Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Breaking the Wall of Matter and Sound: If a Virus Could Sing

Markus Buehler

Art & Science

Life is built from proteins, like the cells in our skin, hair, eyes, and also viruses. We have developed am approach to exploit the quantum properties of proteins to translate them to sound, and use it to better understand biomaterials, and treat diseases. Based on the similarities between the structure of life and music we design new proteins through composition of music, offering a means to materialize sound. Examples of including a musical translation of the COVID-19 pathogen are shown.

Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Covid-19, Education, Engineering, Environment & Nature, Foresight, Global Cooperation, Resilience

Markus Buehler

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Markus J. Buehler is a material scientist and composer of experimental music, and the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT. His work focuses on bio-inspired materials, to create materials with architectural features from the nano- to the macro-scale. Much of his research deals with protein materials – the basic constituent of life – rendering materials such as cells or blood vessels, but also spider silk and viruses. His work seeks to understand the means by which nature creates materials, with applications in bio-inspired engineering, breaking boundaries between science and art.

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