Across disciplines, science is beginning to construct a coherent narrative of our existence – from the birth of galaxies to the molecular origins of life and the biology of aging. How do galaxies evolve to create the conditions that made life possible? As we detect ever more potentially habitable worlds, are we approaching the first real evidence of life-compatible chemical signatures on exoplanets? If life emerges where chemistry permits, can we understand the transition from simple molecules to self-replicating systems capable of evolution? And as we decode the mechanisms of aging, must life culminate in death, or might even this boundary one day be understood, and perhaps reshaped? And if so, is it even desirable?

Moderator: Thomas Perlmann