Makoto Kern, Founder and Principal Design Consultant at iiimpact in Austin Texas USA dives deep into the world of UX (User Experience) Design and shows us how a user-centric approach to software is essential, especially in the disruptive AI landscape. We hear about how he and iiimpact have supported the environmental, resources and healthcare industries, future concerns about cybersecurity and how to navigate the highly disruptive AI landscape, live with AI technology and value the human connection above all others.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and Studio Background Design Talk
4:49 How an electrical engineer got into UX
12:36 The basics of UX vs. UI
21:00 The steps to founding iiimpact
30:21 The domains iiimpact has worked in
36:47 The AI Competence Mirage and Cybersecurity
43:37 Tips for Entrepreneurs - the importance of the team
49:49 Talking AI
59:42 Make an iiimpact Podcast
1:04:33 Q&A Start
1:04:58 What does innovation mean to you?
1:06:17 Key moment, event, book, person
1:08:46 Time management
1:09:48 Favourite childhood memory
1:12:09 Biggest challenge to date
1:13:33 Advice for young professionals
1:14:32 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:15:17 Where can people find you?
1:16:22 Final message
1:16:43 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Rob Wreglesworth, Associate Ecologist and Innovation Lead at The Environment Bank, Co-Founder of No Longer Known and Host of the Innovate Eco Podcast, based in the UK, goes deep on biodiversity and conservation from both the economic and social lenses. We discuss topics like biodiversity net gain and nature credits, eDNA, current issues with conservation and how Rob is now targeting scarcity mindset with his new startup No Longer Known, a culture reboot, in a sense. T-shirts factor into this discussion and may be a solution to engaging the general public on conservation issues. We also look into how Rob has combined the variety and diversity of skill sets he has gained over his career to create real-world impact.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and a conversation between two audiophiles
5:50 Rob's Motivation for Ecology & Environmental Sciences
13:03 The issue with species conservation (Newts and bats)
18:29 Unpacking nature credits, biodiversity and environment banks
23:38 Diving deeper into biodiversity net gain and biodiversity metrics
28:30 Soil biodiversity in comparison to animal biodiversity
29:55 eDNA for understanding the underground
33:45 Gaining compliance in biodiversity net gain
40:42 Rob's diversity of projects at The Environment Bank
43:20 Arming yourself with interdisciplinary knowledge
45:16 The Innovate Eco Podcast
52:08 The cultural reboot for conservation with No Longer Known
1:15:20 Q&A Start
1:15:50 What does innovation mean to you?
1:17:47 Key event, book, person
1:21:57 Time Management
1:25:03 Favourite childhood memory
1:27:00 Biggest challenge to date
1:29:29 Advice to young professionals
1:32:44 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:34:22 Where can people find you?
1:36:00 Final Message
1:36:58 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

To celebrate 50 episodes of The Grand Challengers Podcast (main series), we return with another "Tables Turned" episode, this time featuring 26 questions from guests as early as Episode 2. Guests from across the show got to ask me a question of their choosing and I have compiled them into a special episode titled "Tables Turned". In this episode, I reflect on Switzerland, the importance of music in my life, academia and where I am heading in my recent decision to start my own company. Join me in this beautiful moment of looking back on my own journey once again and to learn more about me!

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Astral Dance by Jimit (Check out more of Jimit's tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hc1IxPxpmUgEIZGGUGrvm?si=z_uif82xQoqAqUy8KpB7JQ)

Chapters:
0:00 Preamble & Intro
1:33 Introducing the special episode
3:36 The Old New Year’s Resolution (Jon Hathaway)
5:53 The house plant saga (Daniele la Cecilia)
7:42 Favourite places around the world (Bill Hunt)
9:45 The Matrix of different worlds (Patri Cuervo)
12:34 Hiking in Switzerland (Jon Hathaway)
15:32 The Swiss Train System? (Alexa Delbosc)
17:10 Zurich vs. Melbourne (Jarrod Luxton)
19:51 Switzerland vs. Singapore (João P. Leitão)
22:43 The next big physical challenge (Denise Mitrano)
24:44 Collaboration vs. competition in academia (Katrin Pakizer)
28:20 Different academic challenges (Luis Sañudo)
32:59 Unlimited Research Resources (Megan Farrelly)
35:14 The 5 to 10-year plan (Liah Coggins & Nadja Kunz)
41:30 Bridging differences in collaboration (Scott Lloyd)
43:13 What nature is to me (Lucas Gobatti)
45:13 Favourite BGI (Danielle Dagenais)
47:02 WSUD vs. Sponge Cities (Tobias Baur)
48:44 Synergies between mining and BGI (Mohan Yellishetty)
50:56 How is the industry progressing with circularity? (Don Weatherbee)
53:16 Changing the world with technology (Yannick Back)
55:32 Modelling and software bugs (Peter Vanrolleghem)
57:27 A tribute to Anas Ghadouani
1:02:21 The importance of music in my life (Françoise Bichai)
1:07:52 Sounds of intimacy (Sofia Boarino)
1:12:45 Keeping a positive mindset (Wei-Shan Chen)
1:17:45 Wrap up
1:18:20 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Nadja Kunz, Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada shares her insights on the role of water in mining and the importance of critical minerals for the sustainable energy transition. Most notably, we gain insights into the complexity of the mining industry and its diverse and often forgotten stakeholders. What is required for us to make mining more sustainable, equitable, safe and future-proof?

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro, traditional owners, mountains and beaches
6:00 Nadja, the network queen
7:51 Water in the mining sector - Nadja's PhD
10:04 From double degree to industry and PhD
16:54 Working in Switzerland and Monglia
21:51 Moving to UBC Vancouver, Canada
24:08 Comparing the Australian and Canadian mining landscapes
25:53 The significance of water management in mining
31:41 Trying to solve water management holistically in mining
35:52 From water management to water stewardship
38:03 Pressing issues in Canada's mining? Critical Minerals
48:24 Quantified evidence - the example of tailings dams
59:09 Nadja's Future Plans
1:01:59 Q&A Start
1:02:24 What does innovation mean to you?
1:04:03 Key person book event
1:05:27 Time Management
1:07:29 Favourite childhood memory
1:08:09 Biggest challenge to date
1:11:08 Advice for young professionals
1:12:33 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:14:13 Final Message
1:15:15 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Christoph Ort, Group Leader and Head of the Urban Water Maangement Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology dives into the world of wastewater surveillance or wastewater-based epidemiology, techniques, intricacies, use-cases and the broader societal implications. We trace his journey in leading a "band" of disciplines in supporting society during a crisis moment, namely the COVID pandemic, with valuable information on the spread of infections - all by just holding a "magnifying glass" into our sewer systems.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and a discussion around two props
8:37 Getting into Christoph's story - culture engineering
12:07 The PhD - Dynamics of sewers and micropollutants
19:48 Introducing wastewater based epidemiology or surveillance
21:21 Terminology around WWBE and sewer sociology
23:44 Detecting illicit drugs in sewer systems
26:57 Briefly - how to detect using analytical chemistry methods
32:17 Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic
39:30 The MS2Field - A mobile lab in a trailer
41:30 His vision, the institutional context and where is Christoph heading
45:25 The future of wastewater-based surveillance
46:48 Syndromic surveillance - the indirect but powerful alternative
51:26 Rock n' Roll?
56:08 Q&A Start
56:25 What does innovation mean to you?
58:56 Key event, person, book
1:00:42 Time Management
1:03:20 Favourite Childhood Memory
1:04:33 Biggest challenge in career to date
1:05:55 Advice for young researchers
1:07:39 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:08:30 Where can people find you?
1:09:19 Final Message
1:09:38 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #8 tests whether NotebookLM can play "Broken Telephone". We generate an audio overview of a paper and use it as the basis to generate a new audio overview - rinse and repeat 20 times! What about across languages? Mashael Yazdanie (ep42) and I react to the final result. Will NotebookLM go off the rails or will it manage to keep the core message of the key research paper we used as a basis? Listen in to find out so that you do not have to test it yourself!

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Guest Intro & Welcome Back
4:25 Mashael's Prior experience with AI
5:51 The children's game of "Broken Telephone”
8:19 The human summary
13:29 How this experiment works and expectations
18:12 Live Reaction Original Summary
30:27 Impressions of Original Summary
36:14 Live Reaction - Version 20
50:18 Impressions of Version 20
52:08 Explaining the next Broken Telephone experiment
53:49 Live Reaction - Multilingual Version 20
1:02:42 Post-discussion
1:10:40 What is the future for AI?
1:14:43 Wrap up
1:15:22 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Wei Shan Chen, also known as "Momo", Assistant Professor at Wageningen University shares his journey from Materials Engineering into the environment, from Taiwan to The Netherlands and from the Carbon Cycle to the Water Cycle. We discuss the issue of food waste and its broader implications among other approaches he has taken to recover carbon and close the loop. We also hear about Momo's foray into Blue-Green Infrastructure planning and how stakeholder engagement has changed his perspective on doing impactful research and implementing the knowledge in the form of usable tools.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and the mystery behind the name Momo
5:21 Tracing Momo's steps from materials in Taiwan to Wageningen
11:29 Closing the carbon cycle with microbial fuel cells
15:28 Momo's work in reducing fossil fuel use - it gets technical
17:21 Retrieving carbon from waste
21:20 Valuing and closing the loop on food waste
32:04 How to deal with the composition of food waste?
35:21 The Bin2Bean Project in Amsterdam
38:38 Going into the Water cycle for Carbon and Food
42:28 Momo's venture into BGI Tools
49:04 Modelling the planning for biodiversity
56:09 Carbon and Water, what next?
58:23 Q&A Start
58:37 What does innovation mean to you?
1:01:16 Key event, book, person
1:03:11 Time Management
1:05:27 Favourite childhood memory
1:08:58 Biggest challenge to date
1:10:57 Advice for young researchers
1:12:38 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:14:11 Where can people find you?
1:15:06 Final Message
1:15:46 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #7 attempts to create a connected story on the topic of headwater streams - Belinda Hatt (ep20) reacts to how NotebookLM produces a deep dive discussion some of her ongoing work on headwater streams, using a whopping 22 sources, from Water Acts to Strategy Documents, journal papers, design documents and documentation of data sets. Will NotebookLM be able to focus on the key topic or will it go off on endless tangents? What about its infamous analogies?

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:27 Guest Intro - Reflections on the first podcast
3:00 Introducing the broad topic area
4:46 Guest's prior experience with AI
8:37 How this experiment works
14:09 The prompt and human's summary and expectation
18:20 Live Reaction
55:58 Post-discussion
1:02:59 Thoughts and wishes for the future of AI
1:06:11 Wrap up
1:07:40 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/