I just registered for the Singularity Summit 2010. Join me in San Francisco, August 14-15th!
The Singularity Summit is the premier dialog on the Singularity.
The first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic.
Since 2006, the scope of this dialog has expanded dramatically. In 2008, the Singularity entered mainstream consideration. IEEE Spectrum, a sober and mainstream technology publication, issued a special report on the Singularity, and Intel CTO Justin Rattner remarked that “we’re making steady progress toward the Singularity” during his keynote to 2,000 people at the Intel Developer Forum. What was once a relatively unknown concept is now being discussed in corporate board rooms.
We invite you to join our extraordinary group of visionaries in business, science, technology, design, and the arts, as our community explores this exciting topic. Your participation offers a world of powerful ideas, a unique networking opportunity, and access to an exclusive directory of your peers.
The May/June edition of MIT Technology Review lists their “Ten Emerging Technologies 2010″. “Solar Fuel” has been selected as one of the “technologies that are likely to change the world”. The article describes how organisms are used to produce fuel directly out of CO2 in the air, water, and sun light. Whereas some teams focus on modifying and optimizing the organisms, BioCee’s core competence is to provide an efficient, reliable and low-cost bioreactor. Companies mentioned in the article are Joule Biotechnologies, Synthetic Genomics, and BioCee / University of Minnesota Biotechnology Institute.
BioCee is a member of a consortium that has received one of the first ARPA-E grants in fall 2009, for the development of “direct solar fuel” technology.
For a long time I have been a fan of TED- the ultimate thought-provoking conference. I never made it to the real thing so far, but I am listening to their podcasts or watch the videos regularly. I wish a University could have an excellent selection of speakers like TED. In fact, it’s my “continung education program”. Please see more information on their website. I hop to see you there!
P.S. There are still sponsorship opportunities available. Let me know if you’re interested. I think it’s well worth installing TED in Munich with a big bang!
Announcing the 3rd Munich Network Cleantech Conference. Curt Winnen at Munich Network is bringing together thought leaders, industry decision makers, and investors for the 3rd time. The conference is gaining significant momentum and is a regular event on my calendar. Information and registration here. Munich Network: 3rd Cleantech Conference June 24, 2010
In the upcoming edition of CSR International you can find my article “A Call for Urgency and Action: Cleantech Venture Capital in Silicon Valley and Germany”. Fritz Lietsch asked me to write about my impressions coming to Germany from Silicon Valley. In short, Germany is a great location for cleantech, but the VC scene is horribly underdeveloped. Silicon Valley started very late in the game, but with a sense of urgency (see my posts about the Singularity and The Skoll Urgent Threat Fund) and a lot of passion (see Clean Tech Open), California claims a lot more mind share than the good gold German engineering firms. Download the article here..
My partner at the Cleantech Circle, Wasiq Bokhari, is a living rolodex of everything and everybody Nanotech. I am happy to see him interviewed on “FutureTalk” recently, where he gives an overview of where Nanotechnology is today, and its current and future applications.
BioCee is mentioned in Kevin Bohn’s and Jessica Yellin’s article on the CNN website which gives a good overview on the ARPA-E program’s potential in the energy and job markets. They quoted us:
Tom Schulz, co-founder of BioCee, which does research in solar fuels, said the program will produce the next “Energy Google.”
“We don’t know which company of the funded projects it will be, and we don’t know when it will ‘tip.’ However, most of the projects will create only a few (but very qualified) jobs over the next two years,” Schulz said. “The real question is how many jobs will be created and saved in 5 to 10 years.”
How is it possible that the media is not reporting on one of the most important “stories”? Andrew Revkin’s blog in the New York Times, “The Greatest Story Rarely Told”, shows just how bad the media misinforms, and gives excellent links to background reading.
Greentech Media published their list of the cleantech “Top Ten High Concepts 2009″, and BioCee is mentioned as #6 on the list. Thank you very much. Now: let’s make sure there’s no misunderstanding. BioCee’s technology — the bioreactor — is actually a proven technology for several applications. It’s only the new application, using two types of microorganisms for the production of fuel out of sunlight and CO2, that makes this a “high concept”.
“BioCee and the University of Minnesota wants to take sunlight, carbon dioxide and two organisms (cyanobacteria for sunlight capture and shewanella for metabolic transformation) to produce a liquid hydrocarbon. Coal and oil are indirect: sunlight and carbon dioxide create plant matter, but then geological forces are required to turn dead trees and microbes into a fuel. Think of it as microwave petroleum: no more slaving over the Permian basin for millions of years waiting for those hydrocarbons to be done.
An added plus: It creates a market for carbon dioxide and reduces the total amount that will exist in the atmosphere.”
BioCee is the company that I co-founded with my friend, biologist, chemical and environmental engineer Marc von Keitz; other co-founders are Michael Flickinger, who developed the technology at the University of Minnesota, and Luca Zullo, who joined us from Cargill.
BioCee is a material science company, right at the overlap of biotech and chemical engineering. They produce bioreactors that make microorganisms happier and more efficient than the usual steel tanks in which they have to do their work.
The first applications BioCee focuses on are desulfurization of petroleum products (NSF gives us a grant for that), and “Direct Solar Fuel”; “Direct Solar Fuel” is the production of hydrocarbons directly from sunlight and CO2 (some kind of artificial photosynthesis). For that, BioCee was among the first three ARPA-E recipients in October 2009.
Please see my 99 second interview on BioCee which was taped at the Munich Cleantech Conference a week ago (it’s in German).
The official press release is here, and lots of excellent press article are here.
