This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Larry Greenmeyer. Got a minute?

You might expect the U.S. Secretary of Defense to say the biggest innovations he's following involve weapon systems or robotics or artificial

intelligence. But current defense secretary Ashton Carter is looking at biology, especially

in regard to how biological science can inform the development

of technology to save the lives of military personnel.

I actually believe that in the era to come that would be the biosciences, that would be most consequential for humankind.

And like all technologies, they'll be used for good or for ill.

And our job is to make sure that the uses for good outweigh the uses for ill.

But I think if you had to just pick up a frontier, you'd have to call that one as the one that we will look back on.

Future Secretaries of Defense, future generations,

from saying, were we part of that awakening in that revolution and I hope the answer that yes.

Carter spoke at a recent meeting called the Wait What Conference in St. Louis that was sponsored

by Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

DARPA hopes its Life Sciences research can improve the health and readiness of combat forces,

advanced battlefield medicine, and help understand and treat dramatic brain injury. of Combat Forces, Advanced Battlefield Medicine,

and help understand and treat traumatic brain injury.

Such work would have obvious civilian application as well,

as would research into infectious disease. The Defense Department showed just how serious it is about

bioscience last year when Darper launched its Biological Technologies Office. At the

Wait What Conference, Air Force Colonel Dan Wattendorf, a biological technology's office program

manager and a clinical geneticist, talked about ways to head off the spread of infectious

diseases.

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