Institute For The Future

Where the tech revolution meets the bio revolution

The urgent challenges we face at the personal and planetary levels are deeply rooted in biology. From lack of access to clean water and food system disruption, to global warming, vaccine shortages, and antibiotic resistance—we will meet these challenges at the intersection of biology and technology, creating a bio:made future.

In much of the world, digital technologies—1s and 0s, bits and bytes—have become the most powerful and affordable medium to express ourselves, to make art and commercial products, and to craft solutions to our biggest and smallest problems. Their speed, ease, and accessibility have made them our go-to tool for creation. Over the past decade, we’ve seen biological and information sciences rapidly converge.

Today, this convergence is opening biology, bringing it out of academia, and putting it into the hands of a new breed of innovators and biodesigners, with their own motivations, priorities, and desires. From a surgeon ‘growing’ meat in a petri dish to a fashion designer cultivating clothing from bacteria and yeast, we’re already seeing what happens when biology inspires innovators from all walks of life.

In the next decade, anyone will be able to design and build with nature’s smallest and most sophisticated materials almost as easily as using a computer. We’ll edit genes and birth entirely new organisms—and program life itself.

With this Exhibit of Future Creations—our forecasts for this bio:made future, we invite you to tour this new landscape of the forces of change and signals of innovation that are happening today.

• Learn about becoming a Future 50 Partner
• Contact Sean Ness | 650-233-9517 | sness@iftf.org