Do Computers Get Sick? How Humans and Computers Fight Viruses - Robin May & Victoria Baines

00:00 // Introduction: Human vs Computer Immunity
01:00 // How Humans Get Sick & What Viruses Do
04:00 // Computer Viruses: Origins and Examples
07:30 // How Viruses Hijack Cells & Go Latent
13:30 // Latent Threats in Cybersecurity: Trojans & Ransomware
20:00 // When Cyber Threats Impact Physical Health
24:00 // How the Immune System Detects Viruses
29:30 // Antivirus Software and Prevention Strategies
36:00 // Cybersecurity as a Public Health Issue
40:00 // Future Solutions: CRISPR, Self-Healing Software & Vaccine Updates
49:00 // Conclusion: Learning Across Disciplines

Watch the Q&A session here:    • Q&A: Do Computers Get Sick? How Humans and...  

Whether you are human or computer, viruses can ruin your day, so taking steps to avoid them is important. This lecture will ask whether there are similarities between human immunity and computer immunity? Can we use discoveries in one system to help protect against infections in the other? Might we one day take our laptops for regular vaccinations, or run a ‘software update’ on our own immune systems to avoid an emerging pathogen?

This lecture was recorded by Robin May & Victoria Baines on 7th May 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Robin is Gresham Professor of Physic.

He is also Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham.

Victoria is IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology.

Victoria is a Senior Research Associate of the Intellectual Forum at Jesus College, Cambridge, a Senior Research Fellow of the British Foreign Policy Group, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. She is also Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University’s School of Computing, a former Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, and was a guest lecturer at Stanford University in 2019 and 2020. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford and holds a doctorate from the University of Nottingham. She serves on the Safety Advisory Board of Snapchat, the Advisory Board of cybersecurity provider Reliance Cyber, and is a trustee of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/d...

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