Last Wednesday, I joined a panel at the 2024 iGEM Grand Jamboree on "Youth & Education for Biosecurity, Biosafety, and Global Policy" within the Responsibility Conference. It took me some time to reflect on what message I wanted to pass on to the diverse audience (team members, sponsors, governments, academia and industry people, etc.).

Here is what I said:

So here we are, at the Responsibility Conference: let’s talk about responsibility. I believe each and everyone of you, whatever your age, origin, background, skin color, gender… can embody this responsibility, first not to do harm, but also to proactively contribute to this world that we’re building together, and make it better.

From there, there are many possible paths ahead, especially when one thinks about what it means for their career, and I think there are two structuring questions one can use to explore them.

First: how can I contribute? What are am I good at? What do I enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis?

And second: what am I driven by? What will bring me longterm motivation? What will bring me a feeling of fulfillment?

If I take my own story as an example, I have a scientific background, but I regularly found myself asking this question: will I find longterm motivation in researching e.g. some specific bacterial pathogen? People around me empowered me to think I could contribute more. And because contributing more, having more impact, is a driver for me, it was essential that I surround myself with aligned people and understand, with their help, how I could do that.

I realized that I believe that biotechnologies come with real, concrete, potentially large scale risks, and enabling the extraordinary benefits of biology while preventing those risks was a strong motivator for me. I hope I can contribute to a future in which the world is safe from biological threats.

However, when we are students or even young professionals, we tend to follow the path that have been laid down before us by others. Usually it means keeping the steering wheel straight, and go deeper in one domain of expertise. I get it, I started doing a Ph.D. because science is fascinating and that’s the natural next step, right? But is the mission driving me? It’s a tough question, it’s uncomfortable and at times overwhelming, but one day maybe Future You might thank you for doing the work.

Another point I would like to get across is: there are options beyond the duality of academia and industry for scientists. I’ve been there, when I was in uni it’s the choice I was told I had. But scientists can contribute in other ways, as some of my fellow panelists are also examples of, where the core of the job is not technical, but understanding the technicalities is still very important. 

Let’s talk about one of those options: policy. There aren’t that many obvious ways to transition from science to policy, and I wanted to talk about my own bumpy road to here.

When I was asking myself hard what I was driven by, I realized two things: research is fascinating, but I want collaboration and building strong connections to be a big part of my job, rather than pushing the intellectual frontier. Second, I’m less excited about being at the forefront of innovation, and more about optimizing how our discoveries can be applied to improve lives at scale and have real-world impact.

At some point and after dozens of conversations with friends or strangers whose jobs I was inspired by, I really felt drawn to the policy world. It seemed like a way to follow the motivation I mentioned earlier: enabling the extraordinary benefits of biotech while preventing potential risks.

I’m not gonna say it was easy, and it required me to build resistance to rejection, but at some point stars will align. I found the Talos Fellowship, which trains young professionals to contribute to emerging tech policy through a reading group and then a 6-month placement in a think tank. While mostly focused on advanced AI, you probably know that AI has a huge potential in enabling biotechnologies, and there is a lot to work on at the interface of the two. I’m grateful for the opportunity I got at Talos to skill up, and now be placed at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance, a think tank working on international and multilateral AI governance. My goal is to leverage the skills I’m building in bio, AI, and policy, to contribute to make the future safer for everyone.

What I want you to takeaway from here is the following:

• Two questions: how can you contribute, and what is driving you

Also, there is more to what you can see for yourself. It takes exploring and considering unusual ideas seriously. Be bold, reach out, talk to people you’re inspired by, seek the difficult feedback that will allow you to make better decisions:

• Dare to diverge from the path, the only thing you need is to step away and make a turn. Find the people that will empower you to do that.

By doing this, you also unlock the potential of doing more and better, which you might feel a responsibility for:

• Scientists can, and should, contribute beyond science.

Super cool thanks! Will keep that in mind too.

Thanks for this! We are currently working on a visualization with a volunteer. Let's see how it goes, but we'll definitely keep your offer in mind!

Hamish already shared his code with me, but in the end we decided to go with something else, at least for now.

Thank you Ysa for that thoughtful aggregation of advice. I didn't know this wasn't something one could find in the forum, and I'm glad you filled that gap, and so well. I think I'd add:

• Accept confusion, and try to resolve it. Some people might think wildly differently from you. Work on improving clarity of thoughts and arguments, even with the short amount of time you have. It might be the best insight you'll take away with you.

• Welcome overwhelm signals, and don't overlook them. A friend once told me they would book 'coexisting 1-1s' with friends: if you have friends also coming at EAGx, schedule a slot with them where it's not expected to talk. It can be a good forcing mechanism to take a well-deserved break.

Thank you Jérémy for this thorough work! It's quite interesting that the earliest interventions seem the most risky, while early response seems the ones to prioritize.

Thank you John for sharing! This is super interesting.

Particularly, the "PNG" part makes me reflect on community belonging and inclusivity, I think it's an important part.

Thanks for sharing! I'm honestly not sure what to answer to this, I feel some of your doubts / points are already addressed in the post. I guess it's where the crux is, whether you believe increasing diversity of representation would be positive for the movement as a way to show others that EA is not a sticker that absolutely defines the whole set of beliefs/values of a person, or not. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future about this. But I probably still want to advocate for making the decision to "not affiliate" intentional, when it could just be a non-decision, a default.

Thank you for sharing that, I think those numbers are a great addition to this post. It would be amazing to have an update of this post-FTX and post-OpenAI.

Thank you! That's a useful framing.