Pamela Silver

Pamela Silver
Elliot T and Onie H Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology
Member, Harvard University Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering

Title: Designing sustainable solutions with biology

Abstract: Our planet and its inhabitants face enormous problems. How can we provide for a growing population in a sustainable and equitable manner? Our accumulated knowledge of how Nature works could help seek solutions through the engineering of biology. We are fortunate to have a cohort of young scientists and engineers who share this passion where the scale and complexity of the solutions remain daunting; this is the ultimate systems/synthetic/engineering biology problem. Here, I will present work from a small group of risk takers to try to address problems concerning carbon utilization, remediation and protection. We have developed a platform that uses electrical input to drive the water splitting reaction to generate hydrogen that can be used by carbon- and nitrogen-fixing bacteria for growth and production. We have used this system to sustainably produce food components and enhance plant growth beyond lab scale. To further enhance carbon capture, we have engineered bacteria to accelerate mineral weathering in sea water together with detection of substances for remediation. And we have used lessons from Nature to characterize and design a new class of proteins to protect cells from climate related health issues. We hope that these approaches will contribute to the many ongoing and future efforts by all concerned scientists/engineers.

Bio: Pamela Silver is the Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University where she runs the Sustainability Futures Initiative. Silver grew up in the Bay Area, received her BS at UC Santa Cruz and her PhD at the UCLA and followed with Postdoctoral work at Harvard University where she was an American Cancer Society Fellow. She was an Assistant Professor at Princeton prior to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School where she was a Professor in the Dept of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, she became one of the first members of the Dept of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School where her laboratory now resides. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and the past Daniel’s Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from UCSC, the Innovative Technology Prize (BIO), the FastCompany Innovation Award and the Joseph Henry Lecture of the Philosophical Society. She has been recognized as one of the top Global Synthetic Biology Influencers and her work named as one of the top 10 Breakthroughs by the World Economic Forum. She is the founder of several companies and served as a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).