Join Alexander Rives as he demystifies the cutting-edge realm of protein language models. Over the past five years, Alex and his team have been at the forefront of developing AI systems capable of interpreting the language of life itself. In this talk, he will explore the evolution of the ESM family of models, their applications in biotechnology, and their potential to revolutionize our understanding of biological systems. This session promises to provide an intriguing venture into artificial intelligence and molecular biology, illuminating how these tools are reshaping scientific discovery, enabling protein sequence understanding and generation with LLMs, and future possibilities for programmable biology.