The speed of the creation of vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 was a modern marvel. You might already have already gotten yours.

But what if vaccines and therapeutics could emerge even faster in response to the next pandemic. That’s one of the goals of a $5 million gift from Microsoft to the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine. 

On this episode, we talk with Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, Eric Horvitz, and the director of the UW institute, David Baker, about the new age of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and the potential to engineer a very different future.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.