a16z Podcast: Deep Learning for the Life Sciences

with Vijay Pande (@vijaypande) and Bharath Ramsundar

Deep learning has arrived in the life sciences: every week, it seems, a new published study comes out... with code on top. In this episode, a16z General Partner Vijay Pande and Bharath Ramsundar talk about how AI/ML is unlocking the field in a new way, in a conversation around their book, Deep Learning for the Life Sciences: Applying Deep Learning to Genomics, Microscopy, Drug Discovery, and More (also co-authored with Peter Eastman and Patrick Walters.

So -- why now? ML is old, bio is certainly old. What is it about deep learning's evolution that is allowing it to finally making a major impact in the life sciences? What is the practical toolkit you need, the right kinds of problems to attack, and the right questions to ask? How is the hacker ethos coming to the world of biology? And what might “open source biology” look like in the future?