I think my formative experiences were really in junior high, where at a typical public school we were doing little genetic experiments, very classic experiments.

I've always been a serious computer nerd, as well as a biologist.

I'm really focused on my research almost 100 percent. That, and my family and kids.

It turns out that viruses evolve from each other, like everything else. So if you look at the evolutionary tree of viruses, you can find parts of their genome that haven't changed over evolutionary time. You can recognize what may be a new virus by identifying this little piece of their genome that hasn't changed and is represented on the chip.

In '83, not only was there no such thing as performance motion capture technology, there was no such thing as digital animation. This was the analog era.

We need a number of solutions - we need more efficiency and conservation. Efficiency is a big one. I think car companies need to do a lot better in producing more efficient cars. They have the technology, we just need to demand them as consumers.

When technology reaches that level of invisibility in our lives, that's our ultimate goal. It vanishes into our lives. It says, 'You don't have to do the work; I'll do the work.'

When I was in Japan on tour in 2010, I felt like I was 30 years into the future. I love technology and they are so advanced with their phones, computers, everything. I think they had the iPhone way before we did in the U.S. I love gadgets, games, social media and I try to stay ahead on all that stuff, but they get it all first.