  • Algorithms of the Air: How Computation Recognizes and Reshapes Life. We're living in a world designed for—and increasingly controlled by—algorithms. As an entrepreneur, designer, and brilliant mind of science, Kevin explores the intersections between digital systems and the physical world, explaining how these complex computer programs determine espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture.

Testimonials

Kevin Slavin was an incredible contributor to the conference. People were excited by the content that he shared and were eager to continue the conversation with him after his presentation. He brought unique insights and thinking to a hard to impress audience.

E. Anthony and Associates

Keywords: artificial intelligence, collaboration, design, innovation, biotechnology, technology, culture and technology, games, algorithms

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