The human cell is wildly complex. Can AI decode it?

241,753 plays|

Silvana Konermann |

TED2026

• April 2026

Silvana Konermann and the team at Arc Institute are trying to crack one of science's most difficult problems: why complex diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer remain so stubbornly unsolvable, even as research advances. Her solution is a universal “virtual cell” — an AI model trained on a billion biological experiments that can read the language of human cells, predict what's going wrong and reveal how to fix it. In conversation with TED’s Chris Anderson, Konermann explores how this work could fundamentally change the way we discover drugs and treat disease. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)