Future Positive

XPRIZE Founder Peter H. Diamandis is in conversation with His Excellency Faisal Al Bannai, the Secretary-General of the Advanced Technology Research Council at ASPIRE, partner and sponsor of XPRIZE Feed The Next Billion. Tune in to hear these industry leaders discuss the fight against global food insecurity.His Excellency Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General, Advanced Technology Research Council, sits with XPRIZE to chat about food security in the Middle East and how advanced research and technology will drive transformative breakthroughs in our future food systems. His Excellency oversees ASPIRE, the technology programme management pillar of the Abu Dhabi Government’s Advanced Technology Research Council. The $15M XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion competition is sponsored by ASPIRE and The Tony Robbins Foundation. https://www.xprize.org/prizes/feedthenextbillion

For this week’s Future Positive Podcast we bring you an exclusive conversation with XPRIZE Founder, Peter H. Diamandis and XPRIZE Innovation Board Member, Sergey Young.  In their conversation they dive deep into all aspects of longevity and what the implications of living longer will have on the future of humanity.  They also both share their own advice on how to live a longer, healthier, younger and more active existence.  Sergey Young is a longevity investor and visionary with a mission to extend healthy lifespans of at least one billion people. He founded the Longevity Vision Fund to accelerate life extension technological breakthroughs and to make longevity affordable and accessible to all. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR) and the Development Sponsor of Age Reversal XPRIZE global competition designed to cure aging. Sergey is also a Top 100 Longevity Leader who is transforming the world one workplace at a time with Longevity@Work--the first non-profit corporate longevity program of its kind. Sergey has been featured as a top longevity expert and contributor on Fox News, BBC, Sky News, Forbes, and Thrive Global. His book The Science And Technology Of Growing Young is available for pre-order at https://sergeyyoung.com/ Links:  http://xprize.org  https://sergeyyoung.com/

Our Pride Month podcast take over culminates this week.  For the past four weeks we have been bringing you a series of interviews conducted by Journalist Amelia Abraham with leading figures from the LGBTQ+ community who are impacting our world  for the better.  This week Amelia speaks to Kelly Rakowski, the CEO and founder of LEX – a queer dating app based on personal ads. Queer visibility online, and coding LGBTQ+ platforms for inclusivity are just a couple of the topics they talk about.Lex is a lo-fi, text-based dating and social app for lesbian, bisexual, asexual, and queer people. Lex is for womxn and trans, genderqueer, intersex, two spirit, and non-binary people for meeting lovers and friends. Inspired by old school newspaper personal ads, Lex (formerly known as Personals) lived on Instagram for years before evolving into an app. If you missed the previous episodes with Vincent, Desmond, Lucas Larochelle and Os Keyes then we strongly recommend that you check it out in our feed.   Links:  http://xprize.org  https://thisislex.app/ 

Continuing our Pride Month podcast take over we bring you the third in our series of interviews conducted by Journalist Amelia Abraham with leading figures from the LGBTQ+ community who are impacting our world  for the better.  This week Amelia speaks to Vincent Desmond, a writer and essayist living and working in Lagos, Nigeria.  They sit down to discuss the issues facing the queer community in Nigeria, the very real perils of digital catfishing and the power of social media movements.Vincent is currently an editor at Zikoko. He has written for Vogue, ELLE US, Allure, Reuters, i-D, VICE, Dazed, NYLON, PAPER and several more.  In 2019, he was awarded the TIER’s Young Activist Award for his work in media advocacy.  In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Difference and Diversity and nominated for the Future Award for Leading Conversation.    If you missed the previous episodes with Lucas Larochelle and Os Keyes then we strongly recommend that you check it out in our feed.  Links: http://xprize.org https://www.desmondvincent.me/ https://www.zikoko.com/

Continuing our Pride Month podcast take over we bring you the second in our series of interviews conducted by Journalist Amelia Abraham with leading figures from the LGBTQ+ community who are impacting our world  for the better.  This week Amelia speaks to Os Keyes a PhD candidate and lecturer at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering. Os was also the inaugural winner of the Ada Lovelace Fellowship.Os has a background in law, data science and data ethics. Their research interests include: 1) the way gender is encoded into technology, and its social and ethical implications; 2) Data ethics and their viability under different political frameworks; 3) classification systems and the tensions of negotiating them in design. They are currently researching the way gender is built into physical and virtual infrastructure and the implications this has for trans users.If you missed the previous episode with Lucas Larochelle we strongly recommend that you check it out in our feed.  Links: http://xprize.org https://ironholds.org/

June 1st marks the beginning of Pride Month, and to celebrate we are bringing a series of interviews conducted by Journalist Amelia Abraham with leading figures from the LGBTQ+ community who are impacting our world  for the better. For our first interview, Amelia talks to designer and Queering The Map founder Lucas LaRochelle about the importance of digital queer spaces, AI and surveillance and… gay penguins.Lucas LaRochelle is a designer and researcher whose work is concerned with queer geographies, critical internet studies, and community-based archiving. They are the founder of Queering The Map, a community generated counter-mapping project that digitally archives queer experience in relation to physical space.They have lectured, facilitated, and exhibited nationally and internationally, recently at Ars Electronica (Austria), Somerset House (United Kingdom), Onomatopee Projects (Netherlands), fanfare (Netherlands), OTHERWISE Festival (Switzerland), Studio XX (Canada) and SBC Gallery (Canada), The Bartlett School of Architecture (United Kingdom), University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras School of Architecture (Puerto Rico), Links: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gay-male-penguins-steal-lesbian-couple-s-eggs-dutch-zoo-n1244575 http://xprize.org  https://www.queeringthemap.com/

How can avatars allow us to use our senses at a remote location in real time? Will we ever be able to smell and taste remotely? For this week’s Future Positive podcast, Amelia Abraham speaks with Dr. Jacki Morie – Scientist, Artist, Educator and Senior Advisor on the A.N.A Avatar XPRIZE to answer these questions and more. We also hear from four of the semifinalist teams competing in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE who take us through their approaches to creating robotic avatars that convey a sense of presence and human connection in the most remote of locations.  Forged Droids is a project that aims to create a low-cost, humanoid robotics system, which includes a robot, an immersive operator control/training system, and service for sharing the training data. Cyberselves began life at the University of Sheffield, UK.  They work at the intersection of psychology, computer science, cultural studies, and philosophy, looking at what happens to human beings as we increasingly find ourselves engaging in immersive, digital cultures and environments, including everything from social media to virtual reality spaces. Touchlab manufactures e-skin thinner than human skin which can be wrapped around hard or soft surfaces to sense pressure and location in real-time. Applications include on-land, underwater, and in space robotics & machines.Dragon Tree Labs empowers human beings to surpass distance, strength, accuracy and two-task limits.  Rooted in the collaboration of those who invent - academia, technology entrepreneurs, corporate researchers. They see their role as creating an environment where a great mixture of professors, research experts and engineers become a community for breakthrough innovations.Links: http://xprize.org  https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar  https://www.forgeddroids.com/ https://www.touchlab.io/

Converting carbon into fuel is the next exciting frontier in the ever changing energy landscape. For this week’s Future Positive podcast, we get the scoop on the future of fuel with two finalists of the NRG COSIA CARBON XPRIZE who are now successfully turning carbon into fuels.  First,  journalist Amelia Abraham interviews Brooklyn based Staff Sheehan of Air Company,  then she catches up with Jason Salfi of Dimensional Energy based in Ithaca, New York. Staff Sheehan  is the Chief Technology Officer at Air Company.  He is a scientist and entrepreneur in the Renewables & Environment industry. Skilled in green chemistry, electrochemistry, process chemistry, chemical engineering, heterogeneous catalysis, and carbon dioxide conversion. Jason Salfi is the CEO and Co-founder of Dimensional Energy, he is also a board member of Scale for ClimateTech which is dedicated to helping companies navigate time-sensitive, critical decisions throughout the full manufacturing process.Links: http://xprize.org www.dimensionalenergy.com  www.aircompany.com