DR. MICHAEL M. CROW is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the 16th president of Arizona State University in 2002 and has led ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformation into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
Under Crow’s leadership, ASU has established more than 30 new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched pioneering multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the nation’s first School of Sustainability and significant initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.
DR. PATRICK SOON-SHIONG is a physician and entrepreneur who serves as executive chairman and global CMO of ImmunityBio, Inc. With over 30 years of experience, he has focused on advancing cancer treatments and medical innovation, holding multiple medical and surgical degrees and fellowships. Dr. Soon-Shiong has pioneered therapies for diabetes and cancer, published over 100 scientific papers and holds more than 675 patents. In 2011, he founded NantWorks, a network of companies dedicated to advancing global health information, pharmaceutical development and digital communication. He has received numerous accolades, including the Franklin Institute’s 2016 Bower Award, and in 2018, acquired the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune.
When macro-level technology scaling reaches its physical limit, breakthroughs emerge from deep integration across entirely disparate fields. In an elite discussion, Dr. Michael Crow and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong deconstructed the rigid silos paralyzing modern research. Moving fluidly from oncology and immunological logic to quantum states and aerospace hardware, the conversation served as a masterclass in cross-disciplinary synthesis.
The dialogue touched on institutional inertia and crucially featured the public debut of a decades-in-the silicon-photonics breakthrough – space-certified lithium niobate chips – engineered to fundamentally disrupt terrestrial and orbital data architectures.
KEY INSIGHTS FROM DR. PATRICK SOON-SHIONG
On Reengineering the Defense Industrial Base Through Decentralized Innovation Hubs
“We have the big Boeings of the world, the Northrop Grummans of the world, the large defense contractors – and I get that, you need that for those massive, legacy systems. But I think the major, transformative breakthroughs are going to be made by smaller, agile teams. The traditional model of Bell Labs needs to evolve, and if we can recreate that kind of intense, innovative environment right here in El Segundo, that is exactly what we should do. We need to run symposia and build ecosystems where the public and private sectors explicitly support smaller, highly innovative tech companies.”
On the “Stealth” Deployment of Space-Certified Photonics Hardware
“We actually have had chips in space for the last three years… We’ve been spending 15 years stealthily developing a magical material called lithium niobate, which is a crystal, to move data in at the speed of light… Today we have 20,000 satellites up there, and by 2030 we’ll have 300,000. The satellites can talk to each other in what we call free space optics, and these chips will do that and then talk down to the ground, and then we’ll communicate differently.”
On Regulatory and Cultural Hurdles to Multidisciplinary Innovation
“Really it is, regulators, culture and bureaucracy, and really an absence of understanding and then… incentives [that cause roadblocks], because you know, what is one person’s innovation is another person’s obstruction. People think right now with AI we’re all going to lose our jobs. Maybe some people will, but maybe we’ll actually convert into others… I think humanity now is at the point where the technologies have reached a stage where you can make tremendous progress for all of mankind.”
KEY INSIGHTS FROM DR. MICHAEL CROW
On Balancing Reductionist Data with Systems Architecture
“One dimension is what we would call basically reductionistic science – let’s go down and figure out as best we can how nature works… screwing down to the finest particle, the smallest system. And then at the same time thinking at a systems level, going out and increasing the aperture… using the two to inform each other without becoming enslaved by the pursuit of perfection. So the enemy of progress is the pursuit of perfection.”
On Reframing the Artificial Intelligence Narrative
“There’re a lot of people that are concerned about the applications of what I still call augmented intelligence systems – as opposed to artificial intelligence, because they’re not really artificial anything. They’re just augmentations of us. They are complete manifestations of us, just at faster speed and broader context.”
On the Widening Gap Between Accelerated Science and Public Understanding
Why are we experiencing this structural issue where as science is accelerating, as the amount of biological information in the system is expanding and as aerospace complexity moves forward rapidly, the average citizen in even an educated country falls further and further behind from understanding? As knowledge becomes exponentially more scientifically sophisticated, society is experiencing an attention deficit crisis. We are working very heavily on this at the institutional level – democratizing that knowledge is a primary challenge, because we have to fix how we bridge the gap between elite technological advancements and broader public literacy.”
