Andrew Hessel is inviting us into his world of synthetic biology where we're moving from developing tools allowing to modify genetic codes to tools allowing us to write entire genomes. He shares how we 're entering an era allowing us to program cells from scratch, how powerful it is and how important it is that we're get involved. Andrew Hessel is a distinguished research scientist with design software giant Autodesk Inc. in their Life Sciences group, which develops software for engineering molecular and living systems. He’s also the CEO of Humane Genomics, which is developing engineered nanoparticles for applications that include therapeutics, vaccines, and gene therapies. Andrew is on the leadership team of GP-write, the international effort to design, build, and test large like the human genome in cell culture. He is a fellow at the University of Ottawa, Institute for Science, Society, and Policy and faculty at Singularity University. His talks and articles help people appreciate and understand the rapid changes happening in life technologies. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx