Luminexus Ciara and Rachel

Jagriti Agrawal | Kira Learning

The education system across North America is outdated. It was created in the height of the industrial revolution (in 1871) to transfer basic knowledge into children so they could grow up and work in factories. That education system created in the 1870s is the same education system we have today. And spoiler alert, it’s way past it’s due date.   

We no longer need to create cookie cutter kids to work in factories - we should be creating kids that can solve hard problems in the world, apply knowledge to make an impact, and challenge kids to think critically and not flip to the back of the textbook for an answer.   

In this episode of the Luminexus podcast, we talk with Jagriti Agrowal, co-founder of Kira Learning, a company that is disrupting how children learn and what they learn about. We talk with Jagriti about the importance of CS and AI education, and why this is the most important tool of the 21rst century that every body should know (+ how Kira is making this a reality!), and Jagriti’s journey developing the 2020 Perseverance rover, then doing a complete 180 and creating an EdTech startup.   

In this episode, we talk about the importance of AI in education, and how artificial intelligence can solve the biggest problems in our education system to create the changemakers of tomorrow.

Hannah Claridge | TTP

One in six people suffer from a neurological disease like Parkinson and Alzheimer disease. And currently, none of these diseases have a cure - there are some therapies and medicines that can temporarily reduce symptoms, but no cure.   

Traditionally, finding a cure to a disease happens from thousands of hours in a lab, then that discovery gets created into a vaccine. But what if we ditch this framework and look for a cure to the deadliest neurological diseases from the top down (literally). Starting at the brain and mapping out how the disease works and progresses, and creating a neurotech device that can mitigate and stop the disease from occurring or progressing. This is the radical kind of change that we talk about on the Luminexus podcast, and we are happy to be joined by Hannah Claridge, who’s work revolves around creating healthcare products to cure neurological diseases.   

In this conversation we talk with Hannah about her work and research in Parkinson’s disease, and the process of designing, creating and bringing that healthcare product to market.

Eva Goulbourne | ReFED website | Littlefoot Ventures

In the USA, 35% of all food produced ends up in the dump. This is 90 billion meals worth of food annually, equaling out to the same climate footprint as the entire U.S aviation industry. When I first learned these facts my mind was blown. All I could think about was why do we let this happen?   

So to answer this question, we break down the problem of food waste and food loss with the World Economic’s Forum food waste/loss expert, Eva Goulburne. We run through a route cause analysis exercise to break down the problem, and understand different route causes. We follow the journey of a little potato from seed to table, and all the possible places throughout this system where out little potato will get wasted. And we also explore solutions that have been implemented, and ways that these solutions have been sucessfull, but also how they have failed.  

This is a classic Luminexus episode, where we spend an hour connecting the dots between the route causes of a problem and failed solutions, and come out the end of our conversation with more clarity and understanding about why the problem exists, and what we need to do about it to help address the problem.

Sonya Kotov

Everything humans make starts with a design. A rough sketch on paper, a flow chart, an outline. Humans have become masters at designing perfectly engineered products to make our lives easier and buildings so tall it’s hard to fathom.   

What if we take this same design approach that goes into products and buildings and apply it to designing solutions to hard problems? Using the beauty and logic of design to create solutions that will benefit humans across the planet and everything else on it (including the planet itself). In this conversation we talk with Sonya Kotov who is studying design impact at Stanford University, about how to actually design an innovative solution to a problem, and the kinds of solutions that are needed to create real change in the world.

Alexander Titus | Colossal Biosciences

By 2050 half of all animal species could go extinct. Currently 6 species go extinct each hour. That is a MASSIVE number.  

What if I told you that there was a way to eliminate this catastrophic reality? A way to save species, restore balance to Earth and combat climate change all at the same time?  

This is the exact question we seek perspective on in this conversation with Dr. Alexander Titus, head of computational sciences at Colossal Biosciences. What Colossal is doing sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie: they are working to bring the woolly mammoth back to live, a creature that has been extinct for over 300 000 years. And Colossal isn’t doing this for bragging rights - they are doing it for the enormous environmental impact this could have on the world. The weight of woolly mammoths walking on the tundra thousands of years ago trapped greenhouse gases in the tundra. The extinction of the mammoth has released megatons of CO2 from the permafrost. Re introducing the mammoth back to it’s stomping ground could reverse this and eliminate close to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.🦣

Brian Lenahan | Quantum Strategy Institute

Quantum computing is one of those buzz words that has been in the media a lot lately. There is a lot of hype and ‘coulds’ being thrown around. “Quantum could discover new drugs.” “Quantum could create better batteries.” “Quantum could increase data security.”   

But these ‘coulds’ are very misleading, when the truth is that there are a lot of technical barriers (like decoherance) with quantum computing which must be solved before quantum computing will disrupt any industry.   

But this doesn’t mean that quantum computers aren’t powerful and have a lot of potential. Quantum computers are incredibly powerful and are solving real problems right now as you read this. So in this conversation, we talk with award winning quantum computing author Brian Lenehan about what quantum computing is doing right now.  

One of the most interesting points Brian raises is that for quantum to solve some very important and niche problems, it must be paired with other technologies like AI or ML. And the intersection between quantum computing, artificial intelligence and healthcare is exactly what we dive into in this episode of the Luminexus podcast.