Planet-Sourced Goods

In the Angela Belcher keynote, she demonstrates how she's discovered a way that humans can use the earth's materials to produce items such as batteries and semi-conductors. Her speech offers insight into the planet's history, explaining how exquisite structures, such as the abalone shell, were formed at a nano-scale level.

She shares with the audience her success in being able to convince bacteria and viruses to work with one another in new and complex ways to create materials humans can use as alternatives to the ones they use today (materials that are often produced in environmentally threatening ways) to produce things. Belcher introduces the idea of natural biomaterials, which is ultimately the result when biology can be manipulated to work with the rest of the Periodic table. Her keynote is both insightful and inspiring, providing a simple explanation of her revolutionary discovery.