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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Experts in fields such as regenerative medicine; personalized health; information and data-driven health; and neuromedicine are gathering here this week for several days of discussions about the future of medicine. Organized under the appropriate rubric of "FutureMed," leaders in these fields, plus nearly 70 paying participants, are taking part in Singularity University's first FutureMed executive program. For two years, Singularity University (SU)--created by futurist Ray Kurzweil and X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis--has been bringing people together at NASA Ames Research Center here to discuss what are called "exponentially growing" technologies--things like 3D printing, self-organizing molecular circuits, advanced robotics, and more. But over two 10-week summer courses with graduate-student level participants and several 10-day programs aimed at successful executives, the institution has spread its focus across a wide variety of disciplines. FutureMed is SU's first attempt at homing in on a single field and having top-level discussions about where that field is heading and how it may change the world.

In 2011, Rob Nail thought he was retired. Never mind that he was only 15 years out of undergrad. He had co-founded Velocity 11, a robotics company that pioneered automation technology solutions for life science laboratories, and in late 2007, he sold it to Agilent Technologies. He had joined the board of Alite Designs, had become an angel investor, and generally enjoyed himself. He elected to take one of the first executive programs at Singularity University (SU), the Silicon Valley think-tank that offers educational programs and that serves as a business incubator, founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil.