Zhens': Recent Episodes
Zhen Rong Yap and Zhen Wei Yap
Eito Miyamura (Twitter: @Eito_Miyamura) is the President of the Oxford University Blockchain Society and is a founding member of Home DAO. In this 1hr+ session, we discuss web3, AI and geopolitics. Tune in for a great session!
Time stamps:
00:27 Hackathons all over the world
02:28 Oxford Blockchain Society and web3
18:44 Web3 - Geopolitics and War
24:37 Bits and Atoms - Long Live TSMC
31:26 What are universities? + Learning programming
40:02 Finding truth in a world of complexity
46:00 More AI content than content made by humans?
50:02 Misinformation - premise, argument and conclusion
58:48 Eclectic Eito, Japanese Nationalism, Masayoshi Son of Softbank
01:04:46 Inspirations - Doug Leone
01:07:25 HomeDAO / Oxford Crypto Village
01:009:59 Where to reach out?
Technology has not only advanced the field of science through new methods and inventions, but it has also made podcasting a more accessible and diverse platform for exploring a wide range of subjects. PhD candidate at University College London, Ursule Demael shares her love for biosciences. She topped her year at Oxford in biomedical science and runs the HOLOBIONT podcast. We discuss about T-cells in immunotherapy, biotech and her interests in podcasting.
Links of interest:
https://twitter.com/HOLOBIONT_
https://sites.google.com/view/www-holobiont-com/home
Timestamps:
00:31 The New Year
01:08 Background
05:56 Direction of COVID-19
12:19 T-cells and Immunology
17:30 Holobiont Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/3nGItqmYzJaostOe6imR2A
22:47 Computation and Biology
26:15 Interdisciplinary Research and Nucleate - Empowering Biotech Leaders
https://www.nucleate.xyz/
35:05 Why did you start the Holobiont Podcast
https://anchor.fm/holobiont
39:58 Any other podcasters you listen to?
42:24 Who inspires you?
How to do the impossible!? Dr. Scott Roberts is a materials technologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Materials Development and Manufacturing Technology Group. He develops new materials, processing techniques, and technologies for the use in the aerospace field. He is as close to an inventor as it gets! Listen to a world class expert in bulk metallic glass, porous metal 3D printing and living life! Tune in for a great session!
NASA JPL page: https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/scott-roberts
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottroberts4/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LRw8nicAAAAJ&hl=en
Consulting: http://metallicglassconsulting.com/about_us/scott_roberts/
Timestamps:
01:10 Love for cats
05:03 Working at JPL - inventing for space!
10:53 Inventing within the Materials Development and Manufacturing Technology Group (Impossible design specifications)
Metallurgy Facility: https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/metallurgy-facility
18:11 What is a technologist at JPL?
25:09 Can a metal also be a glass?
Bulk Metallic Glass for robots: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161129103309.htm
Scott’s PhD: https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/8049/
45:54 Flying your technology on space missions
Bulk Metallic Glass Gears for Lunar Night Capable Actuators: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/survivethenight2018/pdf/7019.pdf
50:49 NASA 2022 Spinoff - ultrasonic + additive manufacturing?
Article: https://fabrisonic.com/fabrisonic-featured-in-nasa-spinoff-magazine/
55:59 The impossible again! - Porous metal 3D printing
Article: https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/nasa-jpl-team-shows-results-of-porous-metal-printing-pbf-process/
01:05:35 The molecular replicator
01:07:30 Technology vs Climate Change
01:14:55 Science is sales
01:22:05 Love of national parks
Utah National Parks: https://www.nps.gov/state/ut/index.htm
01:29:40 Exploring and appreciating cities
01:32:17 Best advice received
01:36:12 Next steps
01:39:44 To find Scott’s work and reach out
‘Reaching back through space and time to Ukiyo-e masters of the past.’
Bram Tan is an artist with an industrial design background. He enjoys thinking broadly about the world and how everything technological works. He also believes that artistic pursuit is an affirmation to oneself that the future WILL be positive and good. He makes Ukiyo-e prints with a 3D printer. Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries.
https://www.bramtan.com/
Timestamps
00:52 Summer in Paris
Andrew Huberman on dopamine and the brain
https://youtu.be/LG53Vxum0as
03:37 Design work - Ukiyo-e - Japanese Art
11:29 Connecting people to artists through space and time
19:20 Science nerd, art, and technology
28:02 What is industrial design? Original Apple computers
38:34 Designing the designer
Grasshopper
https://www.grasshopper3d.com/page/download-1
Algorithms for grasshopper
https://www.food4rhino.com/en
52:16 Contact by Carl Sagan
54:48 Imagining the future!
01:04:43 Difference in living in Malaysia vs UK vs France
01:09:02 Bunker club trip to Poland for Ukraine
01:14:41 Truly realising the war
01:20:22 Discussion around power
01:25:20 War and Art
01:27:35 The Settlers of Catan
01:32:30 Where can people find your work?
Paul Festor is a PhD candidate in computer science at Imperial college, London working on applying reinforcement learning to sepsis. He is passionate about bringing AI and machine learning to the healthcare industry and helping to save lives. In this session, we discuss many topics from ancient civilisations to the pursuit of science to his experience doing a PhD, digging deep during the COVID-19 pandemic, and finding perspective. He also talks about his experience about how we are just a few key actions away from amazing experiences. Tune in for a great session!
Research Group: https://faisallab.org/members/paul-festor
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-festor/?originalSubdomain=uk
Timestamps:
00:55 PhD Project
1:34 Sepsis
3:38 Reinforcement learning on data from ICU beds and sensors
5:06 Framing the reinforcement learning problem and difference with other machine learning methods
10:16 Gamification in healthcare
16:34 Sifting through ICU data
18:42 Motivation for the PhD
21:04 Pure and applied research
Imperial College Professor Eric Laithwaite on superconductors: Magnetic River 1975
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU&ab_channel=ImperialCollegeLondon
Professor Richard Feynman’s nanotechnology lecture: "There's P lenty of Room at the Bottom”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c&ab_channel=MuonRay
25:04 Other technologies
27:47 Most difficult part of a PhD / low income SWE?
33:03 Trends in machine learning academia
38:19 Bringing value to the world through data science, AI, and software engineering
39:51 French Tertiary Education system
48:33 Learning Reinforcement Learning by reinforcement
49:32 Thoughts about ancient and modern civilisations
55:32 Nihilism and appreciation of the adventure of life
01:01:57 Doing a PhD, getting stuck, and finding perspective
01:15:58 AI news - Oxford Union debates ethics of AI with an AI
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59687236
01:24:14 Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Süleyman and Inflection AI on conversational AI
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/13/inflection-ai-led-by-linkedin-and-deepmind-co-founders-raises-225m-to-transform-computer-human-interactions/
01:27:58 AI on mobile devices, productivity, app development
01:37:05 Impact in science communication and making AI and data science more accessible to doctors
01:51:47 Quantifying uncertainty
01:56:02 Piano in stations worldwide and planting seeds
https://www.ted.com/talks/dotan_negrin_searching_for_the_key_of_life
02:05:48 Next steps
02:10:35 Where can people find your work and reach out to you?
Sahasrajit Ramesh is a freelance consultant in business strategy and finance in the power sector, previously working at Aurora Energy Research. He topped his year in materials science at the University of Oxford and did his 4th year at MIT in computational materials. He writes a blog on personal growth and spirituality. He is also looking to launch a coaching business and online products related to spirituality and psychotherapy. He is a deep thinker that is not afraid to share his emotional experiences to help others. Tune in for a great session!
00:45 Working and living in London
02:09 Working at Aurora Energy Research
07:14 How do you think the energy market is going to change?
10:30 Thoughts on COP26
14:29 For purpose businesses e.g Olio
15:35 What is the future of energy? Hardware or software?
19:11 Web3, energy, and infrastructure
22:57 Materials Science at Oxford
30:00 Academics, research and culture at MIT vs Oxford
37:34 How did you top your year at Oxford?
40:21 What is your favourite material?
43:31 Spirituality coaching and psychotherapy
01:13:36 E-book on spirituality and the thoughts of benefitting financially from helping
others
01:32:00 Self-doubt and world views
01:41:00 The myth of the specialist?
01:42:40 Navigating imposter syndrome and introspection
02:00:33 Blog on spirituality, consciousness, and introspection
02:04:17 5 day plan instead of 5 year plan
02:12:12 My journey into consciousness
02:15:02 Where can people find your work or reach out to you?
Michelangelo Valtancoli is an early stage VC investor at Stride.VC and previously the podcast host of Almost Founders, where he provided high quality, straight to the point information on being a founder, raising, and building. He placed top 10 in Bayes Business School and was an avid actor in Italy and Michigan, USA during his year abroad. In this 1hr+ session, we discuss acting entrepreneurship, venture capital, AI in the entertainment industry and approaches to acting. Tune in for a great session!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelangelovaltancoli
Are you raising pre-seed to series A? Send me your Pitch Deck: michelangelo@stride.vc
VC and Founders
1:15 Early stage VC as a first job
https://stride.vc/
5:29 How would you describe VC (Venture Capital)?
8:04 Building vs VC - the contagious enthusiasm of founders
13:14 Working with and learning from big names in VC
19:31 Why go to VC after talking about entrepreneurship on Almost Founders?
25:15 Almost Founders podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/6EMNZGQ0jbyMJdAQRyFn40
30:44 Getting information - using twitter and finding ecosystems
34:41 Team interactions in EF and VC - how is VC and the startups ecosystem changing?
https://www.joinef.com/
42:49 Keeping on top of new changes and information + generalist vs specialist fund
52:52 Starting another podcast?
1:00:25 Gen Z vs previous generations
1:03:50 What motivates you to help out and work with students?
1:09:25 London vs Europe VC ecosystem
1:11:45 I am a VC t-shirt! Loving VC!
Acting and the Entertainment Industry
1:12:46 Acting experience - does it make it easier to do podcasting?
1:16:58 Stepping into a character, body language, and most difficult character to play
1:27:35 Dissertation on AI affecting the entertainment industry
1:31:48 AI in collaborative storytelling, comedy and non-standard patterns of thinking (Deepmind)
https://computationalcreativity.net/iccc21/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ICCC_2021_paper_118.pdf
1:40:31 Getting back into the entertainment industry... but as a VC!
Impact and motivations
1:42:48 Curiosity as motivation for creating impact
1:45:23 Michelangelo’s inspirations: Dad >> Matthew McConaughey (What is a son without his father? - Dune)
1:47:54 What are the next steps?
1:49:12 Where can people find your work?
Jack Chong is the President of OX1 Incubator, the only ideation-to-seed stage incubator in Oxford which awards £50,000+ equity-free grants, and is a PPEist at Christ Church, Oxford. In this 1hr+ session, we discuss the entrepreneurial space in Oxford, London and Stanford, philosophy of technology, and the RICH brunch club. He's a builder and thinker at heart fashioning himself as a concept engineer, community engineering, and a token engineer. Tune in for a great session!
Blog: https://www.jack-chong.com/
0:55 Background on how we met
1:50 Jack’s journey from aspiring diplomat to tech founder and the hacker house
https://www.jack-chong.com/aboutme/
7:00 Tech scene in Jordan
7:46 On the FBI candidates in Jordan
9:01 Currently building in web3 and crypto!
10:26 Where do you see yourself in the ecosystem of deeptech, biotech and crypto scientists and engineers?
12:09 What is your theory of ideas people vs objects people vs people people?
13:48 What are the problems with stablecoin and building in it?
17:11 Mental models in tech and how to reduce noise to signal ratio
19:04 Signal to noise ratio on YouTube and Twitter
21:17 Researching topics for the blog - Pret Subscription, Great Man to Great Founder Theory
https://www.jack-chong.com/blog/why-prets-subscription-model-is-great-consumers-but-terrible-for-business/
https://www.jack-chong.com/blog/the-great-founder-theory-musk-bezos-and-instagram/
25:09 On the philosophy of technology. What does it mean?
29:07 Going to a deeper layer of abstraction
31:30 On a new Moore’s law? Improvements in space travel, software and biology
36:56 On Meta/Facebook and being quite meta
40:30 Corporate sector vs startups - why is everyone doing investment banking, consulting etc?
https://www.jack-chong.com/blog/adventurers-imperialism-hongkong/
47:09 What is it about startups and building that gets you excited? How do you think about money?
50:50 A Tale of Two Worlds: Stanford vs Oxford
52:55 Act against entropy: London RICH brunch club and OX1 Incubator
https://www.ox1incubator.com/
1:00:33 What is the RICH house in Oxford?
https://www.jack-chong.com/blog/a-manifesto-to-build-the-rich-house/
https://cherwell.org/2021/11/17/oxfords-first-hacker-house-for-the-rich-by-the-rich/
1:03:47 Next steps - concepts engineer, community engineer and token engineer
1:04:51 Where can people find your work and reach out to you?
Why are malaria vaccines so hard to make?
Lawrence Wang is an MD-DPhil candidate in vaccine research at Oxford, a medical school student at UC San Diego, and a NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar at National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Intramural Research Program (IRP). In this 1hr+ session, Lawrence and I discuss everything from malaria vaccines to cytokine storms to benefits of doing an MD-PhD. He has written many articles on med school insider, has a public health paper out on the private sector drug shops and anti-malarials in Uganda, and fences foil on the Oxford blues fencing team. Tune in for an exciting session!
2:20 Malaria Vaccine and DPhil work
4:16 Monoclonal antibodies
8:53 How do you isolate antibodies?
13:02 £30,000 experiment - Berkeley Lights machine
23:23 Cytokine Storm!
35:53 Malaria vs Immune System
45:52 Current Malaria Vaccines
50:48 Chicken Pox and Dengue
51:42 Malaria trials on children
52:37 Scaling vaccine production
56:40 Recent thoughts on COVID-19 - other variants...
58:59 Benefit of doing an MD-PhD
1:01:05 Cost of £30,000 experiment - Berkeley Lights machine
1:02:14 Public health research on privately owned anti-malaria drug shops in Uganda - https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-018-2454-7
1:08:18 Perceptions of vaccines in rural Uganda
1:10:33 Malaria and economics - https://www.abpi.org.uk/value-and-access/vaccines/economic-and-societal-impacts-of-vaccines/
1:12:36 Med Insider Blogs
https://medschoolinsiders.com/author/lawrencewang/
1:15:21 Reflections on an MD-PhD
1:17:15 Year abroad at UCL - Infection and Immunity
1:21:31 Lawrence’s inspirations and role models - Bill Gates and Anthony Bourdain (Chef)
1:24:45 Fencing vs medical training + nutrition and injuries
1:36:37 Next steps
1:39:36 Where can people reach out to you?
lawrencetwang@gmail.com
In this 1hr+ session, Nihir Vedd, founder of feather-ai and a PhD candidate in Natural Language Processing at Imperial College London, and I discuss everything from transformers in machine learning to NLP in stand-up comedy to AI model marketplaces. Tune in for a great session!
0:46 RICH Brunch - https://cherwell.org/2021/11/17/oxfords-first-hacker-house-for-the-rich-by-the-rich/
3:31 London PhD life - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nvedd/
4:39 Natural Language Processing PhD project
6:26 Vision for Feature-ai and AI model marketplaces - https://www.feather-ai.com/
15:10 AI model marketplaces and benefit to businesses and ads agencies
18:13 Inspiration for the feather name
22:04 Value of industry software engineering experience
31:36 Inspiration for the PhD project - child’s dream of a decision making machine
34:40 Discussion on natural language processing as a route to artificial general intelligence
41:27 Transformers - the machine learning type and the robot type!
47:55 Problems with Transformers
52:23 Problems with small datasets and machine learning
56:49 Research vs industry on machine learning model implementations and pipelines
1:01:58 Goals of OpenAI vs Deepmind
1:07:30 Deepmind effects on science - AlphaGo
1:08:07 Deepmind using NLP for collaborative storytelling and comedy and non-standard patterns of thinking
https://computationalcreativity.net/iccc21/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ICCC_2021_paper_118.pdf
1:14:21 Areas in deep learning
1:16:45 Why start a YouTube channel? - Transformers, Traction & Feather-ai
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzzXdsl0U4E-pfMzG9oYKwg
1:20:08 Next steps and how to get in touch?
In this 1hr+ session, James N Graham, a DPhil candidate at the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, and I discuss phase field models in soft active matter, computational neuroscience, the importance of physical intuition and lego design. Tune in for a great session!
James' Website: jngraham.com
In this 1hr+ session, Sabrina Wang, a DPhil candidate at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford, and I discuss materials modelling, quantum computing, inspiration for physics and 3D animation (Blender Dilettante). Tune in for a great session!
In this 1hr+ session, Dr. Andrew Shapiro, the Co-Founder and CTO of Proteus Space Inc. and formerly the manager of technology formulation at NASA JPL, and I discuss everything from nanomaterial production to the changing space industry to small satellite propulsion. Tune in for a great session!
In this 1hr+ session, David Heath, the President of the Oxford University Rocketry Society, and I discuss everything rockets from aerospikes to machine learning in fluid dynamics to rotating detonation engines in space. Tune in for our first episode!