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I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine

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and chief of scientific visualization

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at Yale University

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in the department of medicine.

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And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code

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for NASA to do virtual surgery

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in preparation for the astronauts going into deep spaceflight,

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so they could be kept in robotic pods.

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One of the fascinating things about what we were actually working on

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is that we were seeing, using new kinds of scanning technologies,

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things that had just never been seen before --

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I mean, not only in disease management,

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but also things that allowed us to see things about the body

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that just made you marvel.

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I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen.

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And your entire body, everything --

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your hair, skin, bone, nails --

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everything is made of collagen.

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And it's a kind of rope-like structure

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that twirls and swirls like this.

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And the only place that collagen changes its structure

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is in the cornea of your eye.

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In your eye,

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it becomes a grid formation,

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and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque.

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So perfectly organized a structure,

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it was hard not to attribute divinity to it.

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Because we kept on seeing this over and over and over again

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in different parts of the body.

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One of the opportunities I had

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was one person was working on a really interesting

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micromagnetic resonance imaging machine with the NIH.

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And what we were going to do

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was scan a new project

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on the development of the fetus from conception to birth

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using these kinds of new technologies.

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So I wrote the algorithms in code,

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and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur --

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then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI.

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I got the data.

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And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece,

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"From Conception to Birth."

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(Music)

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Video text: "From Conception to Birth"

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Oocyte

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Sperm

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Egg Inseminated

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24 Hours: Baby's first division

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The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion ...

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And divides anew every 12 to 15 hours.

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Early Embryo

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Yolk sack still feeding Baby.

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25 Days: Heart chamber developing

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32 Days: Arms & hands are developing

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36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertabrae

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These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus.

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If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire nine months,

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it would be 1.5 tons at birth.

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45 Days

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Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's.

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51 Days

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52 Days: Developing retina, nose and fingers

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The fetus' continual movement in the womb

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is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth.

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12 Weeks: Indifferent penis --

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girl or boy yet to be determined

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8 Months

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Delivery: the expulsion stage

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The moment of birth

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(Applause)

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Alexander Tsiaras: Thank you.

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But as you can see,

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when you actually start working on this data,

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it's pretty spectacular.

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And as we kept on scanning more and more,

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working on this project,

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looking at these two simple cells

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that have this kind of unbelievable machinery

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that will become the magic of you.

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And as we kept on working on this data,

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looking at small clusters of the body,

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these little pieces of tissue

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that were a trophoblast coming off of a blastocyst,

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all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus,

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saying, "I'm here to stay."

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All of a sudden having conversation and communications

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with the estrogens, the progesterones,

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saying, "I'm here to stay, plant me,"

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building this incredible trilinear fetus

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that becomes, within 44 days,

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something that you can recognize,

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and then at nine weeks

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is really kind of a little human being.

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The marvel of this information:

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How do we actually have this biological mechanism

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inside our body

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to actually see this information?

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I'm going to show you something pretty unique.

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Here's a human heart at 25 [weeks].

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It's just basically two strands.

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And like this magnificent origami,

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cells are developing

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at one million cells per second at four weeks,

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as it's just folding on itself.

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Within five weeks, you can start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles.

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Six weeks, these folds are now beginning

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with the papilla on the inside of the heart

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actually being able to pull down

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each one of those valves in your heart

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until you get a mature heart --

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and then basically the development of the entire human body.

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The magic of the mechanisms

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inside each genetic structure

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saying exactly where that nerve cell should go --

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the complexity of these mathematical models

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of how these things are indeed done

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are beyond human comprehension.

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Even though I am a mathematician,

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I look at this with marvel

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of how do these instruction sets

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not make these mistakes

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as they build what is us?

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It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity.

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Then you start to take a look at adult life.

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Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries.

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It's just a tiny sub-substructure, microscopic.

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But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth,

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you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels

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inside your body.

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I mean, and only one mile is visible.

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59,999 miles

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that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away.

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The complexity of building that within a single system

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is, again, beyond any comprehension

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or any existing mathematics today.

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And that instruction set,

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from the brain to every other part of the body --

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look at the complexity of the folding.

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Where does this intelligence

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of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information,

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so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow --

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and this is one of the things that we're doing right now.

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We're actually doing the launch of two new studies

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of actually scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born.

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Every six months until they're six years old --

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we're going to be doing actually to about 250 children --

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watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold

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to see how this magnificent development

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actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.

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And it's not just our own existence,

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but how does the woman's body understand

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to have genetic structure that not only builds her own,

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but then has the understanding

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that allows her to become

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a walking immunological, cardiovascular system

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that basically is a mobile system

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that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel

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that is beyond, again, our comprehension --

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the magic that is existence, that is us?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)