Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

2025-26 Allen School Distinguished Lecture Series
Title: Accelerating Science with AI
Speaker: Kevin Weil (OpenAI)
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026

Abstract: In just a few years, LLMs have gone from solving school-level problems to contributing to frontier mathematics, theoretical physics, and autonomous biological experimentation. I’ll share what that progress looks like, where it is already changing the pace of discovery, and what still separates today’s systems from the highest levels of scientific invention. The big idea is simple: AI will not replace scientists, but it will give them superpowers — accelerating the path from question to insight, and perhaps letting us do the science of 2050 in 2030 instead.

Bio: Kevin Weil is VP of OpenAI for Science, focused on building the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery. Previously, Kevin served as the Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, where he led the teams turning frontier models into products like ChatGPT, Codex, and the OpenAI API.

Before joining OpenAI, Kevin was the President, Product and Business at Planet Labs. He was previously the co-founder of the Libra cryptocurrency and VP of Product for Novi at Facebook, VP of Product at Instagram and SVP of Product at Twitter. Earlier in his career, Kevin held software engineering and data science roles at Cooliris, Tropos Networks, Microsoft Research and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Kevin graduated summa cum laude in physics and mathematics from Harvard University and has an M.S. in physics from Stanford University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and serves on the boards of Cisco and The Nature Conservancy. In his spare time, he is an avid ultramarathon runner, racing distances up to 100 miles.

This video is closed captioned.