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Speaker 2: We do want to keep you updated on what's happening
Speaker 2: on the economic front end in Washington, DC, and for
Speaker 2: that we go to Michael McKee, international economics and.
Speaker 3: Policy correspondent who's in DC.
Speaker 2: And the IMF just released its lowered forecast for world
Speaker 2: growth this year and next, citing the risk of a
Speaker 2: global trade war, also saying, Mike, the possibility of recession
Speaker 2: in the US is rising to forty percent from twenty
Speaker 2: seven percent in October.
Speaker 4: What else did we learn, well, Alex, the world economic
Speaker 4: outlook is rather cloudy. Indeed, according to the World Economic Outlook, basically,
Speaker 4: the IMF had to retool all of their forecasts that
Speaker 4: were underway when Donald Trump announced his tariffs on April second,
Speaker 4: and so since then they've come up with a couple
Speaker 4: of different scenarios because we don't know what exactly he's
Speaker 4: going to do.
Speaker 5: But the one they're using is one they call the
Speaker 5: reference scenario, and it is that the global growth rate
Speaker 5: will fall by half a percentage point this year, but
Speaker 5: inflation won't rise as much because global slowdown will mean
Speaker 5: that price pressures ease a little bit. That's for the
Speaker 5: whole world. For the United States, it's much grimmer. We
Speaker 5: will grow just one point five percent this year. That's
Speaker 5: almost a full percentage point less than had been forecast
Speaker 5: just two months ago by the IMF, and the inflation
Speaker 5: rate will rise to three percent as unemployment rises above
Speaker 5: four percent. So the US outlook is not particularly good
Speaker 5: at all of this they blame on tariffs.
Speaker 6: So Mike, that's kind of where I wanted to go here.
Speaker 6: I mean, it does feel like a switch was thrown,
Speaker 6: you know, three months ago, where we were in a
Speaker 6: decent economic outlook GDP, you know, growing a three percent
Speaker 6: range on a real basis, inflation probably still a little
Speaker 6: higher than the Fed like it, but you know, two
Speaker 6: and a half percent, stock.
Speaker 7: Market at all time high.
Speaker 6: Is are they ascribing, as you mentioned, the majority or
Speaker 6: all of their cuts to this uncertainty surrounding tariffs.
Speaker 5: Yes, and to modeling out the tariffs themselves and what
Speaker 5: impact they might have of course they have to just
Speaker 5: sort of pick a level of tariffs and try to
Speaker 5: come up with an estimate for what that might mean,
Speaker 5: since we don't have those numbers. But basically they're working
Speaker 5: off what the administration had announced in early April, and
Speaker 5: it's just an across the board drop in economic activity, GDP, markets, everything,
Speaker 5: and of course, as you mentioned, they do put a
Speaker 5: lot of weight not just on the financial costs but
Speaker 5: on the costs of uncertainty.
Speaker 2: Well, what areas through the IMF forecast or maybe the
Speaker 2: least affected by all of this.
Speaker 5: Interestingly, of the major economies, Great Britain is the least effective.
Speaker 5: They don't see really any change in growth for the UK.
Speaker 5: They forecast one point seven percent, that's down just the
Speaker 5: tenth of a percent, and they don't see any change
Speaker 5: in the UK inflation three point one percent or unemployment
Speaker 5: four and a half percent, largely because the jump administration
Speaker 5: didn't really put much in terms of tariffs on the UK,
Speaker 5: just the ten percent universal tariffs, so they got off
Speaker 5: a little bit easier than other countries. The Eurozone sees
Speaker 5: a decline in growth of half a percent to just
Speaker 5: seven tenths of a percent this year.
Speaker 7: Hey, Mike did.
Speaker 6: Does the IMF a pine at all on the duration
Speaker 6: of tariffs? A lot of folks are saying, hey, if
Speaker 6: you know President Trump backs off or waters down some
Speaker 6: of these tariffs like he oftentimes does when push comes
Speaker 6: to show where he that delays them that maybe the
Speaker 6: impact won't be as bad.
Speaker 7: Can you I MUS even model that out?
Speaker 5: Well, they try in the sense that they're doing a
Speaker 5: couple of different scenarios and they do a lighter tear
Speaker 5: regime and so, which would mean that the impacts are lower.
Speaker 5: There's still an impact, but they're lower than the reference forecast.
Speaker 5: But they make no predictions about how likely any of
Speaker 5: these are going to be.
Speaker 2: When we take a look at other areas of the
Speaker 2: global economy, what don't I m F say on China?
Speaker 5: That's really interesting, Alex because the Chinese take a big
Speaker 5: hit growth of just three point two percent, down one
Speaker 5: point three percent from their January forecast. That would be
Speaker 5: the lowest growth rate in China in decades. The Chinese
Speaker 5: government is aiming at five percent this year, so it
Speaker 5: could be a big hit to the Chinese. In terms
Speaker 5: of inflation, they think.
Speaker 8: They'll be flat.
Speaker 5: That's maybe the best case scenario for China. In this situation,
Speaker 5: a lot of people think they would experience disinflation, if
Speaker 5: not deflation.
Speaker 6: Mike, We're going to get some economic data this week
Speaker 6: initial Joba's claims. I mean, what's the what are you
Speaker 6: looking at this week to try to see those initial
Speaker 6: signs of economic impact in what we like to call
Speaker 6: the hard data.
Speaker 5: Well, you'd be looking at things like jobless claims, which
Speaker 5: haven't moved at all. They've actually come down some, so
Speaker 5: it doesn't look like companies are letting people go. But
Speaker 5: this is a kind of a different scenario because we're
Speaker 5: in an environment coming out of the pandemic where companies
Speaker 5: couldn't find workers, so they are more reluctant to let
Speaker 5: people go, more reluctant to adjust in the face of
Speaker 5: a potential recession than they might have been in the past.
Speaker 5: Next week we'll get the the March jobs report and
Speaker 5: the April jobs report rather, and that will give us
Speaker 5: some indication in the unemployment and labor force numbers of
Speaker 5: what's going on. If immigration, illegal or otherwise has basically
Speaker 5: fallen to zero, the labor force won't grow, it should
Speaker 5: probably shrink, and so that's something to keep an eye
Speaker 5: on as well.
Speaker 2: As well.
Speaker 3: All right, Mike, super appreciated.
Speaker 2: Down and you see there, Michael McKee, Boomerg International Economics
Speaker 2: and Policy corresponding.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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Speaker 7: Ox Steele, Paul Sweeney.
Speaker 6: We're live here at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Speaker 7: That's NJ. It to the cool kids. I'm gonna stop
Speaker 7: at the store and get some swag. I thic.
Speaker 9: Okay, the whole team.
Speaker 7: Oh no, I think I'm just me and maybe a
Speaker 7: sticker for the car carsh man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're hearing New New Jersey and some smart people
Speaker 6: here doing some really smart research.
Speaker 7: And we have one of the.
Speaker 6: Next will be study Distinguished Professor Chemistry and Environmental Science
Speaker 6: here and j T. When we talk to us about
Speaker 6: what you're working on in terms of your research here,
Speaker 6: I see the Biosmart Center.
Speaker 7: That sounds pretty cool. What are you guys doing at
Speaker 7: the bio Smart Center.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much for having me at the Biosmass Center.
Speaker 10: Our goal is to look for sustainable materials in terms
Speaker 10: of chemistry to create technologies.
Speaker 9: That will help people.
Speaker 10: One of us technologies actually, you know, to detect pain.
Speaker 9: Over one hundred US adults live.
Speaker 10: With chronic pain and more than ten million individuals struggle
Speaker 10: with prescription medications. But every time you go to the
Speaker 10: hospital and the clinicians, physicians are required to measure pain.
Speaker 10: And the only way we do that, despite advancement, is
Speaker 10: to show you a facial scale.
Speaker 3: They wear on the scale like what phases are you
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 7: Exact?
Speaker 3: So what would your research be able to do?
Speaker 10: So basically my research days, pain is biochemical in nature,
Speaker 10: and when you have chronic pain, there's a lot of inflammation.
Speaker 10: And when there's inflammation, there are chemicals that are about
Speaker 10: chemicals that are produced by the body. By measuring be
Speaker 10: faust of all, By knowing those biochemicals and measuring how
Speaker 10: much they are, we can relate this to pain that
Speaker 10: people are feeling. And so you won't need this subjective
Speaker 10: approach to measure pain because if you have infants, for example,
Speaker 10: if you have elderly, if you have people who are conscious,
Speaker 10: they're not able to articulate their pain, and so you
Speaker 10: can actually use about sensors a smart biosensors to give
Speaker 10: you the level of pain that people are going through.
Speaker 7: So where are you in terms of your research.
Speaker 9: Our sensors that have been used currently?
Speaker 10: Uh, you know, you know, we have collaborators in Upside
Speaker 10: New York and they take human blood samples and they
Speaker 10: measure the levels of molecules called cyclopgen is two or
Speaker 10: inducible nitros oxide tastes, and.
Speaker 9: They measure the level.
Speaker 10: We combine this with artificial intelligence to be able to
Speaker 10: give you the amount of pain that people are going through.
Speaker 10: And for the most part, we've been able to link
Speaker 10: the level that people suggest to the level that we're
Speaker 10: measuring from our bios.
Speaker 2: Are How far are we from like regular doctors and
Speaker 2: nurses using it in hospitals currently?
Speaker 10: I mean it's we've looked at close to one thousand
Speaker 10: in the doors and we're getting eighty percent accuracy in
Speaker 10: terms of what people tell you. At the end of
Speaker 10: the day, pain is also individualistic, right, There are aspects
Speaker 10: of pain that you know, you know, it depends on individuals.
Speaker 9: You have pay tolerants, right exactly.
Speaker 10: You know you have you know, you have saturation, you
Speaker 10: can so there are so many other components that will impacted.
Speaker 10: But in terms of being able to actually test this out,
Speaker 10: we're doing this already.
Speaker 6: So how does doing research at a place like njai
Speaker 6: T How does that work? How do you balance like
Speaker 6: I guess, research with teaching and all that, because I
Speaker 6: know most professors have to deal with that across various disciplines.
Speaker 10: In actual fact, there's correlation because in the classroom I
Speaker 10: teach graduate students, I teach them the fundamentals, and then
Speaker 10: we take it further from the classroom and actually do
Speaker 10: this in the lab, and so there is a connection
Speaker 10: between what you do in the classroom, what you're teaching
Speaker 10: the classroom, and what you actually doing your love.
Speaker 2: We talk a lot on Bloomberg here about tariff risks,
Speaker 2: but economic risks.
Speaker 3: About products being in short supply.
Speaker 2: Is any of that relevant to the work that you do, Like,
Speaker 2: are you worried about getting certain materials or products to fund.
Speaker 3: And continue moving your research along?
Speaker 10: Suddenly we're going to be affected because, as you know,
Speaker 10: most research at the moment are funded by the federal government,
Speaker 10: and so if there's less funding, there's less time that
Speaker 10: we will not be able to support students to be
Speaker 10: able to do the work, and so ultimately it will
Speaker 10: impact our research, It would impact the classroom and what
Speaker 10: we do.
Speaker 7: What's the next step for you in your research?
Speaker 11: Are you?
Speaker 6: Are you working with a team other professors, maybe other universities.
Speaker 7: What's your team looks like my.
Speaker 10: Team at at the moment, we have six PhD students,
Speaker 10: we have post dogs, we have clinicians that I'm working with,
Speaker 10: those who have computer scientists who are looking at the
Speaker 10: AI component of our work. So it's a whole center activity.
Speaker 2: How did you come to research this particular part. I
Speaker 2: always find that really fascinating when you like narrow it down,
Speaker 2: like the field must be so broad, right, Like why
Speaker 2: measuring pain?
Speaker 10: That's a very good I'm sorry, that's a very good
Speaker 10: question because I have always developed sensors for different things.
Speaker 10: We developed sensors for the environment, We developed sensors to
Speaker 10: measure different things. But I had a friend whose daughter
Speaker 10: was suffering from sickle cell and you know, and she asks,
Speaker 10: you know a view.
Speaker 9: You know, many times she's in crisis.
Speaker 10: Physicians that tificately they cannot really assess whether or not
Speaker 10: she's in pain. And I thought, well, that should be
Speaker 10: easy as long as we can find a particular molecule,
Speaker 10: we can measure that.
Speaker 9: And I thought somebody should have done that.
Speaker 3: It seems so obvious now I'm getting But we did.
Speaker 10: We looked in literature and we realize it's actually not.
Speaker 10: And this is where we started the work fifteen years ago.
Speaker 6: And our doctor's clinicians in the marketplace, are they receptive
Speaker 6: to your research and in what you're in your products?
Speaker 7: Clinicians are receptive.
Speaker 9: But my own daughter is not a sociologist.
Speaker 10: She's a physician and she's at Opkins, and she says, Mommy,
Speaker 10: if we can find an instrument that would tell us
Speaker 10: how much pain people are in, this is going to
Speaker 10: be significant because we get people, a lot of people coming,
Speaker 10: they say they're in pain.
Speaker 7: We're required to treat the pain.
Speaker 10: But how can we actually assess how much pain they're in?
Speaker 10: So if somebody says some ten out of ten, who
Speaker 10: are you to say they're not?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 8: Yep?
Speaker 2: Interesting, well, really great stuff. Congratulations on all of it.
Speaker 2: We wish you a lot of luck. It seems like
Speaker 2: an amazing, amazing research that you guys wind up doing here.
Speaker 3: Thank you so very much.
Speaker 2: That is a professor Wami joining us a NJ T
Speaker 2: Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science, on measuring pain.
Speaker 7: I never thought about it. I thought it was again just.
Speaker 3: A little But the inflammation thing, that's so key. I
Speaker 3: feel like everything wrong with us is inflammation.
Speaker 7: Really, she's nodding.
Speaker 3: Then I said that, so therefore it must be real exactly.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Coarplay, and Android
Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 6: All right, let's talk to our next guest here, Tara Alvarez,
Speaker 6: nj T Distinguished Professor Biomedical Engineering, talking about treating vision disorders.
Speaker 6: I've had a vision disorder since sixth grade. I've had glasses.
Speaker 3: So is that a vision disorders?
Speaker 7: Is just I don't know, maybe it's just bad eyes.
Speaker 3: That is there a distinction?
Speaker 9: I don't here's a distinction.
Speaker 6: Tarah, thank you so much for joining us here at
Speaker 6: nj T your home. Talk to us about the work
Speaker 6: you're doing. What are you looking at? What's the vision
Speaker 6: disorders that you guys are looking at.
Speaker 11: Thanks so much for having me, and you're right glasses
Speaker 11: is what most people think of when they think about
Speaker 11: an eye disorder, and if you can imagine, it's very
Speaker 11: difficult to know what clear vision looks like unless you've
Speaker 11: been fitted for your first pair of glasses. My expertise
Speaker 11: is in how the brain brings visual information into the brain,
Speaker 11: which is the idea of using the eyes as a
Speaker 11: team to get the information into the brain. And if
Speaker 11: you don't do that well, you might not even realize
Speaker 11: you have it, but it can result in problems when
Speaker 11: doing near work such as reading, working on your phone,
Speaker 11: working on computers, and vision therapy works quite well for
Speaker 11: this condition known as convergence insufficiency, which is the inability
Speaker 11: of the eyes to work well as a team.
Speaker 3: How do you have how do you fix that? I
Speaker 3: guess or how do you find it?
Speaker 9: And then how do you fix it?
Speaker 11: Great questions. So vision therapy, which is basically like a
Speaker 11: form of physical or occupational therapy for your eyes, strengthens
Speaker 11: the eye muscles and the communication between the brain and
Speaker 11: the eyes. My work has been funded mostly through the
Speaker 11: National Institutes of Health, which is very critical in funding
Speaker 11: research that has direct impact to our society. You can
Speaker 11: find this by going to an eye doctor, so an
Speaker 11: optometrist or an ophthalmologist, and they can do an exam,
Speaker 11: but most people don't even know that they have it,
Speaker 11: so they don't even realize that this is a problem.
Speaker 11: So typical problems people can have as they get headaches
Speaker 11: while reading, they feel like they read slowly, they get
Speaker 11: blurry vision, double vision, and it takes them much longer.
Speaker 11: So it's not that they have a cognitive or a
Speaker 11: problem in learning, it's that they're struggling to get the
Speaker 11: visual information into the brain.
Speaker 7: How common is this affliction or this issue.
Speaker 11: So depending on how you do, the diagnosis is present
Speaker 11: in between four and twelve percent, so you can say
Speaker 11: roughly eight percent of the population.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the funding. What's your level of confidence that
Speaker 2: funding for this kind of study will stay.
Speaker 11: I'm unclear right now. So right now we have I'm
Speaker 11: on my second randomized clinical trial where we're concentrating on
Speaker 11: concussions because we have the CDC released in December of
Speaker 11: twenty four that concussion costs is about forty billion dollars
Speaker 11: a year. And if you have had a concussion, especially
Speaker 11: multiple concussions, you can develop persistent postconcussive symptoms and out
Speaker 11: of that population, about half of them have this convergence
Speaker 11: and sufficiency, which is that teeming problem of the eyes.
Speaker 11: So it is quite common. It's very impactful. My program
Speaker 11: officer at the National Eye Institute within the National Institutes
Speaker 11: of Health is extremely excited about our work, and in
Speaker 11: the past administration, I would have much more confidence that
Speaker 11: we would have funding to continue. That is very important work,
Speaker 11: but it is something I have a lot of concerns
Speaker 11: about right now.
Speaker 6: How often do you get funded or how often do
Speaker 6: most researchers get fund Is this an annual thing?
Speaker 11: So typically you get what's called an R one, which
Speaker 11: is five years of funding, and you are reviewed every year, okay,
Speaker 11: and typically with a randomized clinical trial, which is what
Speaker 11: I'm leading. That's done in collaboration with Children's Hospital Philadelphia
Speaker 11: as well as Rutgers chop Yes and Rutgers University. It
Speaker 11: takes time because this is a rehabilitation and it's a
Speaker 11: longitudinal study, and it's also done with Saless University of Drexel,
Speaker 11: so it's not something that happens overnight. It takes time
Speaker 11: to acquire this data. But it's really critical because the
Speaker 11: knowledge that I'm gaining from this study has been patented
Speaker 11: where NNGIT holds the patents, and that led to our
Speaker 11: startup company, Ocular Motor Technologies. And the key reason I
Speaker 11: became a biomedical engineer is I want to have a
Speaker 11: positive impact on others, specifically in the healthcare sector. And
Speaker 11: it's my children that actually inspired the core technology of
Speaker 11: our company, which is the idea of trying to do
Speaker 11: the therapy that works very well but is incredibly boring. So
Speaker 11: if you can put the therapy in a virtual reality
Speaker 11: headset and make it into a game. If you have
Speaker 11: a child, a mine or almost all grown now, but
Speaker 11: it's not difficult to get a kid to play a
Speaker 11: VR game. And in essence, we are sugar coating the
Speaker 11: therapy and they think they're having fun, but in actuality
Speaker 11: it's sugar coating a ton of science to get those
Speaker 11: eyes to work better together.
Speaker 3: It's like when I put kale in the oven.
Speaker 8: Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of the sad lines exactly. So
Speaker 2: what is the exit strategy for the startup and can
Speaker 2: you get outside funding at the same time.
Speaker 11: So we have been funded through the NSF through SBIR,
Speaker 11: which is the small Bestiness Investigator grants. We've had both
Speaker 11: phase one and phase two, and we also participated in
Speaker 11: an NNGIT iCore program, and we did a national version
Speaker 11: of iCore, which is basically teaching professors how to create
Speaker 11: and translate their science out of the lab and to
Speaker 11: have a positive impact.
Speaker 9: Amazing.
Speaker 2: We have to leave it there. I'm sorry, we're up
Speaker 2: against the clock. Listen, don't leave me yet quite yet.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. We really appreciate Tara Tara Alvarez
Speaker 2: NJIT Distinguished Professor Biomedical Engineering joining us here at NJIT.
Speaker 2: I love hearing about all the variety of work. It
Speaker 2: is truly truly amazing.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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Speaker 1: with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 6: Right now, when we get back to some of our
Speaker 6: speakers here at NJIT, Chow Yohon and J T alumnus
Speaker 6: and he's co foundered CEO Princeton New Energy, which is
Speaker 6: a global leader in lithium ion battery direct recycling. I
Speaker 6: know that's what I learned from my he's now twenty
Speaker 6: nine year old engineer son back when he's like twelve.
Speaker 6: He explained to me these lithum ion batteries that we're
Speaker 6: powering his little remale control cars, how serious you have
Speaker 6: to handle them? You can't just throw them away. And
Speaker 6: here's twelve and he's schooling me there, So I know
Speaker 6: this thing. Child talked to us about your company. What
Speaker 6: are you guys trying to do here? Because these batteries
Speaker 6: are everywhere now.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So Princeton New Energy, we have a great technology
Speaker 12: in the use in plasma to recycle lithim ion battery
Speaker 12: is much lower cost roughly forty to fifty percent lower
Speaker 12: than the traditional recycling technology and also much more cleaner
Speaker 12: compared with the traditional lead as the leaching process. So
Speaker 12: that's why recycling technology we need in the US is
Speaker 12: a cleaner and a cheaper So talk about the supply
Speaker 12: chain for the battery. The biggest a problem for the
Speaker 12: US right now is that the is still too expensive.
Speaker 12: So how we can reduce the cost for the EV
Speaker 12: is important. So there's a more than half of the
Speaker 12: costs inside the battery, which is a they call the
Speaker 12: cathode active materials. So the direct recycling our technology is
Speaker 12: to direct extract those cathode active materials outside from the
Speaker 12: old batteries that you can reuse. And at the same time,
Speaker 12: we do not want to produce a lot of waste.
Speaker 12: So in the traditional way using the software acid, you're
Speaker 12: leaching all the metals and know at the end you
Speaker 12: get a lot of sodium software and we don't have
Speaker 12: the place to dumb them right now, So that's why
Speaker 12: we need great technology to do that and which is
Speaker 12: a much lower cost. So that's what we're doing.
Speaker 3: So let's go to the cathode part first.
Speaker 2: So you're doing that forty percent cheaper than competitors how so, Yeah.
Speaker 12: Because of the traditional way, you need to break the
Speaker 12: old batteries to down to the element. So using the acid,
Speaker 12: so we don't destroy the cathode materials which is a
Speaker 12: fix them reuse them. So that's how we reduce the
Speaker 12: cost and using our plasma technology.
Speaker 6: So where are we with just battery technology and recycling,
Speaker 6: I mean, are there more advances to go here?
Speaker 7: Because it feels like.
Speaker 6: That's such a key part of electric vehicles, just electric
Speaker 6: power going forward.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so it's not only for the EVA, but also
Speaker 12: like the Andy storage batteries. Yes, as the big the
Speaker 12: storage system, so traditional technology we're twined to build in
Speaker 12: the US, but it's very expensive and the processing costs
Speaker 12: is also very expensive. So that's why in the US
Speaker 12: we're trying to scaleing up our technology. So the company
Speaker 12: was founded in twenty nineteen and we have technology and
Speaker 12: after that we have the large space lab in New
Speaker 12: Jersey which is a close to Princeton. And also we
Speaker 12: have a build up pilot production line which is about
Speaker 12: three four years ago right now it is upruning about
Speaker 12: two years which is in Dallas, Texas, and starting from
Speaker 12: last year, we are building the first commercial scale of
Speaker 12: the production line in South Kara and Chester County. So
Speaker 12: in this one we are able to recycle five thousand
Speaker 12: towns as a face one and we target to expand
Speaker 12: to thirty thousand towns end to recycle the batteries.
Speaker 2: Do you have to have end buyers that will contract
Speaker 2: that material for you to feel confident putting in that
Speaker 2: kind of capex.
Speaker 12: Yes, we need that and do you have that? We
Speaker 12: do have the feed stock provider which give us the
Speaker 12: waste batteries and it were coming from like a cell
Speaker 12: manufacturers who make the batteries. They are manufacturing scrap, so
Speaker 12: we do have a contract with them to recycle their
Speaker 12: manufacturing scrap. We do have a contract with auto ems
Speaker 12: and also the Junkyard players who have a lot of
Speaker 12: waste batteries, so we also have a contract for that.
Speaker 3: One who's buying them though, so.
Speaker 12: Currently we are selling to the leaching companies who need
Speaker 12: those batteries to continue to get medals for the later usage.
Speaker 6: How are you funding your company? I'm a former banker,
Speaker 6: so I always think about the money. How are you
Speaker 6: funding this company?
Speaker 12: That's a very important part. So we close the two
Speaker 12: rounds of the investment. We got CIZ round and a RAND.
Speaker 12: So we have a private investors who interest with US
Speaker 12: investor US and supporting us, and those the investors some
Speaker 12: of the finishing investors AMOWT Strategy Investor so. And on
Speaker 12: top of this, we get a big support from the
Speaker 12: Department Energy in the past six years, starting from like
Speaker 12: a smaller grand SBR later on we have a larger grant,
Speaker 12: so we got rough about twenty million dollars pouring us.
Speaker 3: Well, what is your level of confidence that that continues.
Speaker 12: I think for the United States, critical minerals are very important,
Speaker 12: So we don't have so many minds in the US.
Speaker 12: What we need is how we can leverage those waste
Speaker 12: stuff and how to reuse them. So that's why I
Speaker 12: think recycling technology is a critical for US to secure
Speaker 12: the critical minerals and will link to the US energy security.
Speaker 12: So I think for our technology is very critical for
Speaker 12: the United States for the materials what we need and
Speaker 12: also for the batteries what we're going to build. So
Speaker 12: that's what we need, and just give you a little
Speaker 12: bit numbers. So currently US don't produce any catle the materials,
Speaker 12: so all the materials we import from outside. So directly
Speaker 12: cycling we use the waste batteries and produce the catle
Speaker 12: the materials to make new batteries. And that's content more
Speaker 12: than half of the value inside the little IONN batteries.
Speaker 12: So how important is That's why we believe the grant
Speaker 12: will continue to support this critical minerals research and also
Speaker 12: the support our energy security.
Speaker 7: So you get your masters and your PhD here.
Speaker 12: Right, that's right in chemistry department.
Speaker 7: That sounds fun. How was your experience here?
Speaker 12: It's awesome. I really enjoyed the research here. So basically
Speaker 12: it's my very strong the research and the Engineering foundation.
Speaker 12: So I think that's would be very critical because once
Speaker 12: you're move into the next step, so doing research basically
Speaker 12: finished PC, no one's going to teach you how to
Speaker 12: do it. You have very strong the experience, how to
Speaker 12: design your research, how to set up everything, and then
Speaker 12: after research, how to write a paper and the publications
Speaker 12: and more important, how to find the research topics, write
Speaker 12: the proposals to get a grant. So yeah, we got
Speaker 12: I got a pretty good foundation here.
Speaker 6: Very good good advertisement for walking advertisement.
Speaker 7: Or Ji t for sure.
Speaker 6: Chalian, co founder and CEO Princeton New Energy talking about
Speaker 6: recycling those batteries which are in the cars and a
Speaker 6: lot of other places too.
Speaker 3: That's really amazing.
Speaker 2: I'm just interested to see and we've heard from many
Speaker 2: professors here as well, obviously with the startup about funding
Speaker 2: and how important government funding is and how uncertain that
Speaker 2: path to government funding is as well.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I'le steal here alongside Paul Sweeney. This is Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 2: Radio Broadcasting two live from Newark, New Jersey at JIT
Speaker 2: New Jersey Institute of Technology, where they envroll thirteen thousand
Speaker 2: students and are really some of the leaders in technology
Speaker 2: and science within the country. Joining us now here is
Speaker 2: Eric Fortune and JIT Associate Professor of Biological Sciences.
Speaker 3: He recently led this really cool. He recently led.
Speaker 2: A team competing to record the biodiversity in a square
Speaker 2: kilometer of the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 3: And this is after six year completion.
Speaker 2: Your team walked away with a five million dollars prize.
Speaker 2: This is really exciting. Can you walk us through what
Speaker 2: that was like and how you did it and all
Speaker 2: that fun stuff.
Speaker 8: Well, it's a super exciting project that we were part of.
Speaker 8: It was sponsored by this group called the X Prize,
Speaker 8: and their goal is to incentivize fields where otherwise there
Speaker 8: weren't sufficient finances to drive things. So they feel like
Speaker 8: they're responsible for the current space exploration that's occurring in
Speaker 8: the private sector because they sponsored an X Prize thirty
Speaker 8: years ago that drove that market. So their goal with
Speaker 8: this X Prize was to drive the same kind of
Speaker 8: development and innovation in the area of biodiversity. So their
Speaker 8: rules were that they would give us a few months
Speaker 8: ahead of time, a random location in some rainforest on
Speaker 8: the planet, give us one day to sample with only
Speaker 8: drones and other kinds of remote sensing technologies. No human
Speaker 8: was allowed to go into this square kilometer, and then
Speaker 8: forty eight hours to analyze the data and provide a
Speaker 8: report about the biodiversity that we encountered in that time.
Speaker 7: What did you find here? Findings?
Speaker 6: What was the bio I can't think of a more
Speaker 6: biodiverse area maybe than a rainforest.
Speaker 8: Well, we went to perhaps the most biodiverse place on Earth.
Speaker 8: So this was a habitat in the Amazon rainforest. And
Speaker 8: so we had a square kilometer just outside of Manaos
Speaker 8: in Brazil, and so we deployed our drones and these
Speaker 8: devices that sat on top of the rainforest canopy, and
Speaker 8: they collected insects and sound and environmental DNA, and we
Speaker 8: were able to take like twenty seven million samples of
Speaker 8: genetic information from the forest, identified more species of birds
Speaker 8: that exist in all of North America in this one
Speaker 8: one kilometer area, and then measure hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 8: insects all in this twenty four hour period.
Speaker 7: It's really unprecedented.
Speaker 2: So okay, so you take this, you analyze that you
Speaker 2: have a tremendous amount of research.
Speaker 7: Then what then what?
Speaker 8: Well, that's the I think the big problem that Xprise
Speaker 8: is trying to identify, which is first to develop the
Speaker 8: technology so that we can do this kind of analysis
Speaker 8: and then the next steps. The part that we're in
Speaker 8: now is to try and develop and address the market
Speaker 8: for biodiversity monitoring not only in rainforest and critically important
Speaker 8: habitats like the Amazon Basin, but across the planet.
Speaker 6: So what are the next technological frontiers for monitoring?
Speaker 8: So we've now developed and tested and proven these technologies,
Speaker 8: so our goal now is to translate these things into businesses.
Speaker 8: So our team alone has generated six or seven new
Speaker 8: businesses that are each focusing on components of this biodiversity
Speaker 8: monitoring that are entering the market at this moment. And
Speaker 8: the other teams that we compete it with, some of
Speaker 8: their teams are also generating these new companies. New companies
Speaker 8: that do things like monitoring environmental DNA at.
Speaker 7: A particular location.
Speaker 8: So if you're building a power plant somewhere along an
Speaker 8: endangered forest, you want to know what your impacts are
Speaker 8: you measured the environmental DNA to know what species were
Speaker 8: there before and what species what your impact is on
Speaker 8: species later.
Speaker 3: It's great that we're having this on Earth Day, do
Speaker 3: you know?
Speaker 2: I know it's cool, but I was kind of joking,
Speaker 2: not joking with some of my producers, being like.
Speaker 3: Do we still care about that?
Speaker 2: As in like, was this research much more relevant in
Speaker 2: certain areas two years ago than you could make an argument.
Speaker 9: That is now?
Speaker 8: Well, I don't think so. I mean, in one sense,
Speaker 8: Earth Day is the greatest disappointment ever right in that
Speaker 8: and also kind of a weird thing to say. Every
Speaker 8: day we live on Earth as far as I can tell,
Speaker 8: and so what kind of action can we generate here?
Speaker 8: So obviously the most important thing is to align market
Speaker 8: interests along with saving and preserving biodiversity. And lots of
Speaker 8: companies rely on services provided by nature, and so those
Speaker 8: companies have already recognized that and already are engaged in
Speaker 8: saving the habitats on which they rely on. A great
Speaker 8: example is Laureal. This is a company that has a
Speaker 8: global mission for making sure that the impacts of the
Speaker 8: products they generate are going to be neutral over the
Speaker 8: entire lifespan of the product from production to use and
Speaker 8: then the discarding of the waste afterwards.
Speaker 6: Do you sense changing winds out there in terms of funding,
Speaker 6: terms of support for biodiversity and just environment in general.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean it's complicated, of course, with changing political winds,
Speaker 8: but we all live on this planet and that's not changing.
Speaker 8: And I think anyone of our age and I don't
Speaker 8: mean to say anything about how old any of us are,
Speaker 8: but it's inescapable that during your lifetime you have observed
Speaker 8: changes in climate and in biodiversity. That occurs, and whether
Speaker 8: we like it or not, this is something that we're
Speaker 8: going to have to deal with. The question I think
Speaker 8: from a business perspective, of course, is what's the time
Speaker 8: horizon of that? Is it one year, ten years, one
Speaker 8: hundred years? And that's a complicated thing that I am
Speaker 8: not equipped to answer.
Speaker 3: What's next for you guys?
Speaker 8: So I'm personally. I've started a company that came out
Speaker 8: of this Xprize competition and so we have our first order,
Speaker 8: and so I'm busy building things, building these high tech
Speaker 8: devices that are deployable into these kinds of habitats that
Speaker 8: collect this kind of data. And we see that is
Speaker 8: at least on a small scale, a sustainable business for
Speaker 8: quite quite some time. Anyone who owns land and is
Speaker 8: interested in in the biodiversity there starting with like national
Speaker 8: parks or local and city parks, or any other business
Speaker 8: that have large landing holdings, they're going to need over
Speaker 8: time devices like this to answer regulatory and their customers
Speaker 8: demands about biodiversity.
Speaker 7: And fascinating stuff. Eric, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 6: Eric Fortune, here's a social professor of biological sciences here
Speaker 6: at nj IT here in Newark, New Jerseys.
Speaker 7: We appreciate getting a few minutes of his time.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto
Speaker 1: with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 7: All right, al steal Paul Sweeting.
Speaker 6: We're live at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and
Speaker 6: JIIT in Newark, New Jersey, talking to some really smart people.
Speaker 7: What are you doing here? I mean this one we saved.
Speaker 6: Somebody actually does this A neural engineer and brain stimulation scientist.
Speaker 7: That is awesome. Put that on a business card.
Speaker 6: Alisa Kalioniami, Assistant Professor Biomedical Engineering here at NJIT joins
Speaker 6: us here. Alisa, what are you guys looking at? What's
Speaker 6: your research you focusing on these days?
Speaker 13: Yeah, so the biggest question my research is trying to
Speaker 13: understand how to modulate the brain safely and precisely. So
Speaker 13: we already know that several brain disorders have like abnormal
Speaker 13: brain activities, but we don't know what causes them and
Speaker 13: kind of like how can we normalize them? And that's
Speaker 13: where brain stimulation comes from. So prain stimulation is a
Speaker 13: method where we can actually modulate the brain safely.
Speaker 2: Modulate the brain does that mean like fix it or
Speaker 2: change the brain waves or what does that mean?
Speaker 13: So basically it's kind of like the radio. So like
Speaker 13: with the radio, you can find two things. So with
Speaker 13: this one, we are applying these like small energy pulses
Speaker 13: to the brain that are totally safe and these energy
Speaker 13: pulses are able to change your brain activity.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 6: So give us like a typical example of kind of
Speaker 6: what you're trying to do a patient who may have
Speaker 6: some brain issues.
Speaker 7: What's an example?
Speaker 13: Yeah, So, well, for example, considering medications, So medications are
Speaker 13: life saving for many individuals. But the challenge is that
Speaker 13: like some people get side effects, some people don't just
Speaker 13: like tolerate them. Some people just don't get like any response,
Speaker 13: and obviously that's a problem because then we don't have
Speaker 13: any treatments for those. So what I'm trying to do
Speaker 13: with my research is kind of like help those individuals
Speaker 13: who don't get help from the pharmaceuticals. So with these
Speaker 13: brain simulation methods, we kind of like fill that gap
Speaker 13: and try to help them. So we try to develop
Speaker 13: methods that we could kind of like whatever problem they
Speaker 13: have in their brain, we could elevate their symptoms, and
Speaker 13: then in that case it's sort of customized per person
Speaker 13: to do that.
Speaker 3: So I mean, that's amazing. That's like a life saving thing.
Speaker 3: You say it's totally safe, but you say electric magneta.
Speaker 2: Pulsis in your brain, and you're like, WHOA, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that sounds scary.
Speaker 3: Give me the pitch for why it's safe.
Speaker 13: So so basically with uh, this these path is we
Speaker 13: can just reach the surface of the brain and then
Speaker 13: like your brain is already naturally electrical, So what we're
Speaker 13: basically doing is that we just like initiate the activity
Speaker 13: that you would be initiating yourself as well, but we
Speaker 13: just do it externally and then whatever was supposed to
Speaker 13: happen in your brain will happen. So it's kind of
Speaker 13: like we just initiate the domino effects, so to speak.
Speaker 6: Where are you in your research now in terms of
Speaker 6: maybe getting at some point two practical applications.
Speaker 13: So my LAP is rather new, So I've been an
Speaker 13: hit only like two and a half years, so I
Speaker 13: would say that we're still at the kind of like
Speaker 13: the first steps. But we already have some industry collaborations.
Speaker 13: So we've worked with So there's a for example, this
Speaker 13: program and SFI coores so that that's a program where
Speaker 13: we collaborate with industry and then kind of like a
Speaker 13: try to kind of like get an idea of where
Speaker 13: we could help with our research. So I've had a
Speaker 13: couple of student teams done that and then but basically,
Speaker 13: like everything that we do, the end goal is to
Speaker 13: help patients, so somehow, because I mean, this is electricity,
Speaker 13: so obviously like that's where the engineering comes from. But
Speaker 13: like in addition, obviously we have to understand other feels
Speaker 13: like neuroscience and clinical things. But like from my labs, perspective.
Speaker 13: You're trying to kind of like provide the engineering perspective,
Speaker 13: So what do you need to do or what can
Speaker 13: we do through an engineer's perspective to to model like
Speaker 13: kind of like improve these methods so this.
Speaker 3: Could become you could commercialize what you're doing.
Speaker 13: So this technology is already commercialized. Okay, So basically this
Speaker 13: was invented about thirty years ago. So there are several companies.
Speaker 13: I believe currently there is like thirteen different companies that
Speaker 13: are developing these these methods and there are FDA approved treatments.
Speaker 13: So why we still need like a research is because
Speaker 13: like we have this problem that like a we know
Speaker 13: that this works, but we don't really understand the interaction
Speaker 13: between the brain and the electricity that well. So okay,
Speaker 13: we know that it works in this one individual, but
Speaker 13: then like how do we modify to the second individual?
Speaker 7: That's the mystery.
Speaker 13: So we're trying to kind of like find find out
Speaker 13: that what is the like what do we have to do,
Speaker 13: like what do you have to change?
Speaker 3: So currently is FDA.
Speaker 13: Approved the things like depression OCDS, so obsessive compulsive disorder
Speaker 13: and microants with ours, but everything's like one size with all.
Speaker 9: So if you have like.
Speaker 13: Let's say, like a your your tenetic somehow different, it
Speaker 13: is like it might not work for you, but then.
Speaker 3: Currently we don't really know why and what should we do?
Speaker 7: Interesting? Are you saying that? Interesting?
Speaker 6: That re research there for sure, Lisa, thank you so
Speaker 6: much for joining us A Lisa Kelli and Niam Assistant
Speaker 6: Professor Biomedical Engineering n JIT got some smart folks here
Speaker 6: and we're glad they could spare a few minutes of
Speaker 6: their time here today.
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