In this podcast, we will be talking to Professor Vijay Kumar, the Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Dean Kumar is one of the world's leading experts on robotics and automation, and has been doing some pioneering work on micro-automation and drones. He will talk to us about some truly exciting applications of drones in fire fighting, mining and deep sea exploration among other topics. 

In this episode, we talk about Blockchain and its impact on the business world in the future. Being the underlying technology that powers bitcoin, blockchain seems to be sweeping the world and getting people quite excited about its endless applications. So many companies are popping up to try and take advantage of blockchain to power supply chains, food networks, philanthropy and even the drug trade. We will be talking with Dr. Tej Singh Anand, Clinical Professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, who has had a lot of experience adapting the blockchain technology for some innovative applications in the healthcare industry. 

Journalism has radically changed because of the internet, social media and big data. We have already seen conspiracy theories propagated through Facebook, new age therapies suggested to deal with the COVID crisis, and, of course, several sources of information that cannot be controlled by governments and have been the fuel of democracy movements. Our guest will be the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Dana Priest. Dana has been with the Washington Post for over 30 years and is now the Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Dana Priest has significant insights into how the digital transformation of journalism is already creating challenges and will continue to impact humanity in the future, not necessarily in a good way, unless we can find technical solutions and policies to manage it.

The restaurants and hospitality industries worldwide are being transformed radically by technology, accelerated by the COVID pandemic. We will be speaking with Tim McLaughlin, the founder CEO of GoTab, a FinTech company based in Arlington, Virginia that is tackling numerous challenges in the hospitality space using digital technology.  Using QR codes and radically digitized operations management systems, customers can receive service without ever having to interact with any human. Or is that how the restaurant and hospitality industries are going to emerge over the next several decades? Tim has a more nuanced view of the future impact on humanity of hospitality and restaurants.

The healthcare industry in the United States and the world is going to be transformed radically by technology. We will be speaking with Stuart McGuigan who has a long history of working on digital transformation in healthcare in several key companies including Medco Health Solutions, Johnson and Johnson, CVS Caremark and was recently the Chief Information Officer at the State Department.

In the near future, there will be more than 1.8 billion young people on the planet. Universities are critical in influencing them to lead the future of humanity to a better place. In the U.S. we are currently dealing with three pandemics: COVID-19, racism and a threat to democracy.  University of Maryland President Darryll Pines talks about his vision on how universities can provide better education that combines technology, ethics and social sciences to be able to deal with these problems.

Discuss the impact of emerging new technologies and economic and political landscape in the world on the future of humanity in the next 20 to 50 years.