AI at the Frontier of Scientific Innovation: From Algorithms in Nature to Digitizing Smell
- Resource Type
- Audio Presentation/Podcast
- Publish Date
- 03/26/2026
- Author
- Innovation Research Interchange
- Topics
- Innovation, Artificial Intellegence
- Associated Event
- Webinar: AI at the Frontier of Scientific Innovation: From Algorithms in Nature to Digitizing Smell
Presentation with Saket Navlakha
March 2026
Join Saket Navlakha, Associate Professor at the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, for a fascinating discussion on how artificial intelligence is reshaping scientific research and innovation. From his pioneering work on “algorithms in nature” to co-founding Knose.AI—a start-up digitizing smell—Navlakha shares how AI has accelerated discovery, transformed the innovation process, and fostered new partnerships. Explore the opportunities, challenges, and long-term implications of AI for research institutions and the future of science.
Saket Navlakha is an Associate Professor in the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a world-renowned, private, non-profit research and education center on Long Island, New York. He received an A.A. from Simon’s Rock College in 2002, a B.S. from Cornell University in 2005, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland College Park in 2010. He was then a post-doc in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University before becoming an Assistant Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 2014. His lab studies “algorithms in nature”, i.e., the problem-solving strategies that biological systems, ranging from brains to plants, use to solve problems that are important for survival. In 2018, he was named a Pew Biomedical Scholar, and in 2019, he was awarded an NSF CAREER award. In 2024, he co-founded Knose.AI, a start-up that aims to digitize smell using AI.