Business Lab

With its Emirates Mars Mission, also known as the Hope Probe, the UAE has established itself as only the fifth country in history to reach Mars and the seventh in the world to reach the orbit of another planet. The UAE’s first mission to Mars, Hope’s goal is to provide the first, complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers to help scientists understand the planet’s climate better.

The Emirates Mars Mission is unique in that the troves of data collected by Hope are being released to the public. “This contributes to a more knowledge-based economy and fosters the science community's capabilities as a collective. This step was taken to encourage the science community to break the barriers and work together for the greater good,” says Maryam Yousuf, a data analyst for the Emirates Mars Mission.

The Hope probe has three main objectives, the first is to understand the lower Martian atmosphere and its weather and climate. Yousuf continues, “The second objective is to correlate the lower atmosphere conditions with the upper atmosphere to explain how weather changes the escape of hydrogen and oxygen. And the final objective that we have is to understand the structure and variability of hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere and why Mars is losing them into space.”

The focus on space for the UAE comes at an important time as mapping Mars will contribute to the work of not just the knowledge economy of the UAE, but advance science for the whole world. “The UAE is basically investing in space, as investing in the space sector means investing in the human capital towards a better future for all,” says Yousuf.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with the UAE Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai.

In many areas of the world, environmental conditions are not conducive to traditional farming. As a result, these countries are food dependent. They rely on imported food, which is subject to supply chain issues and nutrient loss during transportation. A company in the United Arab Emirates called Smart Acres is looking to change all that through hydroponic vertical farming.

“Living in a region with a lot of non-arable land and in arid conditions, we're not able to produce a lot of the crops needed for consumption for the nation. The UAE actually imports 90% of the food for consumption,” says Aphisith Phongsavanh, lead project manager of Smart Acres.

Smart Acres is an indoor vertical hydroponic farm that grows pesticide-free leafy greens using 1/10 of the land and 90% less water than traditional farming. The Abu Dhabi-based farm grows 13 cycles of lettuce a year, yielding 20 times more food than traditional farming would on the same square meters of land.

The Smart Acres farm consists of eight shipping containers equipped with modules that use internet of things technology to monitor for humidity, temperature, and the nutrients inside the plants. It’s all in the name of creating an environment that’s optimized for plant growth and high nutritional value. “When we come in, we have air showers built into our facilities. We make sure that our controlled environment is as sterile as possible to protect the plants from external factors,” says Phongsavanh.

Having fine-tuned the process for leafy greens, the team is preparing to expand its crop. First up: strawberries, a local favorite. “There’s no leading vertical farm in the UAE right now that is commercializing strawberries. So, in fact, we would love to be the first one to test it and get it right,” says Phongsavanh.

Potatoes are also a priority. “A lot of the countries in the MENA region, Middle East, North Africa, get their potato seeds and their potatoes imported from around the globe, such as Europe and North America. We would really like to reduce and curb that dependence on that system, so if we were to grow the Middle East potato seed, it would do wonders for the local ecosystem in terms of Middle East and North Africa.”

The company also has plans to develop the Smart Acres Institute of Food Security and Agriculture, a localized food security program. “Our long-term goal is actually to be a pioneer within the region to facilitate the research and development of plant propagation,” says Phongsavanh. “We'd really love to look into growing new crops and plants that can be grown efficiently within this harsh environment.”

The future looks promising, as Smart Acres works to increase food production from 11 tons to 155 tons annually.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with the UAE Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai.

For many people, the concept of directed energy, or lasers, conjures images of lightsabers and bank vault security systems—the stuff of Hollywood movies. However, the fact is, lasers are commonly used in everyday life applications, from surgery to optical communications. At Technology Innovation Institute’s (TII) Directed Energy Research Center (DERC), scientists and engineers are using directed energy to solve some of the world’s most complex challenges and make the world a better place.

Directed energy is “the ability to create a high amount of energy in a controlled volume at a given distance in order to trigger physical reactions to study the interaction between the energy and the matter,” says Dr. Chaouki Kasmi, who is the Chief Researcher at DERC, which is part of the Abu Dhabi government's Advanced Technology Research Council.

The research at DERC reflects the multitude of applications that are possible using directed energy, but the research projects have at least one thing in common: the goal of solving real-world scientific or technical challenges. For example, one of DERC’s recent developments is a landmine detection system – the ground-penetrating radar - designed to help developing or previously war-torn countries detect and neutralize unexploded landmines.

However, Dr. Kasmi and the researchers at DERC aren’t just looking down. They have their sights set much higher and further with projects focused on using lasers for communications on land, to the moon, and even underwater—truly making the entire world a better place with directed energy technology.

“The disruptive innovation that we are bringing today is how we can make it affordable for developing countries. The idea is to create a technology that could really help solve a worldwide problem at low cost. And this is very important for us as we would like to have the system deployed at scale,” says Dr. Kasmi.

The research scientists at DERC also look for ways to leverage the solutions they develop beyond the initial application. “The way we work is to really create building blocks and to combine or reuse those building blocks in order to tackle additional challenges,” says Dr. Kasmi.

Since the 1940s scientists have studied ways to increase rainfall with the goal of increasing precipitation in arid and semi-arid climates. Today, that endeavor is making incredible leaps and bounds as scientists and engineers apply nanotechnology to improve the effectiveness of cloud seeding.

“The global water shortage has continuously intensified by rapid population growth and economic development around the world. Conventional water resources such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater have become very limited, which is driving scientists and engineers to look for alternative water resources,” says Dr. Linda Zou, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Khalifa University of Science and Technology.

Dr. Zou leads a groundbreaking research project using nanotechnology to develop cloud seeding materials. Cloud seeding is a form of weather modification that mimics what naturally occurs in clouds but enhances the process by adding particles that can stimulate and accelerate the condensation process. However, Dr. Zou explains that “The cloud seeding materials used today have been around for many decades. The information and techniques are out of date and their effectiveness is not well understood.”

Cloud seeding has strict requirements. To be successful, scientists need the right air temperature, the right humidity, a surface that attracts water and keeps it, and then the correct size material to allow condensation to form on the particle.

“Through the advancement in nanotechnology and nanoscience, nowadays we are working to design and engineer cloud seeding materials with optimal properties to ensure water vapor condensation will occur effectively and maximize the rainfall achieved,” explains Dr. Zou.

Related materials

·      UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science

·      New UAE cloud seeding test in Texas shows 'promising results', The National News, August 15, 2021

Few today won’t agree that sustainability is important not only to the future of the planet and society but to business practices as well. And approaches are evolving beyond designing products to be used as long as possible. “If we’re going to design a product or use a product, we’re thinking from the very first moment what happens afterwards,” says Corey Glickman, vice president and head of the sustainability and design business at Infosys. “How do I source those materials? How does it function efficiently? And then ultimately, can it be reused? Can it be recycled?”

Consumers are driving sustainability efforts as well. They’re beginning to weigh company values when choosing where to shop and what to buy. And business leaders are taking note, Glickman says. They’re looking at things like return on investment, whether they can afford to change, or afford not to change.

“We call it single bottom-line sustainability, where I look at the single bottom line of all those elements, and I start attaching sustainability to it,” Glickman says. “And I start looking at changes of value and then I can build a business case for change.”

As companies set sustainability goals—to be carbon neutral by 2050, for example—they’re tackling complex challenges: regulations change, supply chains are complicated—especially during the current pandemic—and integrating new technologies into legacy systems is almost always a hurdle, technologically and culturally.

Glickman suggests an incremental approach—he calls it micro change, embracing the fact that sustainability isn’t a one-and-done paradigm shift. “These are things that can be done in a six-week period, eight-week period, that have tangible proof of concepts that can be measured, that can be done at different levels.”

Looking at current infrastructure investments, particularly in North America and Europe, as well as the increasing interest of stakeholders, the sustainability bar is expected to rise. “For the next three years you will see a lot of investment. You will see countries or businesses that want to be leading because they see an advantage,” says Glickman. “Then you will see others have to move along in that direction also.”

This episode of Business Lab is produced in partnership with Infosys.

Fueled by innovations in AI, IoT, and blockchain, digital transformation has been accelerating rapidly across industries. But as the world’s data is growing at the edge, the stark differences in digital equity and inclusion have become clear. Access to technology, underrepresentation within tech companies, and bias within technology itself contribute to this stark digital divide, says Janice Zdankus, vice president of strategy and planning and innovation for social impact at HPE.

From healthcare to manufacturing to agriculture, many organizations don’t have a handle on the data they generate. While data is being created quickly, companies often lack a strategy to organize, share and account for bias in their data. ”I think we see today that there's not an equitable exchange of data and those producing data aren't always seeing the value back to them for sharing their data,” says Zdankus.

Democratizing data access is key to bolstering data inclusion and equity but requires sophisticated data organization and sharing that doesn’t compromise privacy. Rights management governance and high levels of end-to-end security can help ensure that data is being shared without security risks, says Zdankus.

Ultimately, improving digital inclusion and equity comes down to company culture. “It can't just be a P&L [profit and loss] decision. It has to be around thought leadership and innovation and how you can engage your employees in a way that's meaningful in a way to build relevance for your company,” says Zdankus. Solutions need to be value-based to foster goodwill and trust among employees, other organizations, and consumers.

“If innovation for equity and inclusion were that easy, it would've been done already,” says Zdankus. The push for greater inclusion and equity is a long-term and full-fledged commitment. Companies need to prioritize inclusion within their workforce and offer greater visibility to marginalized voices, develop interest in technology among young people, and implement systems thinking that focuses on how to bring individual strengths together towards a common outcome.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

Across industries and geographies, the pandemic has triggered a paradigm shift in the way companies—and their employees—conduct day-to-day business. The move to work-from-home and hybrid work models has increased the need for collaboration to facilitate communication and innovation from remote locations, and to keep teams connected and engaged when in-person meetings are difficult or impossible.

Successful collaboration requires creating an equitable experience for all team members, says Faiza Hughell, RingCentral's chief customer officer. “Participant equity is predicated on the ability to empower your employees with the tools, technologies, and programs they need to reach success, to remain productive at all times,” she explains.

And it’s more important than ever for companies to evaluate the new technologies teams are implementing to ensure they are facilitating the desired outcomes, as well as to assess a particular technology’s potential application to other areas and teams in the company. “In a sales organization, for example, certain teams may have access to certain tools that increase their productivity. Well guess what? Other teams might be able to benefit from that as well,” says Hughell. “It's important when we bring in new technologies that we negotiate our contracts such that they're flexible, so we can determine who needs the technology.”

When evaluating new technologies to drive and support distributed workforces, Hughell suggests paring up individuals, which not only helps people learn, but drives adoption of the new technology and helps the company assess whether it’s bringing the expected results. “I always tell my leaders inspect what you expect. Don't just buy a piece of technology, roll it out and expect miracles to happen,” she says. “You have to drive adoption and usage, and you might find that it was the wrong technology and it's not serving your desired outcome or purpose, at which point, make that decision as a leader to fast fail and move on.”

The most important best practice is to do what’s necessary to empower your employees to succeed. Providing libraries of bite-size instruction videos, for instance, can help team members learn specific features of new technology related to their work, without having to sit through long training sessions. Creating the atmosphere of learning and collaboration is as important to a company’s success as implementing the new technology. “At the end of the day,” says Hughell, “if you can show someone that you're going to help empower their success and help increase their productivity and reduce friction in their day-to-day operation, not many people would argue with that.”

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with RingCentral.

Artificial intelligence helps build physical infrastructure like modular housing, skyscrapers, and factory floors. “…many problems that we wrestle with in all forms of engineering and design are very, very complex problems…those problems are beginning to reach the limits of human capacity,” says Mike Haley, the vice president of research at Autodesk. But there’s hope with AI capabilities, Haley continues “This is a place where AI and humans come together very nicely because AI can actually take certain very complex problems in the world and recast them.”

And where “AI and humans come together” is at the start of the process with generative design, which incorporates AI into the design process to explore solutions and ideas that a human alone might not have even considered. “You really want to be able to look at the entire lifecycle of producing something and ask yourself, ‘How can I produce this by using the least amount of energy throughout?’” This kind of thinking will reduce the impact of, not just construction, but any sort of product creation on the planet.

The symbiotic human-computer relationship behind generative design is necessary to solve those “very complex problems”—including sustainability. “We are not going to have a sustainable society until we learn to build products—from mobile phones to buildings to large pieces of infrastructure—that survive the long-term,” Haley notes.

The key, he says, is to start in the earliest stages of the design process. “Decisions that affect sustainability happen in the conceptual phase, when you're imagining what you're going to create.” He continues, “If you can begin to put features into software, into decision-making systems, early on, they can guide designers toward more sustainable solutions by affecting them at this early stage.”

Using generative design will result in malleable solutions that anticipate future needs or requirements to avoid having to build new solutions, products, or infrastructure. “What if a building that was built for one purpose, when it needed to be turned into a different kind of building, wasn't destroyed, but it was just tweaked slightly?”

That’s the real opportunity here—creating a relationship between humans and computers will be foundational to the future of design. “The consequence of bringing the digital and physical together,” Haley says, “is that it creates a feedback loop between what gets created in the world and what is about to be created next time.”

Show notes and references

What is Generative Design, and How Can It Be Used in Manufacturing?

Four Ways AI in Architecture and Construction Can Empower Building Projects

Next-generation solutions and products are hitting a wall with wi-fi: it’s not fast enough, and latency and connectivity issues mean it’s not reliable enough. What’s an innovator to do? Focus on what’s next: 5G and software-defined networking.

Nick McKeown, senior vice president and general manager of the network and edge group at Intel Corporation says this technical leap is what will make future innovation possible, “Once you've got a software platform where you can change its behavior, you can start introducing previously absurd-sounding ideas,” including, he continues, “fanciful ideas of automatic, real-time, closed-loop control of an entire network.”

While nascent, these technological advancements are already showing promise in practical applications. For example, in industrial settings where there’s more analysis happening at the edge, having greater observability into the network is allowing for fine timescale responses to mechanical errors and broken equipment. “Corrective action could be something as mundane as a broken link, a broken piece of equipment, but it could actually be a functional incorrectness in the software that is controlling it,” says McKeown.

Grad students and programmers are taking advantage of the advancements in network technology to try out new ideas through academic projects. “One of the key ideas,” says McKeown, “is to verify in real time that the network is operating according to a specification, formally checking against that specification in real time, as packets fly around in the network. This has never been done before.” And although this idea remains in the realm of research projects, McKeown believes it exemplifies the promise of a software-based 5G networking future.

Software-defined 5G networking promises applications that we can’t yet even imagine, says McKeown. “New IoT apps combined with both public and private 5G is going to create a ‘Cambrian explosion’ of new ideas that will manifest in ways that if we were to try to predict, we would get it wrong.”

The internet of things and smart devices are everywhere, which means computing needs to be everywhere too. And this is where edge computing comes in, because as companies pursue faster, more efficient decision-making, all of that data needs to be processed locally, in real time—on device at the edge.

“The type of processing that needs to happen in near real time is not something that can be hauled all the way back to the cloud in order to make a decision,” says Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and AI Group at Intel.

The benefits of implementing an edge-computing architecture are operationally significant. Although larger AI and machine learning models will still require the compute power of the cloud or a data center, smaller models can be trained and deployed at the edge. Not having to move around large amounts of data, explains Rivera, results in enhanced security, lower latency, and increased reliability. Reliability can prove to be more of a requirement than a benefit when users have dubious connections, for example, or data applications are deployed in hostile environments, like severe weather or dangerous locations.

Edge-computing technologies and approaches can also help companies modernize legacy applications and infrastructure. “It makes it much more accessible for customers in the market to evolve and transform their infrastructure,” says Rivera, “while working through the issues and the challenges they have around needing to be more productive and more effective moving forward.”

A compute-everywhere future promises opportunities for companies that historically have been impossible to realize—or even imagine. And that will create great opportunity says Rivera, “We're eventually going to see a world where edge and cloud aren’t perceived as separate domains, where compute is ubiquitous from the edge to the cloud to the client devices.”