If you ever have the chance
to go back in time and change history
don't worry about whatever might happen
in the upcoming election, there are much
bigger fish to fry.
Go back three billion years, to the biggest 
mistake in evolutionary history. Three billion years
ago, chlorophyll — the light
absorbing molecule in plants that
powered photosynthesis — popped into 
existence, and from there all of our troubles
stemmed. While the rate at which plants photosynthesized food and fuels from
carbon dioxide and sunlight has 
sufficed for the last three billion years.
Within the last 100 years we've become
acutely aware that plant struggle to
feel our exponentially growing
population. And chlorophyll's inability to
absorb a lot of sunlight is 
largely to blame. At best
chlorophyll only absorbs 12 percent of the
sun's energy and in actuality, plants
generally muster efficiency in the range of less than one percent. Obviously this is no longer good enough. In
contrast, modern day solar panels
now average efficiencies in the range of
15 to 20 percent, although they do remain
fairly expensive to produce. If you have
the chance to go back in time 
and change history
fix chlorophyll.
But barring that magical ability you may
turn to the amalgamation of chemistry
and biology that is my research. Over the
past few years I developed an
alternative, better version of photosynthesis 
called artificial photosynthesis.
Rather than rely on inefficient
chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, I've taught
bacteria how to grow and cover their bodies
with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals
which are much more efficient than
chlorophyll and can be grown at a
fraction of the cost of manufacturing
conventional solar panels. Once covered
with these essentially tiny solar panels
these bacterial army will grow, and photosynthesize food, fuels, pharmaceuticals and plastics. All
utilizing solar energy. These bacteria
already outperform natural
photosynthesis and as I teach them to
grow different types of solar panels
these bacteria's efficiencies are only
expected to go higher. These cyborg
bacteria, this combination of chemistry
and biology, living and non-living, serves
as the first step and there lies an
alternative and arguably better
evolutionary history. One in which we are
not limited by chlorophyll's inefficiencies, and one that
will allow us to grow and evolve for many
generations to come. With the power to
will both chemistry and biology in tandem
to readdress historical and evolutionary
missteps, the question now becomes 
what do we fix next. Thank you.
