Jessica Green

We make decisions every day based on the visible world around us.  Yet much of our lives is shaped by what we can't see. Beginning with her personal story of transitioning from one unseen world to another—from nuclear physics to microbiome work—Jessica Green explains how the DNA sequencing revolution has transformed our understanding of who we are (our personal identity) and the world around us. She shares how microbes influence our bodies, our cities and the planet in ways we never realized before. Green closes her talk with a vision of bioinformed design that leaves her audiences seeing everything from a new perspective—and with a new desire to know even more about the world around us, and about ourselves, on this microscopic, yet magnanimously important level.

 In this specialized talk, Jessica Green shares five ways microbiome design can reshape the places we live, work and play. She illustrates, using data and visualizations, how the unseen microbial world is unintentionally designed into our daily lives, and how it affects everything we do. And, as microbes are at the root of everything, if we understand how they function, we can understand how we need to change, and grow, in order to create something better than what we have. In sweeping, accessible talks, Green lays out a future where intentional microbiome design is leveraged to create a healthier, more sustainable world—and what we can do to propel, and participate in, this exciting new future.