COL Matt Hepburn, Program Manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), discusses how by pursuing a host-centric view of combatting infectious disease, it may be possible to circumvent treatment of specific pathogens. The talk was part of a two-day event held by BTO to bring together leading-edge technologists, start-ups, industry, and academic researchers to look at how advances in engineering and information sciences can be used to drive biology for technological advantage.