Nature’s Hardware Store: Building the Future with Biology

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Lynn Rothschild

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What if the solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges — on Earth and beyond — have already been invented by nature? In this forward-looking talk, evolutionary biologist and astrobiologist Dr. Lynn Rothschild explores how life’s patterns, materials, and mechanisms, refined over billions of years, can serve as a blueprint for building better futures on Earth and other planets.

Drawing on insights from deep time, Dr. Rothschild will open the doors to “Nature’s hardware store” — a vast, largely untapped reservoir of biological strategies available to scientists, engineers, and innovators. From self-healing materials and bio-inspired architecture to regenerative systems for space exploration, she reveals how biology is shaping the frontiers of technology and inspiring bold, surprisingly practical solutions to complex problems.

Grounded in astrobiology and evolutionary insight, this talk invites us to rethink innovation through the lens of life itself and to explore what’s possible when we tap into nature’s storehouse of intelligence to solve the challenges of tomorrow.

Dr. Lynn J. Rothschild is a research scientist at NASA Ames and Adjunct Professor at Brown University and Stanford University working in astrobiology, evolutionary biology and synthetic biology. Rothschild's work focuses on the origin and evolution of life on Earth and in space, and in pioneering the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration.

From 2011 through 2019 Rothschild served as the faculty advisor of the award-winning Stanford-Brown iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machine Competition) team, exploring innovative technologies such as biomining, mycotecture, BioWires, making a biodegradable UAS (drone) and an astropharmacy. Rothschild is a past-president of the Society of Protozoologists, fellow of the Linnean Society of London, The California Academy of Sciences and the Explorer’s Club and lectures and speaks about her work widely.

Our mission at is to foster long-term thinking and responsibility. Through our Long Now Talks series which began in 02003 and features speakers from around the world, we hope to ignite cultural imagination around long-term thinking. The talks are filmed live in San Francisco, and we release podcasts and videos from them which are publicly available online.

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