Tom Kalil is the CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy. Tom served in the White House for two presidents (Obama and Clinton) and in collaboration with his team worked with the Senate to give every federal agency the authority to support incentive prizes for up to $50 million. Tom also designed and launched dozens of White House science and technology initiatives, including the $40 billion National Nanotechnology Initiative, announced by President Clinton; The BRAIN Initiative, announced by President Obama; The Next Generation Internet initiative, announced by President Clinton and Vice President Gore; and initiatives in advanced materials, robotics, smallsats, data science, and EdTech.
Policymakers are more likely to consider ideas where more thought has been given to the core questions of the policy process.
In this interview, Tom Kalil discusses the opportunities for science agencies and the research community to use AI/ML to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and technological advancement. Q. Why do you think that science agencies and the research community should be paying more attention to the intersection between AI/ML and science? Recently, researchers have […]
One of the main goals of Kalil’s Corner is to share some of the things I’ve learned over the course of my career about policy entrepreneurship. Below is an FAQ on a thought experiment that I think is useful for policy entrepreneurs, and how the thought experiment is related to a concept I call “shared agency.” Q. What […]
2022 Bioautomation Challenge: Investing in Automating Protein EngineeringThomas Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer of Schmidt Futures, interviews biomedical engineer Erika DeBenedictis Schmidt Futures is supporting an initiative – the 2022 Bioautomation Challenge – to accelerate the adoption of automation by leading researchers in protein engineering. The Federation of American Scientists will act as the fiscal sponsor […]
2022 Bioautomation Challenge: Investing in Automating Protein EngineeringThomas Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer of Schmidt Futures, interviews biomedical engineer Erika DeBenedictis Schmidt Futures is supporting an initiative – the 2022 Bioautomation Challenge – to accelerate the adoption of automation by leading researchers in protein engineering. The Federation of American Scientists will act as the fiscal sponsor […]
Recently, I caught up with Martin Borch Jensen, the Chief Science Officer of the biotech company Gordian Biotechnology. Gordian is a therapeutics company focused on the diseases of aging. Martin did his Ph.D. in the biology of aging, received a prestigious NIH award to jumpstart an academic career, but decided to return the grant to launch […]