Sam Kriegman is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. Sam and his students enjoy creating new kinds of simulations, robots, and AI with the ultimate goal of understanding how animals evolve, grow, move, sense, and think. Sam is a Schmidt Futures AI2050 Early Career Fellow and the recipient of the ISAL Distinguished Early-Career Investigator Award and the Cozzarelli Prize. His creation of the world's first AI-designed organisms (the "xenobots") triggered considerable global media attention and a tidal wave of public discourse, still ongoing, among scientists in several fields, science communicators, and the public.