Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication
⚙ Last week's issue of The Prepared featured Boltcutter, a list of hardware VC fund Bolt's favorite shop tools. It's a who's-who of tools that I think everyone should have in their workshop and I'm proud to say I personally have many of the tools listed.
⚙ This plotter artwork is great for people like me: who can't draw, but have lots of tools and machines.
What do you do when you have to machine a part, but it's made out of highly radioactive fuel rods?
Hero dogs like Lassie are all well and good on the TV, but if a random dog (or even a dog you knew) was barking at you with no apparent danger or trouble in sight, would you "listen" to them and follow? Maybe not, and that's where a new vest designed to give dogs the power to "speak" comes in.
Software and Programming
🔈🔉🔊 It's easy to make a user-friendly volume adjust, but a user-unfriendly one? Well, that's much harder (and more fun... at least until you lose it and throw your computer against the wall.)
A problem unique to the 21st century: What do you do when a computer thinks your last name is "offensive"?
A modern version of the Linux operating system, running on a very not-modern version of a Toshiba laptop.
Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine
Stellarium: a free, open-source planetarium for your computer.
For a while, we've thought heart disease was a relatively new issue. Recent scans of mummies, however, are telling a different story.
🪐 The hottest new Soundcloud artist? NASA's InSight Mars lander.
Mapping, History, and Data Science
From The Prepared: How Civil War-era legislation is driving multibillion dollar IT investments today.
You've heard of VHS v. Betamax, HDDVD v. Blu-Ray... Now you can add Wi-Fi v. HomeRF to the list of behind-the-scenes tech standards wars that ended up shaping the very fabric of our society.
⚙ I wasn't totally sure where to put this, since it very much involves software, hardware, and engineering, so I decided on putting it here, since it's an important piece of history: Here is a visualization of how the Enigma Machine worked, the famous encryption device used by the Nazis in WWII and cracked, in part, by father of computing Alan Turing. The way the animation moves the "bits" of data around really captures the nature of this computing device, which was totally electromechanical.
Events and Opportunities
I don't know about you guys, but I've got a busy few weeks ahead of me...
TONIGHT, 10/4 This year's Futureworks Incubator closes out with a party and showcase down at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, featuring over 50 of the hardware and manufacturing startups that went through this year's program.
Monday, 10/7 Join GRO-Biotech and Insight Data Sciences for a talk and Q&A about different careers in data, the most suitable backgrounds for each of them, and how Insight Data Sciences can help you make the transition.
Monday, 10/7 If you don't mind being suspended over the East River for a bit, head over to Cornell Tech for the inaugural seminar in their HealthTech.NYC series, uniting engineers, clinicians, and leaders intent on disrupting and improving healthcare through technology. The first event will examine how precision medicine can be applied in the context of cancer care with speakers joining from sema4, Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, Flatiron health, and the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center. (And yes, you can take the subway to get there as well, if you're afraid of heights)
Wednesday, 10/9 In honor of National Nanotech Day (10/9 >> 10^9, for the uninitiated, myself included) the Nanotech NYC meetup group will be gathering together for their next Nanonite social, with a collection of researchers, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs, as always.
Saturday, 10/12 The next edition of Hot Glass Cold Beer returns to the Brooklyn Glass studios in Gowanus, featuring live glass blowing, open studios, and effectively endless amounts of beer. As always, getting a ticker in advance (versus at the door) means you'll be guaranteed to get one of their hand-made glasses (which you can subsequently drink out of for the rest of the night).
October 11-16 Innovation Week at Mount Sinai. What started as just the SINAInnovations conference is now a week's worth of activities dedicated to bringing New York's biomedical innovation communities together. Here's the full lineup:
Friday-Sunday, 10/11-13 Mount Sinai Health Hackathon. The 4th annual Mount Sinai Health Hackathon will be an exciting 48-hour transdisciplinary competition focused on creating novel technology solutions for problems in healthcare. This year’s theme is Artificial Intelligence – Expanding the Limits of Human Performance.
Tuesday, 10/15 Careers & Connections 2019. GRO-Biotech's next big event, the Careers & Connections mini-conference and networking event, is being held concurrently with emerging healthcare technologies conference, SINAInnovations. We have hit capacity for event RSVPs, but a wait list has been started so you should still register!
Tuesday & Wednesday, 10/15-16 SINAInnovations Conference. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is hosting its eighth annual SINAInnovations conference around the theme of Artificial Intelligence. A range of talks and panels will focus on the explosive growth of AI in our society and in particular in medicine, featuring international thought leaders across the range of relevant domains.
Tuesday, 10/15 The Careers & Connections reception ends around 7pm, which would leave you just enough time to get down to Tir Na Nog for the second half of the New York BioPharma Networking Group's October after-work gathering.
Wednesday, 10/16 Right after Careers & Connections, GRO-Biotech is hosting a fireside chat at BioLabs with Adam Wollowick from Stryker and Jack Wu from Adlai Nortye on what a career in business development looks like and how you can start a career in bizdev.
Some other upcoming events to keep on your radar...
Saturday, 10/19 New Lab's annual open house birthday celebration is back, with a theme this year of Light+Motion. As always, you can expect pretty much everyone affiliated with technology, design, science, and/or entrepreneurship to turn up for what's one of the bigger bashes of the year.
Saturday & Sunday 10/19-20 The biggest bi-annual graduate career symposium in the country is back at NYU Med showcasing all the career trajectories you can pursue post-PhD. This is one of the best opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to learn about the breadth of career paths for doctorates and an amazing place to network with the next generation of scientists. More info on the two-day conference can be found here, and the registration link is here.
Monday 10/21 It's not always science and startup events here. One of my favorite organizations, the Society for the Advancement of Social Studies (aka SASS) is back with more barroom history, this time with a focus on the spooky, scary, and ghoulish.
Wednesday, 10/23 VR investors and practitioners in the healthcare space will gather at RLab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a showcase of the latest and greatest VR technologies and applications in the healthcare space.
Wednesday, 10/23 Scientists, artists and everything in between meet up once again at Peculier Pub for the October edition of SciArt's Synapse social mixer.
Thursday, 10/24 The NYC biotech/life science/entrepreneurial communities get together at JLABS once again for the October edition of their Innovators & Entrepreneurs mixer.
Saturday, 10/26 The Future of Care conference is back at Rockefeller University featuring some of the latest breakthroughs in clinical care and the innovators helping shepherd them from bench to bedside. Applications close today!
Tuesday, 10/29 Join Columbia Nano Labs for their annual Industry Day conference. Learn how you can use and leverage the Nano Labs facilities, hear from a panel of entrepreneurs who have done just that, and listen to faculty and technical experts discuss the way these sophisticated tools contribute to cutting-edge research. (Yes, this was rescheduled from the originally planed date of 9/5.)
Thursday, 10/31 Pitching your startup in front of investors doesn't have to be spooky. The Mid Atlantic Bio Angels 1st Pitch events offer NYC's biotech entrepreneurs the chance to pitch their innovations in front of a panel of real investors and receive critical feedback on their pitches and business plans. The 1st Pitch events are also a great place to learn about the latest innovations in the NYC biotech ecosystem and connect with some of its major players.
Friday, 11/8 The Intrepid museum's Innovators series returns for another evening of showcasing startups powered by NASA technologies, plus networking and mingling between scientists, entrepreneurs, and technologists.
Friday-Sunday, 11/8-10 For 36 hours on November 8-10, HackPrinceton will bring together 600 developers and designers from across the country to create incredible software and hardware projects. They'll have swag, workshops, mentors, prizes, games, free food, and more.
Map of the Month
⚡ Here's a live map of carbon emissions being generated by electricity generation around the world.
Odds & Ends
The Son of Sam is sorry for what he did. (Naturally, the only place I could've possily found this website is the incomparably scattershot Web Curios.)