Edge Master Class 2009: GEORGE CHURCH & J. CRAIG VENTER: A SHORT COURSE ON SYNTHETIC GENOMICS funded by Jeffrey Epstein and hosted by Elon Musk at SpaceX.
Read Johnny Vedmore’s NEWSPASTE articles about Edge:
Musk and Epstein: The Third Culture Dossier - https://newspaste.com/2024/10/31/musk-epstein-the-third-culture-dossier/
Musk and Epstein: SpaceX Offenders - https://newspaste.com/2025/08/02/musk-and-epstein-spacex-offenders/
Find Everything Epstein on NEWSPASTE - https://newspaste.com/2026/06/14/everything-about-the-epstein-case
Find the archived version of the Edge website related to this course here - https://web.archive.org/web/20141209162337/https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2009-george-church-j-craig-venter-a-short-course-on-synthetic-genomics
The Attendees:
Stewart Brand, Biologist, Long Now Foundation; Whole Earth Discipline
Larry Brilliant, M.D. Epidemiologist, Skoll Urgent Threats Fund?
John Brockman, Publisher & Editor, Edge?
Max Brockman, Literary Agent, Brockman, Inc.; What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science
Jason Calacanis, Internet Entrepreneur, Mahalo?
George Dyson, Science Historian; Darwin Among the Machines?
Jesse Dylan, Filmmaker, Form.tv, FreeForm.tv?
Arie Emanuel, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment?
Sam Harris, Neuroscientist, UCLA; The End of Faith?
W. Daniel Hillis, Computer Scientist, Applied Minds; Pattern On The Stone?
Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council?
Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management, Google?
Lawrence Krauss, Physicist, Origins Initiative, ASU; Hiding In The Mirror?
John Markoff, Journalist, The New York Times; What The Dormouse Said?
Katinka Matson, Cofounder, Edge; Artist, katinkamatson.com?
Elon Musk, Physicist, SpaceX, Tesla Motors?
Nathan Myhrvold, Physicist, CEO, Intellectual Ventures, LLC, The Road Ahead
Tim O’Reilly, Founder, O’Reilly Media, O’Reilly Radar
Larry Page, Co-founder, Google?
Lucy Page Southworth, Biomedical Informatics Researcher, Stanford
Sean Parker, The Founders Fund; Co-founder, Napster & Facebook
Ryan Phelan, Founder, DNA Direct
Nick Pritzker, Hyatt Development Corporation
Ed Regis, Writer; What Is Life?
Terrence Sejnowski, Computational Neurobiologist, Salk; The Computational Brain?
Maria Spiropulu, Physicist, CERN & Caltech?
Victoria Stodden, Computational Legal Scholar, Yale Law School
Richard Thaler, Behavioural Economist, U. Chicago; Nudge?
Craig Venter, Genomics Researcher; CEO, Synthetic Genomics, A Life Decoded?
Nathan Wolfe, Biologist, Global Virus Forecasting Initiative?
Alexandra Zukerman, Assistant Editor, Edge
Intro written by George Dyson: On July 24, 2009, a small group of scientists, entrepreneurs, cultural impresarios and journalists that included architects of some of the leading transformative companies of our time (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, PayPal), arrived at the Andaz Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, to be offered a glimpse, guided by George Church and Craig Venter, of a future far stranger than Mr. Huxley had been able to imagine in 1948.
In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already — life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. “We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer,” George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made.
GEORGE CHURCH, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Director, Center for Computational Genetics, and Science Advisor to 23 and Me, and J. CRAIG VENTER, Founder of Synthetic Genomics, Inc. and President of the J. Craig Venter Institute and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, taught the Edge Master Class 2009: “A Short Course In Synthetic Genomics” at The Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood, the weekend of July 24th-26th. On Saturday the 25th, the class travelled by bus to SpaceX near LAX, where Sessions 1-4 were taught by George Church. On Sunday, the Class was held at The Andaz in West Hollywood. Craig Venter taught Session 5, and George Church taught Session 6. The topics covered over the course of a rigorous 2-day program of six lectures included:
What is life, origins of life, in vitro synthetic life, mirror-life, metabolic engineering for hydrocarbons & pharmaceuticals, computational tools, electronic-biological interfaces, nanotech-molecular-manufacturing, biosensors, accelerated lab evolution, engineered personal stem cells, multi-virus-resistant cells, humanised mice, bringing back extinct species, safety/security policy.
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