COM Dean Cochairs World Economic Forum’s Top Technologies Report
DiChristina hopes the list will help leaders deal with the “rapid pace of change”
Before Mariette DiChristina became the dean of COM, she was editor of one of the nation’s most prestigious science magazines—in many ways the perfect choice to cochair the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies report, which details technologies expected to “achieve real-world impact within 3–5 years.” As she’s done since 2016, DiChristina this year again cochaired the steering committee who created “The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025” report.
DiChristina (’86) calls herself a “techno-optimist”—but she stresses that the responsible use of innovative technologies requires both learning about them and then carefully discussing their potential impacts with stakeholders. That’s the role the World Economic Forum report, developed in collaboration with Frontiers, attempts to play.
“What I hope for the world is that we at least can discuss new innovations and both be critical of them and think about how we can best use them—considering both the things that can go wrong as well as the things that can go right,” says DiChristina, who was editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine before returning to COM in 2019. “I do believe in a positive trajectory for us as humans. But we need to stay open, and we need to take the time that it takes to talk to each other and bring everybody along.”
COMtalk spoke with DiChristina about her work on the 2025 report and why she thinks it is important.
Q&A
With Mariette DiChristina
COMtalk: What is the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report?
Mariette DiChristina: The goal of the report is to provide foresight to leaders the world over. How do you navigate science and technological change? How do we make the best use of these changes so that we are avoiding risk and also taking advantage of opportunities to help make the world a better place? The World Economic Forum has existed for a number of decades now, and that’s its mission: to bring people together to talk about global issues and define paths forward in an international way. The Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report started 13 years ago as a tool for business leaders, for policy leaders, for experts, technologists and researchers. The 10 technologies have serious investment going into them by multiple companies and in multiple places. They’re on the cusp of being extremely impactful.
COMtalk: What did your cochairing duties entail?
Mariette DiChristina: Since 2016, I have partnered with an amazing scholar and researcher and technologist named Bernard Meyerson, who is currently the chief innovation officer emeritus at IBM. The process starts with expert analysis about rising use of different terms in the scientific literature. And then we take nominations from more than 300 experts. Then comes the job of winnowing. We start with removing the obvious ones: if a nomination was touched on in previous editions, is not poised for massive growth, or is too duplicative of past themes. We also want items to be useful, cutting across a bunch of industries. That whole process takes a couple of months to run through. The most fun part, where the rubber meets the road, is that the committee then looks at all the data. What do we feel—as an expert community of observers and participants in these fields—will be most impactful?
COMtalk: What are a few examples of technologies or innovations you correctly predicted in the past?
Mariette DiChristina: One of my favorite examples is the mRNA technologies. We highlighted mRNA several years before that suite of innovations was used to create COVID-19 vaccines and also the CRISPR-Cas9 [gene editing]. Those two things we absolutely called ahead and then saw a really significant impact. [And here’s an interesting graphic of how both techs led to this year’s “engineered living therapeutics” entry.] We also had multiple types of AI nominations over the years, from the earliest days of the steering committee, and now we’re seeing it integrated in every way, throughout our lives. Many of the things that we’ve picked—now 130 items over the 13 years—have been significant at one level or another.
COMtalk: What did you learn putting together the 2025 report?
Mariette DiChristina: One thing that really struck me is how increasingly networked everything is. There is a lot of interconnectivity and convergence in this year’s list. For instance, one of the items is collaborative sensing. The notion behind it is that there are sensors, some passive, some active, sprinkled throughout the environment. Sensing is also applied in another item from this year, autonomous biochemical sensing. Another one of the nominations is engineered living therapeutics that go in your body and deliver medications.
As I look at the list over the years, I see some themes come up frequently. One is innovations that help us in living better, longer. Sometimes it’s a new type of innovation, like engineered living therapeutics. Sometimes it’s a novel application of an existing therapeutic agent. For instance, this year we included a new use for GLP-1s, better known for weight loss, to potentially help manage neurodegenerative diseases. Another theme: how are we going to feed more people in a sustainable way? This year, we have green nitrogen fixation, which aims to cut energy needed for fertilizing crops. Energy also comes up year in year, year out; this year, the list includes advanced nuclear technologies. And connecting all of those innovations is information, more rapidly shared, and more managed by increasingly sophisticated AI systems. This year, one of our information category items was generative watermarking. We’ve all heard of watermarking a photo to see, is it owned by somebody else but being misused? Could we somehow watermark our various AI files, or files manipulated by AI?
COMtalk: Why is this information important for people to have?
Mariette DiChristina: I think it’s both about taking maximal advantage of opportunities to help people and also about avoiding risks. Let’s face it, the rapid pace of change is overwhelming us all. It’s overwhelming institutions, it’s overwhelming policy leaders, it’s overwhelming business leaders. We need some help from the experts to see through all of the things that are happening at such a rapid pace. And when I think about Boston University and our own interest in convergent themes, I note that these are themes that could help the world solve challenging situations. For example, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are aimed at solving challenging situations facing humanity, but we can’t do any of it just with physics, or just with biology or chemistry. Fields come together to create these amazing innovations. I’m really proud that Boston University is right there when it comes to bringing amazing innovations through convergent themes. Reports like the “Top 10” then crystallize those themes into: How can we apply them to help us live better, longer, eat well, manage our energy needs, and take care of the environment, so it’s as good for our children as it was for our grandparents? The world is a complicated place. Reports like this help break it down and make it more understandable and make it easier for us to respond in positive ways.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
