Luminexus Ciara and Rachel

Welcome to the 27th episode of the Luminexus podcast! In this episode, we spoke to Garrett Smiley, founder and CEO of Sora Schools an innovative online school for students in 6th-12th grade.

This episode is centered all around AI, especially its uses in education.

In this episode, we talk about topics ranging from AI as an important tool for the 21st century and how Sora is approaching addressing and implementing it to How AI can be used to enable non-technical experts to create products and the realm of misinformation in this field.

This conversation was flooded with budding ideas and interesting perspectives. So, whether you're new to the topic or have budding ideas of your own this episode is perfect for you.

Quantum computing - it’s such a buzz word now and everyone is talking about it for what it might be able to do decades off in the future. And while these futuristic conversations about quantum computing are interesting and inspiring, they are not realistic, because before we get to this point where quantum computing can accomplish all these crazy feats, we first need to solve all the technical problems that limit large scale adoption of quantum computing. And there are a lot of technical problems. Decoherence, low malleability and the extremely cold temperatures quantum computers operate at are massive technical problems that must be solved before we can even think about quantum computers taking over the world.

So in this episode, we talk with Nick Johnson, a trapped-ion physicist and quantum engineer at Riverlane, about the problem of scaling quantum computing, and these hard technical problems with quantum computing. Nick holds a PhD in physics from the university of Sussex where he researched a scalable demonstrator for trapped-ion quantum computing using modules connected by electric fields.

You may have clicked on this episode hoping to find a crystal clear answer to this billion-dollar question. An answer like increasing fertilizer application, or creating a crazy new drone technology to monitor individual plants. But *spoiler alert* this conversation is not about one perfect solution to producing more food. Because this solution doesn’t exist.

Instead, you will find that there is no singular solution to producing more, and no silver bullet for a better food system, technology is creating many opportunities for improvements in agriculture across the globe.

In this episode of the Luminexus Podcast, we explore the complex and interconnected world of agriculture, with Ariel Patton, creator of the Topsoil newsletter, about what makes agriculture unique, and how change can happen given the status quo.

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.