Disability is an impairment, but an impairment is not necessarily a disability. The interaction of an impairment with the social barriers that surround you may or may not turn that impairment into a disability. For example; I am a wheelchair user, and If I see a building in front of me with three steps, I cannot get into it. If I cannot get into it, it's not because I'm on a wheelchair; it's because the building has 3 steps. If the same building had a ramp, my wheelchair would not be an impairment and I could easily get into the building.

We always have this mix in each area, but people tend to categorise creativity by discipline rather than by the individuals within those disciplines.

Choosing not to rely on outside funding offers greater freedom overall. While there's significant sacrifice upfront, about 10 years down the line, you begin to truly value the autonomy it provides.

My colleague Jerry Joyce once chaired a NASA committee that defined life in a practical sense, as a self-sustaining chemical system with the potential for Darwinian evolution (the hallmark of biology). That's a perfectly adequate operational definition that is appropriate for research into the origins of life. Obviously it has nothing to do with consciousness, or even the experience of being alive.

Change proceeds at the speed of trust. Building this trust, particularly in the context of AI and synthetic biology, starts with open information exchange, discussion, and dialogue. It's about creating a shared understanding of our capabilities, responsible deployment of technology, and acknowledging the associated risks.

Projects often don't just go wrong; they start wrong. The seeds of failure are often sown right at the beginning, leading to problems later on. Recognising this, successful project leaders invest in thorough planning and simulation upfront, understanding that a project's success is largely determined by how it starts.

It's not enough to lead yourself, you need to tune into the people you work with- the people that you know- your family. You need to pick up non-verbal cues, facial expressions, tone of voice.

One of the simplest but hardest things to do is to be honest with ourselves. We are works-in-progress from the day we're born, till the day we die. You should never, ever, stop working on yourself.

Control and leverage are two-dimensional concepts that can lead you to leaving money on the table. By trying to get control you can drive deals away but if you know that the other side is control-oriented? You can get all the leverage by saying, 'wow… you're so powerful, you're in charge… you have all the leverage…' and once you know that's what turns the other side on? You can get them to give you want ever you want!

They should foster a culture where bad news is welcomed, not just good news. Unfortunately, many leaders shy away from negative updates. However, if a leader inadvertently suppresses bad news, creating a culture where the messenger is punished, it results in a dysfunctional governance structure.

Trying to figure out how we fit into the cosmos is old, it's a basic human question.

We have a very strange relationship with empire, a combination of selective amnesia and nostalgia. The amnesia comes from the fact we mostly identify as the nation that won World War 2 not as the nation which had the greatest empire in human history. That helps us forget that there was at least a century where we were quite massively white supremacist and sometimes genocidal.