Episode 23: When Biologists Start Thinking Like Engineers

This week, we sit down with Katie Lennon, CSO of Exthymic, who makes a case most bench scientists aren't ready to hear: biology isn't just a discovery discipline anymore. It's engineering. Katie walks us through what it actually looks like to build biology, hardware, and software concurrently, why that requires a shared language across disciplines, and what gets lost when teams hand off instead of collaborate.We also get into the unglamorous side of AI in the lab. More data documentation, peer-checking metadata before an experiment is marked complete, and knowing exactly where LLMs quietly get things wrong. Katie also shares a surprisingly effective strategy for getting scientists over their fear of AI tools. Companies mentioned in the show: https://exthymic.com/https://oni.bio/https://www.potato.ai/https://ollie.ai/-------------------Sign up for KAMI Think Tank's Maven course here! Classes start in less than 10 days!!