Dr. Zina Jarrahi Cinker is a globally renowned exponential technology and deep science strategist, condensed matter physicist and MATTERVerse thought leader. She serves as the Director General of MATTER, an international think tank of 30 country chapters, Chief Creator of PUZZLE X Barcelona, an international event focused on frontier tech and Chief Creator of XPANSE a strategic ecosystem-building initiative and global forum she is creating in partnership with ADQ, the Sovereign Fund of Abu Dhabi. XPANSE aims to bring together 2,500 of the world’s brightest minds, technology trailblazers, Nobel Laureates, industry leaders, CEOs, ministers, and scientists to set the horizons of exponential technologies, such as quantum, neuromorphic computing, next-gen materials, AGI, genomics, space habitat, fusion energy, brain-machine interfaces, and more.
Dr. Cinker received a PhD in Condensed Matter Ultrafast Spectroscopy from Vanderbilt University and has spent the past decade helping the materialization of deep science into technologies with broader impact. She previously served as the Executive Director of the U.S. National Graphene Association, the main organization, and body in North America with over 5,000 international members and organizations. She recently spoke to The Innovator about the impact of exponential technologies on business and society.
Q: Which exponential technology area excites you these days?
ZJC: Biology! As a physicist, it might sound strange but what I am fascinated by these days is not physics or quantum, it’s biology,and not our high-school definition of biology! I strongly believe the next decade will be dominated by the deep technologies in this realm: organoid intelligence, biocomputers, genomics, multiomics, neuromorphic computing, brain-machine interfaces and CRISPR. We are just starting to crack the code of life and blueprint of living species and addressing longevity, eradicating diseases and transforming pharmaceuticals. We are also making leaps in other areas that at first glance have nothing to do with biology like computation, data storage, or energy conservation for our power-hungry electronics. Think of this: our brain can perform the equivalent of an exaflop — a billion-billion mathematical operations per second – and runs on 10-15 watts. Do you know what kind of power/energy our supercomputers run on? This is what the field of neuromorphic computing addresses. In the age of Gen AI, and the looming problem with energy consumption of LLMs [ large language models], I believe some of the answers might have a foot in the world of biology.
Q: What else do you see happening at the intersection of biology and computing?
ZJC: Last year at PUZZLE X in Barcelona, we did a demo with the company Cache DNA and new media artist Soliman Lopez where we captured the brain waves of our speakers as they were thinking about the future and then we encapsulated that information and data inside a strand of DNA. Most people think this is futuristic. Our entire point was that this technology has existed for a decade and is commercially available, enabling us to actually do this demo live. DNA data storage is immensely efficient. If we were to store the entire data of the world: the data in massive data centers, on everyone’s laptops, hard drives in the form of DNA, it could all fit in a building the size of a small house. But that’s not the most interesting. We are now starting to use DNA for computing, not just DNA storage. A firm called Company Catalog DNA used DNA to store the works of Shakespeare and then successfully used DNA interfaces to perform a word search in that database.
The field of organoid intelligence, an emerging multidisciplinary field working to develop biological computing using 3D cultures of human brain cells (brain organoids) and brain-machine interface technologies, is also exciting. One startup has already demonstrated that it can activate brain cells in a petri dish and turn them into a computation machine that can learn and play a game of Pong.
Humanity’s technological advances in the past one to two centuries have been the direct result of our increased capacity in computation.When we advise our leaders and investors, we make a point of telling them to not look at this just as an investment in computing but truly grasp the revolutionary power that this unleashes. Look at what digital made possible when the potential of silicon-based computing was unlocked. Imagine what will be next.
Q: This week Sandbox AQ, a Google spin-off working on the intersection of quantum and AI, announced a collaboration with Nvidia that leverages the power of Quantitative AI to produce highly accurate simulations of real-life systems by accelerating more than 80 times faster than traditional 128-core CPU computations. It is stretching the limits of computational chemistry, impacting fields including biopharma, chemicals, and materials science. Is this another sign of things to come?
ZJC: I truly believe that we are entering a new age in the history of humankind: the age of exponential technologies. Four different areas of technology and human knowledge are reaching a certain point of maturity at the same time. They are now not only exponentially speeding up one another but also creating hybrid areas of development that we did not even think would exist. These areas of exponential technology are nano assembly, quantum technologies, AI and machine learning, and genomics and multiomics, At this point in the development of exponential technology we can no longer follow predictive linear models, where we say ‘In five years, we’re going to be there.’ This type of thinking and planning is no longer relevant. AI came in and everybody was like ‘Oh, my God, what is happening? We did not expect this.’ It is just the beginning. We are entering a new age. The developments in health, energy and computing will be exponential. New technologies like AI will seemingly come out of nowhere. Get very comfortable with that feeling because this is going to happen again and again. And this is very important not only for businesses to know for their strategy and competitive analysis but also for legislators and policymakers. They can no longer say ‘let us wrap our arms around AI and then we’ll go and address the problems with quantum cryptography.’ The models we have right now are not going to be able to keep up with exponential technology.
The pace of development is so dizzyingly fast. You need to adapt, and you need to understand that you can no longer look at the frontiers of one field and say ‘We know exactly what is going on in the cutting edge of the energy sector and that’s enough’ because in the age of exponential technologies boundaries are blurred. So, if you really want to start understanding what is coming next, you need to know what is happening on the horizons of all these different areas. It doesn’t mean you have to have deep knowledge of the technologies, but you need to be aware of the advances and their potential impact. Knowledge is power. You need to know, for example, that something is coming up in the world of brain interfaces, even if you are a leader in the oil and gas sector. How do they connect? It is not for me to tell you. A seasoned expert in oil and gas knows the lay of the land of their own field and how things might benefit their business. What we do is to bring the knowledge of the edge closer to decision makers so they can decide what to do with it.
Q: How do you propose leaders keep up?
ZJC: Centuries ago, kings would send envoys to different lands to learn about the most exotic and the most cutting-edge developments of their time; then they would come back home and bring that news to the kings, translated from many languages and fields. That is what is needed now. Leaders need a credible source that is translating this news in the right way, so they know what is coming but don’t have to spend too much time on it. And then it is up to the leaders, the modern-day equivalent of kings, to decide how they want to use this knowledge.
This is not an easy task. The exponential technology and deep science knowledge is quite technical and not even easy to understand for people in science and tech, let alone our leaders. It is not a question of putting this information in long reports and sending out boring consulting decks. That is the past. We need to create a sort of collective intelligence, to rely on a trusted network that will allow us to connect those pieces in a way that is not siloed or structured.
And that is exactly why we created XPANSE in partnership with ADQ, the sovereign fund of Abu Dhabi, to bring this knowledge of the exponential technology age and the people who lead it in one place, together.
I have a reputation for being quite an optimistic person and technology advocate. If I were only to listen to what is on the media, on the news right now, I would be a total pessimist and think that the world is coming to an end and we are doomed. But I see things quite differently. It is not because I don’t know of the challenges we face as humanity but because every day I am engaging with the men and women on the frontiers, our sentinels, our explorers, our scientists. These men and women, they are dedicating their entire lives to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. And I can see them progressing one by one. I know the challenges but I also have the privilege of knowing that there are immensely important solutions being created and there is a global force of science and tech people that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible every day.
That is another reason why we create forums like XPANSE in Abu Dhabi, to show the world what the explorers in the fields of quantum, 2D materials, fusion energy, carbon capture, are creating and how it will change the next chapter for cities, citizens, industries and societies. XPANSE will be a place where decision makers in industry and in policy sit down with world’s brightest minds in exponential tech and deep science to look at how we can work together to shape the future. A forum like this is more needed than ever. We invite everyone to be a part of it.
Q:What do you want the key takeaways from this interview to be for a business audience?
ZJC: If you were caught off guard by AI, heed my words…you have no idea what else is coming. This is just the beginning. And it is not about AI.As our leaders, you are the ones who need to have first-hand access to the knowledge of exponential tech. So don’t just keep your eye on the horizon of your own field.
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