Invisible Worlds: Plants, Plastics, and AI

Imagine an underground city: sensors, roads, doors… and a highly efficient system. The roots of grasses like _Brachypodium_ form a protective layer, the exoderm, which acts somewhat like a smart filter between the soil and the plant. I’ll take you on a journey into this “underground intelligence,” down to the single-cell level, to understand how the root develops and manages its nutrition.

What if plastic could heal itself, change shape, and never become waste?
In this talk, we’ll discover a new generation of “smart” plastics built using dynamic chemistry, where bonds can break and reconnect on demand. This means materials that can be repaired, reshaped, and recycled more easily.
A fresh way to rethink plastic: not as waste, but as a resource.

We see headlines about AI replacing various jobs, but one of the most profound impacts is on AI Research itself. AI Researchers are uniquely engineering their own replacement, in this talk, we'll explore the impact on the future of the field and why this may be a first in history: an industry actively replacing and transforming itself voluntarily.