Lee Cronin (@leecronin)'s lab at the University of Glasgow does cutting-edge research into manufacturing and 3D printing complex molecules, like medicines on-demand - a breakthrough he presented at TEDGlobal 2012.He has one of the largest multidisciplinary chemistry-based research teams in the world, having raised over $35 M in grants and current income of $15 M. Lee has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals and construct chemical computers. You can listen right here on iTunesIn our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including: * How Lee believes we can create artificial life * The relationship between biology, chemistry and our understanding of the universe * What Lee's team is looking at when it comes to 3D printing medicines and molecules * The future of personalized genetic medicine * Why Lee is skeptical of artificial general intelligence * The real problem with fake news * How the scientific research funding process works and the politics involved * Why researchers need to be able to sell their ideas * The way Lee looks at problems to tackle * Why chemical computers may be a bigger deal than quantumTranscriptProducing this podcast and transcribing the episode takes tons of time and resources. If you support FringeFM and the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. If you can’t afford to support us, we completely understand as well, but an iTunes review or share on Twitter can go a long way too! Professor Cronin: Some of the smallest people appear to come from the most difficult backgrounds and so I always kind of try and spread my bets on people every student comes to my lab or any person. I always give them what I think would be a Nobel prize winning project and I think it's quite funny cause I've never won a Nobel prize and he never liked me too, but it doesn't stop me giving them one. And then when they failed to win the Nobel Prize or the Nobel project doesn't work, we're kind of surprised and I mean they make it easier and then in the end that we make it, when it still continues to fail, we go, well what can we do? And that's when suddenly I realise this. And some of my group members realize that we are really doing science, because suddenly we work out what we can do is interesting and I know if you haven’t done, and you start climbing the mountain you’re already half way up. Cause you've started and you failed to kind of, some height where people wouldn't dare to go to start with. So I love being ambitious and I don't mind failing I love to fail particularly well.Matt: I like it and if you set a huge goal is then you've still gotten pretty insignificant progress.Professor Cronin: Exactly and that's why I think humanity will be fine. I mean that's all I have four big problems because someone said, why you don’t just pick one I said well four chances of winning a Nobel Prize is better than one.Matt: We're living in the era of exponential technologies and today's guest is at the forefront of several of these fields today. We have professor Lee Cronin on the program. Lee's lab at the University of Glasgow is doing cutting edge research into the manuf...

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