Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits - Ep. 37 | Hypergiant and Colossal's Ben Lamm on Industrial AI and Resurrecting Woolly Mammoths

Ep. 37 | Hypergiant and Colossal's Ben Lamm on Industrial AI and Resurrecting Woolly Mammoths

11/09/21 • 47 min

Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

Turning science fiction into engineering reality is a complex business, but Ben Lamm has made it into a career.

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, Daniel chats with Lamm, a serial entrepreneur who has founded several technology and science startups all through his 20s and 30s. One of these companies is Hypergiant, which helps governments and companies integrate cutting-edge AI into their aerospace, defense, and infrastructure.

Now, Lamm has set his sights on bioengineering, where he's partnered with one of the leading experts in genomics, George Church, to bring back woolly mammoths in the form of engineered arctic elephants designed with mammoth DNA.

Yes, Ben has seen Jurassic Park. Yes, they get that question all the time. And, yes, you have got to hear how they're pulling this off.

Join us to hear Ben recount his favorite projects throughout his career (so far) and explain his addiction to what's next in pursuing "the art of the possible."

Turning science fiction into engineering reality is a complex business, but Ben Lamm has made it into a career.

Yes, Ben has seen Jurassic Park. Yes, they get that question all the time. And, yes, you have got to hear how they're pulling this off.

Join us to hear Ben recount his favorite projects throughout his career (so far) and explain his addiction to what's next in pursuing "the art of the possible."

Previous Episode

Ep. 36 | Cryptography in the Cloud Age with Intel Federal's Steve Orrin

Steve Orrin (self-described former hacker and undeniable math zealot) stands firmly at the crossroads between the public and private sectors, precisely where cybersecurity intersects with them both. From his viewpoint, it's a myth that the government is slow to adopt progressive technologies. Or, more accurately, reality resides in a nuanced gray area where Predator drones are outfitted with cutting-edge security and, somehow, painfully slow cloud adoption is actually a blessing in disguise.

In this episode, you'll hear about the impact of AI and quantum computing on cybersecurity, the "new math, new hardware" of next-gen cryptography, and how the heck to bring classified materials into the work-from-home environment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additional highlights from this episode include:

A shockingly accessible explanation of homomorphic cryptography
The unique joys of having Bruce Schneier rip one's carefully crafted cryptography stack to shreds
How a security expert chooses a baby monitor these days
Why maybe we should be designing security systems with our moms in mind

Next Episode

Ep. 38 | Comedy, Shocks, and Educating EEs on YouTube with ElectroBOOM's Mehdi Sadaghdar

"Want to subconsciously learn while being entertained?" says the ElectroBOOM YouTube page. "Then subscribe!!"

Mehdi Sadaghdar is well-known for several things: his YouTube videos, his habit of accidentally shocking himself in said videos, his sense of humor, his impressive unibrow. But Sadaghdar is also one of the few electrical engineer celebrities alive today and he's made a name for himself by creating electronics educational videos on YouTube.

Just as his YouTube page promises, ElectroBOOM makes over 4.8 million subscribers laugh with his particular brand of hijinks while also teaching them about concepts like current limiting and magnetic fields in BLDC motors. The result is somewhere between Bill Nye, Mythbusters, and the Marx Brothers.

In this episode of Moore's Lobby, Mehdi and Daniel chat about the role of YouTube and social media in modern engineering education, especially the idea of teaching by showing (occasionally shocking) mistakes.

Also included in this episode: