Primary care medicine represents 52% of all care delivered in the United States, but when it comes to AI innovation, it’s been largely left behind. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Stanford physician Steven Lin , explains how AI could improve healthcare logistics, optimize patient care, and significantly lower costs by reducing the clerical burdens that cost the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars a year and keep physicians from spending more time with t...
Aug 18, 2022•28 min•Ep 193•Transcript available on Metacast Take a look around your neighborhood and you’ll see a few things you like -- and, most likely, a few you don’t. Maybe you need a crosswalk near the senior home. Or garbage keeps getting dumped on the sidewalk. Now imagine if you and others in your community could document what you saw, collect those data, identify and agree on issues to prioritize, and then find feasible solutions for them? In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Stanford faculty member Abby King , pr...
Aug 16, 2022•28 min•Ep 191•Transcript available on Metacast Algorithms inform the news you read, the TV shows you watch, and the advertisements that appear on your internet searches – and they also have a say in who gets a bank loan, what medical procedures are covered by insurance, and who gets selected for a job interview. As algorithms are used to make these decisions, how do we make sure they’re fair? And what does fairness even mean? In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything , computer science professor Omer Reingold explain...
Aug 08, 2022•28 min•Ep 192•Transcript available on Metacast Unfortunately, not every medical procedure is 100% successful. Due to the complexity of breast cancer lumpectomies, for instance, 16–25% of surgeries fail to remove the entire tumor, requiring patients to repeat the procedure. But to improve surgery success rates, and their efficiency, physicians are now looking to technologies from a surprising source: the gaming industry. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything , Bruce Daniel , a professor of radiology, explains how ...
Jul 25, 2022•27 min•Ep 190•Transcript available on Metacast Since they were invented more than a century ago, airplanes have gone from carrying a single person to ferrying many hundreds of people and several tons of cargo. Despite the increase in size and capacity, commercial aircraft have actually become quieter over the past several decades, thanks to a few key design changes informed by fluid mechanics, a branch of physics that studies fluids in motion. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Sanjiva Lele , a professor of a...
Jul 18, 2022•28 min•Ep 189•Transcript available on Metacast Data shows that greater gender diversity on company leadership groups leads to improved business outcomes, says Stanford cardiologist Hannah Valantine. Likewise, she says, in medical research, where diversity boosts the development of new technologies. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything , Valantine, the former inaugural chief officer for scientific workforce diversity at the National Institutes of Health, as well as a senior investigator at the National Heart, Lun...
Jul 18, 2022•28 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast In our deeply polarized society, the prospect of holding thoughtful discussions on policy issues seems impossible. But it doesn’t have to be. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, James Fishkin , a professor of communication at Stanford, describes the deliberative polling model, a system of structured and moderated small group discussions that can help bring people together and bridge differences in perspective on even some of the most politically fraught issues. To...
Jun 24, 2022•28 min•Ep 187•Transcript available on Metacast Many of the lies, distortions, and pieces of disinformation online are easy to spot. But as technology advances it will become harder to tell the difference between video and images that are true and accurate and those that are manipulated or outright made up. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Jonathan Dotan , of Stanford’s Starling Lab for Data Integrity, and host, bioengineer Russ Altman , discuss what researchers are doing to keep ahead of advances in deep fa...
Jun 17, 2022•28 min•Ep 186•Transcript available on Metacast Physicians diagnose Alzheimer’s disease with tests that measure memory loss and behavioral change. But many years before these symptoms appear, the disease is changing the brain, leading to the buildup of misfolded proteins and brain shrinkage that cause cognitive decline. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Stanford mechanical engineer Ellen Kuhl explains how she’s using databases of brain images of both Alzheimer’s patients and healthy individuals to create comp...
Jun 14, 2022•27 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast Humans have been trying to predict when earthquakes will happen for centuries, with little success, by developing earthquake detectors and by wondering if unusual animal behavior could be a sign of an incoming temblor. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Eric Dunham , a geophysicist at Stanford University, explains that while we’re still unable to predict when earthquakes will happen, advanced computers and new sensors on the seafloor are pushing the field of natu...
Jun 14, 2022•27 min•Ep 185•Transcript available on Metacast Computer chips are everywhere: your cellphone, your car, even your refrigerator. And they’re essential to enabling advances in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and faster and better computers -- and to solving global challenges such as climate change. The omnipresence of this foundational technology has been growing for decades, but the pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of society, significantly increasing the demand for more and better chips. In this episode of Stanfo...
May 25, 2022•27 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast Search online and you’ll find lists of all the skills entrepreneurs should have - among them are imagination, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship. But are entrepreneurs born with these relevant skills, or can they be taught? In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Tina Seelig , professor of the practice in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, explains the differences between imagination, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, an...
May 25, 2022•27 min•Ep 182•Transcript available on Metacast The consequences of climate change have already been devastating: wildfires, drought, coastal flooding, and increased temperatures, among them. And there are massive economic, societal, and geopolitical and security costs as well. It's no wonder that many people may feel the situation at this point is hopeless. But in this episode of the Future of Everything, Stanford’s Chris Field tells host and bioengineer Russ Altman that the world has made more progress than we might have expected a decade a...
May 17, 2022•28 min•Ep 181•Transcript available on Metacast The vast majority of substances are neither liquid, solid, nor gas – but an alternative form that shares characteristics of liquids and gases. Among them are gels, glasses, and colloidal suspensions, and they’re an essential part of everyday products like toothpaste, paint, hair products, and even windows. Stanford chemical engineer Roseanna Zia is an expert on the gel-like substance known as colloids. In this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, Zia joins host Russ Altman...
May 05, 2022•28 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast Conducting a surgery is one of the most complex tasks an individual can do — but how do you recognize the difference between the highly skilled surgeons performing at the top of their game and those still honing their techniques? With the help of wearable sensors, motion tracking and video, physicians can now watch surgeons in action, quantify their movements, and determine how highly skilled physicians accomplish the unique choreography of surgery. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The ...
Apr 15, 2022•27 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast Are U.S. adults happy? Sad? Depressed? One can answer these questions by calling thousands of people and surveying their psychological state, a strategy that’s both costly and time-consuming. But with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence, you can also measure a population’s well-being by turning to social media platforms and tracking what millions of people are talking about. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, computational social scientist Jo...
Apr 07, 2022•27 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast Start an email with “I hope” and before you can type the next word, the program will suggest you complete it with “all is well.” You may not have realized it, but this is AI-generated text. In the past several years, this technology has advanced beyond completing sentences in emails: It can now respond to others’ emails, and write essays, hip-hop songs, public health messages, and much more. What’s more, it can sometimes be even more effective than humans at conveying certain messages. In this e...
Apr 04, 2022•28 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast The world has made remarkable gains in pediatric medicine and public health over the past several generations. The average American child of the 21st century has access to clean water and milk, fully functioning sewage systems, and antibiotics, vaccines, and other medicines. Result: Child mortality rates have declined dramatically over the past century. At the same time, a widening income gap in the United States has led to vastly different prevalence rates for health conditions between low- and...
Mar 23, 2022•28 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast It may not be immediately obvious, but there are huge financial, environmental and security costs associated with storing all the selfies, videos, documents and other digital assets the world is generating. One way to address this issue is by developing better compression algorithms that can represent the data more succinctly. Another is by creating new ways of storing the information itself, including, potentially, within biological molecules. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Futur...
Mar 13, 2022•28 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Children have an amazing capacity for healing after injury. Break a leg, the bone grows back; cut a finger, the skin heals. But as we age, most tissues no longer heal easily, and tissue loss is unavoidable due to aging, degenerative diseases such as arthritis, and cancer. In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Fan Yang and host and fellow bioengineer Russ Altman, discuss how biomaterials created in a lab can be injected into wound sites to enable tissue regeneration ...
Mar 12, 2022•27 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast You might not realize it, but AI-driven systems are integrated into virtually every aspect of our lives. But how can we be certain the values AI systems are striving for reflect what we want for ourselves and for society? And how can scientists and engineers do a better job of increasing people’s trust in AI? Stanford computer scientist Carlos Guestrin is a leading voice on how to advance and implement a more trustworthy AI. Learn about his work in this area, and his particular interest in AI an...
Feb 22, 2022•28 min•Ep 172•Transcript available on Metacast Anyone who’s ever been to a hospital knows that the healthcare system is extremely complex. Every patient has their own challenges – and they will typically see multiple physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare practitioners, and come into contact with a slew of medical technologies, protocols, and billing and insurance systems. Sara Singer, a Stanford professor of medicine, is an expert on integrated care – the development of tools, technologies, and processes designed to improve t...
Feb 18, 2022•28 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Whether it’s autonomous vehicles or assistive technology in healthcare that can do things like help the elderly do core tasks like feeding themselves, some of the most challenging problems in the field of robotics involve how robots interact with humans, with all of our many complexities. Drawing from fields as varied as cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics, Stanford computer scientist Dorsa Sadigh is exploring how to train robots to better understand humans – and how to ...
Feb 10, 2022•27 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast Among the many areas James Zou might have chosen to apply his considerable knowledge of artificial intelligence, he opted for health care. It was the most interesting, the most complex and the most impactful area of study. In short, it was the most exciting outlet for his expertise. Since that epiphany, Zou has gone on to publish influential studies that have improved the patient experience, shaped basic research and sped the development of new drugs. Among his most important contributions, Zou ...
Jan 20, 2022•27 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast Stanford professor Johan Ugander is an expert in making sense of messy data. Lately he’s been working to tell fact from fiction online, as news stories spread on social media. He comes at the question from a unique angle, using machine learning to study the differing patterns in how both types of information spread (or don’t). In so doing, Ugander has come to some interesting conclusions and, more important, suggests some novel strategies for preventing the spread of misinformation. False storie...
Jan 07, 2022•27 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast For a profession that has existed essentially since the beginning of human civilization, few people fully appreciate the importance of construction in our everyday lives, but Martin Fischer does. To build the key infrastructure of society, he says, requires intimate understanding of human nature, the environment, the materials and the ever-evolving techniques of building things. Fischer has grown frustrated with the present state of his profession and decided to change its trajectory using artif...
Jan 06, 2022•28 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast Much of what the world knows about genetic diseases is learned by comparing the DNA of people with a shared disease against the DNA of otherwise healthy people to learn where the differences lie. This is all well and good except that, written into all that DNA, is a lot of other information that the subjects would rather keep private. And that’s where Gill Bejerano enters the scene. He’s an expert in cryptogenomics, a discipline that marries the fields of cryptography and genomics to essentially...
Jan 05, 2022•28 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast As the field of computer science has evolved over the last half century, so too has the way in which computer science is taught and to whom it is taught. Stanford lecturer Cynthia Lee says she is encouraged by the diversity she sees as she looks out over her classroom. But that wasn’t always the case, particularly when she, a woman, was in college. Lee has since dedicated her career to changing that mindset from a fixed and rigid outlook to one that is more open and welcoming of diverse backgrou...
Dec 13, 2021•29 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast In one of computer science’s more meta moments, professor Chelsea Finn created an AI algorithm to evaluate the coding projects of her students. The AI model reads and analyzes code, spot flaws and gives feedback to the students. Computers learning about learning—it’s so meta that Finn calls it “meta learning.” Finn says the field should forgo training AI for highly specific tasks in favor of training it to look at a diversity of problems to divine the common structure among those problems. The r...
Nov 15, 2021•28 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast For experts in digital graphics and visual perception, like computer scientist Kayvon Fatahalian , the recent pandemic has been a call to arms. Fatahalian says he and others in the field felt an urgent responsibility to harness their background in computer graphics and interactive techniques to improve life for people across the globe. He says new, virtual tools have proved better than past, real ones in improving certain aspects of our everyday lives. His job as a computer scientist is to make ...
Nov 03, 2021•28 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast 
