Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication
🆒 What's better than a 3D printer or a CNC mill? A 3D printer AND a CNC mill, all in one.
📱👖 Only 40% of the front pockets on womens' pants can fit a standard smartphone!
🙌🏾 Kickstarter and Autodesk teamed up to create the ultimate printer test partso that we can finally call BS on those too-good-to-be-true 3D printer crowdfunding campaigns. Yes, there have been other "benchmark" prints in the past, but the backing by two major players in the additive manufacturing community could help take this one over the top.
🚇 The MTA has recently Launched the Transit Tech Lab with the vision of bringing in entrepreneurs and innovators to help develop the next generation of technologies to help improve mass transit in NYC. Spencer Wright, of The Prepared has some thoughts about this that pretty much 1:1 reflect my own.
🐍🤖 This robotic, ladder-climbing snake has been called both "the thing of nightmares" and "mezmerizing". Two kinds of people, I guess...
Software and Programming
📺 Netflix will let viewers "choose their own adventure" in an episode of Black Mirror coming out in December.
💸 Starting a startup and not sure how much it's worth? Try out Equidam, a comprehensive tool for calculating your valuation that was shown to me by M&D readers and Skinno Co-Founders Lisa and Christina.
🔊 When we talk, the sound waves that come out of our mouth don't just vibrate listeners' ears -- they vibrate everything around us. Using both high-speed and commodity (think smartphone) digital cameras, researchers from MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe were able to detect and listen to these vibrations bouncing off of objects like potato chip bags and plant leaves. Oh, and did I mention they detected these sound vibrations from the other side of sound-proof glass? It's never been easier to be spied on -- cool tech, with creepy implications.
🤵 What if your favorite actors and musicians were immortal? What if they also never aged? High resolution 3D scanning and data archiving is beginning to make this a reality - in Hollywood, for now. If what they did to Samuel L. Jackson in the upcoming Captain Marvel movie is anything to go by, we may never need another generation of actors.
Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine
🤖 When a robot commits medical malpractice, who do you blame?
🌉 Currently, if you want to travel up Norway's coast, you have to take the E39 highway, which winds along and around fjords and requires up to 7 ferry crossings. To modernize and speed up this coastal route, Norway is undertaking an ambitious construction projects to span the entire length with a continuous highway. As you might imagine, building highways through Scandinavian fjords requires some pretty impressive engineering, much of it being attempted for the first time ever. (Via The Prepared)
🔮 A report by the World Economic Forum on the future of jobs estimates that over 50% of all work may be automated by 2025.
👷♂️ If that WEF forecast is true, then it's important we engage the workersthose robots will be displacing.
💔 For years, the prevailing convention in cardiology was that you were more likely to suffer a sudden cardiac arrest on Monday mornings. New research shows that there actually isn't any bias towards Monday mornings and you're actually equally at risk any day or time... great?
Mapping, History, and Data Science
⚔ For this issue, I'm dedicating this section entirely to a collection of Youtube series by Indy Neidell that cover World Wars I and II as well as the interwarperiod. Both World War series play out in real time - that is, the episode is published on the date of the events its covering (so by this point Germany has already invaded Poland and we're a little more than a month into WWII). The series go into much more detail than your history textbooks ever did and will for many, I'm sure, provide a deeper picture of some of the most pivotal decades in human history. You can be sure I'll be following along diligently.
Events and Opportunities
I continue to stand by my Sam Jackson quote this week, especially since he got a shoutout earlier in the Software section:
Saturday, 10/20 Interested in what the future of biomedical innovation holds? Want to meet the rest of the NYC biotechnology community? Then check out the 2018 Future of Care conference at the Rockefeller University. (I'm not sure if registration is till open, but it's worth a shot to check)
Tuesday & Wednesday, 10/23-10/24 Mount Sinai holds their annual SinaInnovations conference focusing on breakthroughs in translational medicine and innovative biomedical technologies.
Thursday 10/25 Running concurrent with their annual meeting, the Galien Forum (also known as the Nobel of pharma) is holding a MedStartUp program to foster innovative collaborations between the private sector and academia.
Thursday, 10/25 JLABS @ NYC is fully up and running and hosting tons of events to bring together the NYC biotech startup community. Their next event is a special mixer for entrepreneurs and innovators.
Thursday, 10/25 Join Futureworks at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center for Publication to Profit: an evening with researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry specialists discussing their experiences andstrategies to commercialization of their products.
Thursday, 10/25 Interested in careers in Data Science but unsure of how to make the transition? GRO Biotech and the Insight Data Science fellowship program are teaming up to host an event all about applying your skills towards finding a job in this rapidly growing field.
Tuesday, 10/30 NYC's preeminent digital health innovation group, HITLAB, will be presenting at General Assembly about how to scale andAI Health Tech company.
Thursday, 11/1 SBIR and STTR grants area great way to secure non-dilutive funding to help drive research at small tech startups. Learn about how you can put together a winning proposal from the NY Center for Biotechnology at BioLabs.
Thursday, 11/1 New Lab and JLABS team up to present a new quarterly discussion series: Existential Medicine. The first edition will focus on regenerative medicine and feature some of the notable biotech companies in the NYC area working on growing organs. RSVP using code "NewLab2018"
Some other upcoming events to keep on your radar...
Saturday, 11/3 Hot Glass Cold Beer returns to Gowanus glass-blowing shop Brooklyn Glass. For the $25 admission, you get a hand-made glass, unlimited beer, and arguably more access to the shop than you should (please do not burn yourself).
Wednesday, 11/7 The Translational Therapeutics Accelerator at Columbia Medical Center is holding an all-day event featuring speakers from both academia and industry, sharing best practices to successfully advance early-stage science to clinical applications.
Thursday, 11/15 Innovation Forum, a network of startups, scientists, andaspiring entrepreneurs, is holding their inaugural New York event at Cornell Medical College.
Friday, 11/16 SciViz NYC, a design and data visualization conference unlike any other, returns for its 3rd year at Mount Sinai. A melding of science, art, and design, I can't recommend this conference enough.
Thursday, 11/29 Andrei Iancu, the head of the US Patent and Trademark office visits Columbia University to talk IP, commercialization, and a host of other topics.
Friday, 11/30 Applications are due for the NYC Media Lab's Combine startup accelerator program. Accepted teams receive a $10,000 grant to do customer discovery and build out their business model, with the opportunity to secure and additional $25,000 to help start a company andinitiate commercialization.
Monday, 12/3 I can't believe it's already been this long, but Genspace, one of the cities first biotech incubators, turns 10 this year and is holding a big birthday bash at Caveat in the LES. Join the NY biodesign community for this celebration of a major milestone.
Thursday, 12/18 The NYC Biotech ecosystem is quickly gaining ground on Boston and the Bay Area, but it still isn't easy. NYC is, was, andalways will be a tough place to start a company, but that's not all bad. Join Xconomy at the Alexandria Center for Life Sciences to learn what it takes to launch a startup in New York. After all, "if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere."
Ongoing: Check out the Futureworks Ops21 courses being offered on the latest trends in advanced manufacturing.
Map of the Month
🍂 Fall is here. Find out when the trees will start changing colors near you.
Odds & Ends
⏳ The NYPL has recently released a set of historical photos that let you have Google Street View on 5th Avenue, over 100 years ago.