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>> i can say one other thing? that story is not always told. >> as an lgbtq girl who was actually kicked out of college for being gay, i would have never thought i'd be standing on this stage doing something like this. thank you. >> she was told not only can you not pursue your scientific dreams, not even giving you a degree, a solution to one of the biggest problems in the world and it almost didn't happen because of who she is. >> for all of the people who still say no, they, you know, we'll do it first in pigs and then we'll go to people. every day we don't get there, somebody else dies. it...

It's about connection. it's alive. >> this idea that you could start to construct that. >> right. >> in some ways, the biological sort of challenge of that is extraordinary. >> doris taylor is an innovator. she's trying to do something that everyone said was impossible, grow new human hearts. individualized, personalized, waiting for people, thousands of people who need heart transplants and simply can't get them. >> so we use a fake heart. we basically use the equivalent of baby shampoo and put it through the vessels in the heart and what was left was a scaffold of what we call a ghost heart....

Were doing this for, building this heart. would it be my heart, ultimately? >> i will build you a personalized heart if you need a heart. i would take cells from your blood or your skin. i would make them into stem cells. i would then grow the billions of cells we need and put your cells on that scaffold and we'd cover every surface of that scaffold with your cells and we teach it how to grow up and become a heart that matches your body. >> i think this whole idea of teaching cells -- it's hard to get your head around. >> when you go out and jog, aren't you teaching the cells in your leg to ge...

You can't invent this stuff, although we kind of did. [ laughter ] >> i'm going to tell you about a 20-year journey that many people told me couldn't be done. i always just check the news on my phone and i was, like, oh, my goodness. ghost heart, what could that be? >> 26-year-old mikaela powell had a heart transplant herself. it saved her life, but it's not the personalized heart doris is describing. mikaela is on a daily regimen of anti-rejection drugs worried that one day her body might reject her donated organ. >> i was just insanely inspired by that video. it touched me so much that i had...

Ultimately? >> i will build you a personalized heart if you need a heart. i would take cells from your blood or your skin. i would make them into stem cells. i would then grow the billions of cells we need and put your cells on that scaffold and we'd cover every surface of that scaffold with your cells and we teach it how to grow up and become a heart that matches your body. >> i think this whole idea of teaching cells -- it's hard to get your head around. >> when you go out and jog, aren't you teaching the cells in your leg to get stronger? it's basically what i'm doing, too, i'm just using a...