Dr. Tiffany Vora is a rousing speaker and thought leader who uses a bio- and tech-focused mindset to stimulate leaders, companies, and industries to design for the best possible future.
In addition to working as a founder and co-founder of several startups, she is currently the Vice Chair of Digital Biology and Medicine at Singularity University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Previously, Tiffany was the Faculty Director of Singularity’s global ecosystem of Experts and thought leaders.
After earning undergraduate degrees in Biology and Chemistry at New York University, Tiffany completed her PhD in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, where she worked in the emerging fields of genomics, systems biology, and computational biology. She later served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo, and as an Instructor for the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University.
She has mentored startup founders, inspired companies to tackle humanity’s grand challenges, and supported governments and other organizations to prepare for a radically different future of life on Earth (and elsewhere). Tiffany is particularly focused on nurturing, amplifying, and connecting women and people of color around the world—because diversity drives creativity and innovation.
Tiffany’s expertise in biology and medicine encompasses fields as diverse as CRISPR, the microbiome, longevity, genetics, agriculture, climate change, space biology, biomimicry, and biohacking. Overall, Tiffany is passionate about translating the leading edge of science and medicine into actionable insights for individuals, companies, and society.
Sample Topics
Future of Food: When Biology Is Technology
In this session, participants explore the ways in which exponential technologies, particularly biotechnologies, are transforming, what and how we meet. Food is a cornerstone of our health, our social interactions, and even our identities. But the demands of an ever-increasing population plus the existential threat of climate change mean big changes in where our food comes from, how it tastes, and how it will impact our health. Excitingly, big data, robotics, synthetic biology, gene editing, and other exponential technologies are bringing precision agriculture and personalized nutrition within reach—with new flavors, experiences, and yes, challenges along for the ride. In this session, participants will:
● Identify the major challenges and opportunities in global food production
● Explore how convergent technologies are transforming where our food comes from
● Encounter biotechnologies that will influence what and how we eat
● Interrogate new ethical, moral, and social ways of thinking that will both arise from and inform the Future of Food.
This session is ideal for anyone interested in looking deeper into the journey of our food from farm to mouth in order to spot business opportunities in decades to come.
Digital Biology: Programming The Future Of Life
This session showcases how today’s revolution in biotechnologies is setting the stage to solve some of humanity’s grand challenges. Just as computers store information as strings of 0s and 1s, on Earth, living systems store information in DNA. By reading out this information, digital biology and other biotechnologies are impacting businesses across a range of industries. Excitingly, this mental framework of “DNA as information” suggests that living systems are just that: systems that can be “programmed” by altering their DNA “algorithms.” Although digital biology raises profound ethical, governmental, and environmental questions, they are unquestionably affecting the global economy and modern life through applications such as health, food, water, energy, the environment, and even space. If the 20th century was the Computer Age, then the 21st century will be the Biology Age.
In this session, participants will:
● Encounter a framework for understanding major advances in the life sciences
● Track exciting breakthroughs and ongoing progress
● Identify problem and solution spaces undergoing disruption
● Explore the short-term, medium-term, and long-term benefits and challenges prompted
by the explosion of digital biology.
This session will empower participants, particularly business and community leaders, to position themselves to be active designers and consumers of the new future of life on Earth … and elsewhere.
Gene Editing
Gene editing technologies like CRISPR are rapidly revolutionizing how we precisely and permanently alter the DNA of living things—including humans. Catch up on this fast-moving field, and explore where gene editing could take us, in health, in agriculture, and in what it means to be human.
Future Of Health: A Global Revolution
This session empowers participants to recognize opportunities for exponential technologies to transform medicine and health, enabling the identification of unexpected opportunities for their organizations to positively impact human lives. Health is currently undergoing a fundamental shift away from episodic, reactive, and expensive “sickcare” to continuous, proactive, and cheaper “healthcare.” This transformation toward personalized and connected medicine is revolutionizing diagnosis, therapy, and prevention. Although the explosion of personal health data is associated with important ethical and regulatory issues—as well as implications for the future of healthcare professions—the integration of exponential technologies has the potential to drive improvements in human health, wellness, and longevity on a worldwide scale.
In this session, participants will:
● Identify the major trends in healthcare that are defining new problem and solution spaces
● Explore exciting breakthroughs and ongoing progress
● Interrogate ethical, moral, and social issues that will arise from new medical technologies and applications
● Consider potential contributions that their organization can make to the Future of Health, whether or not their focus is traditionally health-centered.
By looking beyond the technologies to a truly human-centered future of health, participants will begin to prepare themselves, their families, and their organizations to thrive in a world of radically different health opportunities and challenges—including longer lives. This session is perfect for anyone who interacts with healthcare systems, personally or professionally.
The Microbiome: The Hidden Abundance Of You
In this deep dive, participants encounter a previously hidden world that has exciting potential applications in health, food, and more. Exponential advances in digital biology-enabled technologies have revealed that we are more than human: each of our bodies contains a personalized and dynamic ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, and viruses known as the microbiome.
Scientific insights continue to suggest that the microbiome is a novel “tuning knob” for individualized wellness and health, not just for humans, but for animals, plants, and more.
In this session, participants will:
● Recognize themselves as a more-than-human ecosystem
● Identify strategies for optimizing the microbiome to improve health
● Confront major near-term challenges that stem from—and can be solved with—bacteria
● Explore convergent innovation spaces that harness the microbiome as a tuning knob for health and wellness, including human medicine, agriculture, and global health.
This session supports a mindset shift from “bacteria as threats” to “bacteria as opportunities”, showcasing how business leaders can be receptive to unexpected opportunities arising from exponential technologies.
Future of Food
Big data, robotics, gene editing, and other technologies are bringing precision agriculture and personalized nutrition within reach. Get ready for big changes in where your food comes from, how it tastes, and how it impacts your health.
Are You A Futuremaker?
Advances in computing are accelerating technologies from AI to biotech to robotics and beyond, impacting everything from daily life to entire species. Transform your ideas about tomorrow and explore how to embrace opportunities while preparing for challenges. Are you ready to make the future?
Longevity: Hype & Hope
The global average life expectancy has more than doubled in the last hundred years. What will the next hundred bring? What social and ethical challenges will we face as humans live ever longer? And what decisions can we make now to ensure that we live not just longer lives, but better ones?
SciFi: Designing Your Future
Science fiction is more than creative expression: it empowers you to dig into opportunities and roadblocks to possible futures. Embrace scifi to build a fun and safe environment for asking and potentially answering hard questions about the future(s).
Evolutionary Innovation: Lessons for the Future from Biology
For 4 billion years, life has been constantly innovating here on Earth. What can we learn from how biology innovates, and from the scientists and thinkers who have investigated the living world? Blending history with tomorrow’s cutting-edge biotech advances, this session empowers participants to leverage evolution’s methods to drive innovation in any industry.
In this workshop, participants will:
● Explore the foundations of evolutionary theory and examples of “biological innovation” in today’s world, including the pandemic, with connections to future evolution (e.g. via CRISPR)
● Encounter case studies of the technologies and ways of thinking employed by evolutionary scientists
● Extract learnings from how the natural world innovates and apply them to a hypothetical scenario
● Formulate an “evolutionary innovation” action plan with goals for innovation and leadership in business and society.
By focusing on learning from the natural world, this session is ideal for professionals who are looking to expand their insights and their innovation journeys beyond the traditional business realm.
Longevity: Is 150 the next 80?Innovations in the science of longevity are setting the stage for radically longer, healthier human lives. Where can – and should – those breakthroughs take us? How can today’s leaders help position individuals, businesses, and societies to be ready for the massive disruption on the horizon?
In this session, participants will:
● Review the major scientific and technological advances that are further extending the human life and health spans
● Learn to distinguish between hype and hope in longevity
● Actively consider both disruptions and opportunities, across industries, for organizations and societies as longevity is transformed
● Take a far-horizon approach to exploring the impacts of radically longer, healthier human lives on our families, businesses, and communities.
This session is perfect for horizon-scanning leaders who seek to prepare for—and leverage—major disruptions to the “business as usual” of the last hundred years.
Evolutionary Leadership: Lessons for the Future from Biology
In this session, participants learn how to draw inspiration from the natural world to grow their leadership practice. Biology is becoming ever more prominent in our daily lives, as evident from our health to our food to the impact of disease on the global economy. What can global leaders across industries learn from how biology innovates, and from the scientists and thinkers who have investigated the living world? This intermediate-level workshop is an excellent follow-on to a Digital Biology session, as it builds upon but does not focus on DNA alone. This workshop can also stand alone, without an introductory biotech talk.
In this workshop, participants will:
● Explore the foundations of evolutionary theory and examples of “biological innovation” in today’s world, including the pandemic, with connections to future evolution (e.g. via CRISPR)
● Encounter case studies of the technologies and ways of thinking employed by evolutionary scientists
● Extract leadership lessons from how the natural world innovates and apply them to a hypothetical scenario
● Formulate an “evolutionary leadership” action plan with goals for leadership in business and society.
By focusing on learning from the natural world, this session is ideal for professionals who are looking to expand their insights and their leadership journeys beyond the traditional business realm.
BUILDING OUR FUTURES(S): EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES AND MINDSETS
This session explores how transformative innovation is combining with accelerating exponential technologies, with radical impact across industries and society. Illustrative case studies showcase how exciting breakthroughs in biotechnology are impacting health, food, materials, and the fight against climate change. With help from futurists’ tools such as the Cone of Uncertainty and the STEEPS framework, participants broaden their view to consider big and important questions that arise thanks to the unprecedented power of today’s innovations. In this session, participants will:
- Dive into the foundations of “exponential”technologies, in order to understand the accelerating pace of change and how the future will be different form the past
- Encounter case studies for how exponential advances in biotechnology are revolutionizing research, medicine, agriculture, space, sustainability, and other industries.
- Imagine “jobs of the future” and how to empower a skilled and creative workforce
- Practice alternating between highly focused, tactical thinking and far-horizon, strategic thinking
- Empower themselves and their organization to develop the future-forward leadership skills that are critical to today’s disruptive landscape.
By engaging with tested frameworks that can be applied across industries, participants will set the stage for continued growth and exploration as innovators and leaders in today’s rapidly changing world. this session will inspire ongoing conversations not just in our offices and public spaces, but in our homes as well.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS:
- Digital Biology: Programming The Future Of Life
- Future Of Health Through Biotech Solution
- Introduction to Exponential Thinking
- Write Science Fiction To Design Your Future
- Longevity: Hope, Hype, and Technology
- The Microbiome: The Hidden Abundance Of You
- Future of Food
- Gene Editing The Future Of Medicine
- Technology Breakthroughs For Humanity Longevity
- Yes, Bacteria Can Help You Live Longer
- Programming Life: An Innovation Activity
- + Various Hands-On Experiences and Workshops
