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Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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A new project at Australia’s Monash University programs food to ‘dance’ across platters, providing interactive culinary experiences for diners and chefs. Food interaction design researcher and lead author of the research Jialin Deng, from Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, designed a system encompassing a plate fitted with electrodes that can be programmed to move different food elements like sauces and condiments around on their own, creating new combinations or elements for the diner in a “playful manner.” Deng said the project was about exploring the integration of food’s material properties and ‘computational’ capabilities, with the aim of achieving different dining journeys.“For example, a chef can predefine the locations where they want to put the food droplets and ingredients, and they can program the dish frame by frame, like you do in animation,” Deng was quoted as saying in a university press release.“We can put solid items and watery items together, we can merge two different flavors, we can transport various things towards the plate, we can play with chemical or physical reactions like in molecular gastronomy.” Interaction, game and play design expert from the Faculty of IT’s Creative Technologies discipline group and co-author of the research, Professor Florian Mueller, says the research is a glimpse into the future of food and computing.“The integration of food and computing will transform how we understand both computing and food as not two very different things, but a new frontier that combines the best of both,” Mueller was quoted as saying in the press release.“This will not only change the hospitality industry, which can create much more engaging experiences by being able to tell new and different stories through interactive food, but also computer science education, where students learn about computing by eating food.” Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business. |
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| Throughout the almost 100 years of its existence what is now called the Max Planck Society has hosted the work of many famous scientists including Albert Einstein and his mentor, Max Planck, who ushered in a new era of physics with quantum theory and the theory of relativity; Werner Heisenberg who is considered one of the fathers of quantum mechanics; and physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who made important contributions to nuclear physics, energy generation by means of nuclear fusion in stars, and the theory of planet formation.
Now the Max Planck Institute For Plasma Physics (IPP) is celebrating another achievement: the spin-out of its first commercial company, Proxima Fusion, a German startup co-founded and headed by Francesco Sciortino, an Italian physicist who came back to Europe to work for the institute after earning a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Max Planck IPP has been at the forefront of fusion research for 60 years, but the U.S. has been outpacing Europe in the creation of commercial fusion companies and in raising the capital needed to fund them. There are more than 40 fusion startups in the world, around two-thirds of them in the U.S.
Rather than see history repeat itself – Europe does the cutting-edge scientific and technological research, but the U.S. gets to market first with more funding –a group of European actors have come together to help Sciortino and his team achieve the dream of turning Munich-based Proxima Fusion into a global champion. Shareholders of Proxima include Germany’s Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners (UVC), UK-based Plural Platform, an investment vehicle led by people who've led tech startups before, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) a German public-private venture capital investment group, and academic leaders and industrial leaders. A second tranche of funding, which has not yet been disclosed, is being supported by European unicorn founders and experienced business angels who are passing on not just their wealth but their operational experience. Proxima also has partnerships with IPP, the Technical University of Munich’s Venture Labs, UnternehmerTUM, The Center for Innovation and Business Creation at the Technical University of Munich, as well as Germany’s Bilfinger-Noell, which specializes in nuclear and magnet technologies.
It is the latest example of how Europe is trying new approaches to take deep tech from the lab to market. |
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Who: Saara Hyvönen, a Ph.D in Mathematics, is a Co-founder and Data & AI Executive at DAIN Studios, a Finnish-German data, AI and insights consultancy. Her focus is on helping companies to shape their data and AI strategy and identify the most promising opportunities to leverage data and AI. Her work in AI ethics has ranged from helping define principles of AI ethics for companies to translating these into concrete actions for developers to ensure responsible AI development. She previously worked as a senior analytics strategist at Sanoma, Finland's largest media group, and as head of CRM analytics at Nokia
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Topic: Operationalizing AI ethics
Quote: "Ensuring responsible AI means there needs to be a named AI owner who can clarify their decisions and assume accountability. Accountability also means that the impact of AI is assessed in a systemic way, that there is a human in the loop providing oversight and control, and that processes around AI development and data governance take into account direct and indirect impacts. This is not a job for one person. The whole organization needs to be involved in developing, implementing, and using AI solutions in a responsible manner."
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| Corporates and industry collectives need trusted ways to exchange decentralized data on everything from logistics to calculating carbon emissions. French scale-up Dawex, a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, has developed a technology that aims to allow organizations to create new ecosystems around data exchange platforms that are compliant with regulatory requirements and address traceability and security challenges. Clients include Groupe ADP, an international airport operator, Kanematsu, a Japanese general trading organization, and Mobivia which uses the brand names Midas and Norauto. Earlier this month Trusted European Media Data Space (TEMS)}, a consortium of 43 organizations from 14 countries which aims to create a common media data space across Europe favoring the economic development and future growth of local and regional media ecosystems, became the latest group to adopt data exchange technology developed by Dawex. Organizations from more than 20 industries, such as agriculture, air and space, automobile, financial services & insurance, construction, energy, logistics & transportation, retail, telco, travel and hospitality, rely on Dawex’s expertise and Data Exchange Platform technology to share data in compliance with data regulations. |
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Amount of market capitalization that was wiped out over the past week at U.S.-based identity management company Okta due to a breach of its support system. A hacker was able to view files uploaded by certain Okta customers as part of recent support cases. Okta forms a critical part of cybersecurity systems at major corporations. The company has more than 18,000 customers who use its products to provide a single login point for many different platforms. Okta has been at the center of a number of other higher-profile incidents. Earlier this year, for example, its clients casino giants Ceasars and MGM were both affected by hacks. Caesars was forced to pay millions in ransom to the hacking group, sources told CNBC. MGM had to shut down critical systems that the company acknowledged would have a material effect on its bottom line in an SEC filing. The direct and indirect losses from those incidents totaled over $100 million. Both those attacks targeted MGM and Caesars’ Okta installations, using a sophisticated social engineering attack that went through IT help desks.
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