HackTalk: Gene Olinger - AIxBio from a High-Containment Lab Perspective

​HackTalk: Gene Olinger (Galveston National Laboratory, UTMB)

​AIxBio from a High-Containment Lab Perspective

​Pre-hackathon talk. Free and open. Recording available after.

​Most of the AIxBio conversation happens between model builders and policy folks. Gene brings the view from inside one of the nation's premier BSL-4 facilities, where biosecurity and biodefense questions are anything but abstract.

​Gene Olinger, PhD, MBA, is the Director of the Galveston National Laboratory and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, where he holds the John Sealy Distinguished University Chair in Tropical and Emerging Virology. He brings over 20 years of BSL-3/4 research experience, with a focus on vaccine and therapeutic development for Ebola and other high-consequence emerging pathogens. Before joining UTMB, he served at USAMRIID and NIH NIAID, where he was a key contributor to the development of ZMapp, the Ebola treatment deployed during the West Africa outbreak.

​He'll share a practitioner's perspective from GNL on where AI is actually helping inside a high-containment setting, which basic questions still need answers, and where hackathon participants can plug in, on both the capability and the safety side.

​Format: 20-30 min talk + Q&A.

​Part of the AIxBio Hackathon pre-event programming.