Hidden Intelligence

This talk explores how data-driven approaches move beyond prediction to reveal underlying structure—identifying patterns, equations, and mechanisms directly from observations. Through intuitive examples, it illustrates how algorithms can “rediscover” known physical laws and suggest new ones in settings where theory is incomplete. The goal is to highlight both the promise and the limitations of this paradigm, addressing questions of interpretability, robustness, and scientific insight.

Your gut is in constant conversation with your brain. Through the gut–microbiome–brain axis, trillions of microbes in your intestines interact with your nervous and immune systems, influencing how you feel and how your body functions. But how does this communication actually work, and what role does it play in disease? In this talk, we will explore the science behind this complex feedback loop, the evidence linking it to health and illness, and what factors such as diet, stress, sleep, medication, and probiotics may really do for your gut. We will also look at what is hype, what is solid science, and how close we are to truly personalised microbiome-based treatments.

When Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened, a series of deaths fuelled the legend of a deadly curse but could the deaths have in fact have been caused by a highly virulent and long-lived pathogen? This story inspired a scientific idea in evolutionary biology: the “curse of the pharaoh” hypothesis. The hypothesis takes the story as an analogy to explain how very ling lived parasites can sometimes evolve to become deadly.
Most pathogens rely on living hosts to spread, so there’s a limit to how much harm they can do—kill the host too fast, and transmission stops. But some pathogens, like anthrax, can form long-lived spores and survive in the environment. They don’t need a healthy host to keep spreading.
In theory, this means they can afford to be much more deadly. But in reality, some are lethal while others are not. Why? That’s the puzzle we’re trying to solve.