TEDxUSC - Andrew Hessel - Crowd-Sourced Cancer Cures December 21, 2011

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Andrew Hessel, a consulting biologist and advocate of DNA technologies, discusses the acceleration of technological DNA change to help cure cancer. Hessel refers back to 2002 when he booted up the first synthetic virus and started to make synthetic bacteria. Today he is playing around and reengineering simple organisms like algae to make fuels. Hessel emphasized that the field is moving so quickly that education has not been able to keep up. There aren't that many genetic engineers because the only way you can learn the skill is by doing it. Hessel says that this technology has the potential to create bigger and new industries that will help cities and people out. "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."

Hessel is the CEO of Pink Army Cooperative, the world's first cooperative biotechnological company that is working to make personalized, affordable medicines for breast cancer and serves as co-chair of the Bioinformatics and Biotechnology program at Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university that aims to prepare leaders for accelerating technological change.

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