Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 2: Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Is this something that happened in
Speaker 2: college for you?
Speaker 3: Carol?
Speaker 2: There were these courses I'm listening. Okay, So there were
Speaker 2: these certain classes in college that were like designed to
Speaker 2: weed people out. Okay, yeah, Psychology intro to psych was
Speaker 2: one of them, because everyone wanted to major in psychology.
Speaker 2: So what they did is even if you took ap
Speaker 2: psych and you got a five, you still had to
Speaker 2: take intro to Psychology and they made it a terrible class,
Speaker 2: so only the hardcore students would stick with it. Also,
Speaker 2: organic chemistry, Okay.
Speaker 3: I did not take that in college.
Speaker 2: This was like, you know, you're not going to be
Speaker 2: a doctor in life, do you take it in college?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, no, no, no, no no no, no no no no. It's
Speaker 2: like what but it was notorious for weeding people out.
Speaker 2: Like you want to become a doctor, you can't do
Speaker 2: it until you take out you know.
Speaker 3: I have this conversation with my daughter who has a
Speaker 3: friend that's pre met and she said, you know, they
Speaker 3: make these classes hard so that they absolutely weed out
Speaker 3: and figure out who's really going to be serious.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I go to the doctor and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you really pasted? Okam, you did? They didn't let you
Speaker 2: out along the.
Speaker 3: Way past fail You know what they call what do
Speaker 3: they say, doctor got aldis or our Premand yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: We've got a great guest though, to really maybe make
Speaker 3: you think differently about students taking science courses and so
Speaker 3: let's get to them.
Speaker 2: We got Josea Nelson because you think there's a better way.
Speaker 2: He's professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology. He
Speaker 2: runs the Nelson Lab. The lab calls itself quote a
Speaker 2: multidisciplinary research group. It's focused on developing the next generation
Speaker 2: tools for organic chemistry. Joseah joins us from Pasadena, California.
Speaker 2: Also with us is Janet Lauren. She's a Bloomberg News
Speaker 2: higher education finance reporter. She joins us here in the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio and.
Speaker 3: Jenna, we need to say thank you because Hosea comes
Speaker 3: to us courtesy of you. Just tell us how we
Speaker 3: came to your attention.
Speaker 1: We had met at a dinner and he was talking
Speaker 1: about teaching chemistry and the challenges of teaching and learning,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about this and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: this would be a great guest on Bloomberg Radio your career.
Speaker 3: And you are so right, So hose come on in
Speaker 3: on that. So this whole concept of like weeding people.
Speaker 4: Out wrong, absolutely wrong, you know, And I think I'll
Speaker 4: stand here in front of everyone and on behalf of
Speaker 4: all organic chemists apologize for taking that strategy and towards education.
Speaker 4: It doesn't really serve education. Well, I don't think.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because I if there's a way to do this,
Speaker 2: you know, it's no matter how you slice it, this
Speaker 2: is difficult stuff. And I think that's why it is,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of used to weed people out. But
Speaker 2: is it difficult because we don't have the right education
Speaker 2: getting into college, Hosea. Or is it difficult because the
Speaker 2: way it's taught, it's not taught in a way that
Speaker 2: is digestible based on the way that people we understand
Speaker 2: the way people learn.
Speaker 4: You know. I think it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think that a major challenge is
Speaker 4: organic chemistry represents a wealth of knowledge across all sorts
Speaker 4: of scientific disciplines, and we tend to when we teach
Speaker 4: it kind of introduce all of those things at once.
Speaker 4: There's three different ways to look at this problem. And
Speaker 4: instead of kind of building people up and giving them
Speaker 4: the foundation they need to progress through those three different
Speaker 4: ways of looking at the problem, a lot of times
Speaker 4: we just kind of throw it all towards them in
Speaker 4: the beginning. And you know, I think you guys alluded
Speaker 4: to it in your discussion that perhaps you know, there's
Speaker 4: been a sentiment amongst organic chemists and scientists that there's
Speaker 4: some sort of bar that we need to place in
Speaker 4: front of students, you know, to decide who has the
Speaker 4: necessary tools to move to the next level instead of
Speaker 4: thinking about it as education. Hey, we need to educate
Speaker 4: future doctors so they know a little bit about organic
Speaker 4: chemistry so they can learn biochemistry and medicine, if that
Speaker 4: makes any sense.
Speaker 1: So, can you tell us a little bit about your
Speaker 1: career path and how you decided you wanted to be
Speaker 1: a scientist and progress to become a chemist and you know,
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing in your lab.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the reason I'm really passionate about education is
Speaker 4: because of it. So I actually failed high school chemistry
Speaker 4: not once, but twice, and actually dropping out of high school,
Speaker 4: and then eventually I found a well paying lab technician
Speaker 4: a summer program and our summer job and did that
Speaker 4: and fell in love with experimental science and working in
Speaker 4: a laboratory and making discoveries. Because, as it turns out,
Speaker 4: you know, the chemistry or the science we learn in
Speaker 4: the class is very different than the practice of doing
Speaker 4: science or the practice of chemistry.
Speaker 2: Why did that not turn you off when you failed
Speaker 2: chemistry and school? Because I think that is the quickest
Speaker 2: way for people to be turned off from something. I
Speaker 2: didn't do well in every subject, and I was turned
Speaker 2: off by stuff I didn't do well.
Speaker 3: And you turned off, and then you also there's a
Speaker 3: narrative that forms around you of like, well, maybe you're
Speaker 3: just not a chemistry type of person or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think that's that? Is that true?
Speaker 4: And to be honest, you know, I was turned off
Speaker 4: and did not pursue my science education or education at
Speaker 4: all subsequent to that. And so, you know, I think
Speaker 4: one of the challenges that we face as educators is
Speaker 4: thinking about how to engage people and and kind of
Speaker 4: give people value and and and personal validation that goes
Speaker 4: beyond memorizing the letters associated with orbitals or doing a calculation,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of what we do now is
Speaker 4: try to relate. And actually it's a primary goal when
Speaker 4: I'm in the classroom, is we try to really relate
Speaker 4: what we're doing in the class to bigger societal problems
Speaker 4: or bigger personal problems. You know, how does chemistry and
Speaker 4: science impact medicine. How does the the you know, the
Speaker 4: screen of the iPhone you're you're working on right now
Speaker 4: in the middle of class, you know, how is that
Speaker 4: fueled by science? And so I think we need to
Speaker 4: do a much better job in that regard.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, you're at Caltech where students are well
Speaker 1: beyond you know, basic science. But how do you how
Speaker 1: do you make it interesting to people who are maybe
Speaker 1: thinking this could be something for me, but I'm not
Speaker 1: very good in math or I'm not very good in science,
Speaker 1: and to sort of bridge that gap.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's a challenge. You know, I think
Speaker 4: that one of the things in a classroom, if you
Speaker 4: really want to reach people, you kind of have to
Speaker 4: meet people where they are. And I think traditionally in science,
Speaker 4: so a lot of times we spend our time, you know,
Speaker 4: putting out an ideal preparation level. And if people don't
Speaker 4: meet that preparation level and they don't do well on
Speaker 4: the course, well it's the problem with the person. But
Speaker 4: the facts are the facts, and the students we have
Speaker 4: are the students, and their education level is their education level,
Speaker 4: so we really have to meet them in that regard.
Speaker 4: And I still am convinced that making our lessons in
Speaker 4: our curricula bigger than the very fine details of a
Speaker 4: subject matter is really really important in bringing people along.
Speaker 3: You know, I think about education too, and I think
Speaker 3: about you know, sometimes we're just so taught to you know,
Speaker 3: two tests are testing and the whole idea of I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's been an interesting year between I don't
Speaker 3: want to get political at the war between Israel and
Speaker 3: Hamas and you know, students trying to protest and they
Speaker 3: couldn't And we often have a conversation in the newsroom
Speaker 3: that you know. College universities are a place to go
Speaker 3: and have conversations, make mistakes, learn, And I do think
Speaker 3: about all different subjects played at different parts of your brain.
Speaker 3: They teach you how to think. Maybe you don't get
Speaker 3: an A in the class, but it maybe teaches you
Speaker 3: to think on a higher level, and I just don't
Speaker 3: know that teaching has gotten around all of that yet.
Speaker 4: No, I would agree, you know, I think that the
Speaker 4: fact of the matter is when I walk into a
Speaker 4: doctor's office and tell them I'm an organic chemists, oftentimes
Speaker 4: they tell you how organic chemistry has played zero role
Speaker 4: in their practice of medicine. You know, what is true
Speaker 4: is that perhaps the lesson they learned, you know, problem
Speaker 4: solving and thinking about organic chemists kind of gave them
Speaker 4: the tools they need to approach medical problems. And I
Speaker 4: think the same is through true across any kind of discipline.
Speaker 4: And it could be a political science problem, it could
Speaker 4: be an economics problem. But you know, in general, the
Speaker 4: practice of going after really hard things and problem solving
Speaker 4: in a logical fashion can be applied in a lot
Speaker 4: of areas. So, you know, I do agree with that.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us about what problems that you
Speaker 1: are looking to solve and about your work and what
Speaker 1: goes on in your lab at Caltech?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we are really interested in in in developing
Speaker 4: technology that will influence medicine, and so we want to
Speaker 4: discover new chemicals from nature. They're called natural products that
Speaker 4: can be used as drugs. It turns out that more
Speaker 4: than fifty percent of on market drugs are derived from nature,
Speaker 4: a fact that many people don't know. And so we
Speaker 4: we use new electron miicross co b in spectrosky methods
Speaker 4: to discover those compounds. And we also we have another
Speaker 4: division in our lab that works on new chemical reactions
Speaker 4: or new ways to quote unquote cook drugs or active
Speaker 4: pharmaceutical ingredients, and a big part of that is AI.
Speaker 4: So you know, I think that's something that is important,
Speaker 4: and I guess evidenced by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Speaker 4: last week. And this is a big part of science.
Speaker 4: So our group is largely funded by the National Science Foundation,
Speaker 4: and we have a center there called the Center for
Speaker 4: Computer Aided Chemical Synthesis, and there we use tools in
Speaker 4: AI to try and help pharmaceutical efforts and biology efforts
Speaker 4: to think about quicker ways to make molecules that may
Speaker 4: be drugs or they may be the tools we use
Speaker 4: to understand fundamental biology.
Speaker 3: All right, I hope we haven't lost anybody. But why
Speaker 3: do we need to do that? Walk us through that
Speaker 3: next step? Why is that a smart step to take
Speaker 3: steps to take a bridge to cross? Yeah, So this.
Speaker 4: Is I think on a couple levels. You know, you
Speaker 4: can kind of look at it from a lot of perspectives.
Speaker 4: So you know, right now, for example, artificial intelligence, as
Speaker 4: you all know, is just becoming important to all these
Speaker 4: different elements of society, and that includes science and medicine,
Speaker 4: and so you know, we are part to this program
Speaker 4: and the impact of what we're doing will effectively hopefully
Speaker 4: allow the preparation of chemicals or the discovery of chemicals
Speaker 4: for nature to happen quicker. And so you know right now,
Speaker 4: you know, like the therapeutic drug line, if someone makes
Speaker 4: a discovery that might lead to a drug, it may
Speaker 4: take a decade to do the work to actually get
Speaker 4: it into clinical trials, where we think that using artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence and machine learning and other data science approaches, we're
Speaker 4: going to be able to shorten that period. So the
Speaker 4: impact and the importance in medicine and human health is
Speaker 4: really there. I think you can kind of twist it
Speaker 4: from the other direction and look at it from the
Speaker 4: perspective of national security, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people thinking about, you know, ways that we can protect
Speaker 4: our country from AI driven synthesis machines that may be
Speaker 4: involved in making weapons and doing other things like that.
Speaker 4: So from all element of where we're operating, this is
Speaker 4: really really important.
Speaker 2: That's kind of scary stuff. Hey, we have about a
Speaker 2: minute left and then we're going to do some news
Speaker 2: and we're going to come back with you, Joseah.
Speaker 4: But I'm wondering.
Speaker 2: We talked about the connection doctors have or don't have
Speaker 2: to organic chemistry, but where else do you see your
Speaker 2: students going and working when they're done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so most of our students actually go to work
Speaker 4: in the pharmaceutical industry. So graduate students typically go to
Speaker 4: work in pharma, big pharma. We have a small section
Speaker 4: of graduate students that go into consulting, and you know,
Speaker 4: undergraduates a lot of times will end up as you
Speaker 4: alluded to, in medical school. But these days a lot
Speaker 4: of people are using some of the tools they develop
Speaker 4: in their undergraduate education to be analysts and do other
Speaker 4: things like that, go off work for Google, make devices
Speaker 4: that tell you about your body and things like that.
Speaker 4: So it's quite diverse what our students do.
Speaker 2: Let's get right back to Joseah Nelson. He is Professor
Speaker 2: of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. He runs
Speaker 2: the Nelson Lab. It's quote, a multidisciplinary research group focused
Speaker 2: on developing next gen tools for organic chemistry. Joseiah's joining
Speaker 2: us from Pasadena, California. We also got Janet Lauren, Bloomberg
Speaker 2: News Higher Education Finance reporter here in our Bloomberg Interactive
Speaker 2: Brokers studio.
Speaker 3: Josea was also the winner of the twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: Blovotnik National Awards for Young Scientists. They intend to and
Speaker 3: this is I'm reading from what they say to recognize
Speaker 3: and celebrate exceptional young scientists in the life sciences, physical sciences,
Speaker 3: and engineering and chemistry, and to provide critical support to
Speaker 3: send innovative work in science and technology that will address
Speaker 3: society's most pressing global problems. All right, Josea. Before we
Speaker 3: went to a break, I said, google your name and
Speaker 3: you're going to come up with a bunch of stories
Speaker 3: about fun guy. Tell us about fungal pathogens, the work
Speaker 3: you are doing, and why we need to kind of
Speaker 3: sit up and take notice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a that's a popular question. The Last of
Speaker 4: Us made us famous? Actually really, But yeah, I think so,
Speaker 4: you know, I think that it's television shows they kind
Speaker 4: of bring sometimes bring some truth to to the reality
Speaker 4: of their viewers. And so the truth of the matter is,
Speaker 4: and this is something we talk a lot about in
Speaker 4: our research group, is that if the next pandemic was
Speaker 4: a fungal pandemic instead of a viral pandemic, we wouldn't
Speaker 4: have things off the shelf ready to go. We wouldn't
Speaker 4: have therapeutics, we would not have vaccine technology, and you know,
Speaker 4: fighting our way out of that pandemic would be a
Speaker 4: lot more difficult. And the reason is, at least from
Speaker 4: my perspective, is that fungi are genetically very similar to
Speaker 4: human beings. It turns out that there's around fifty percent
Speaker 4: overlap between our genes, and so when we make drugs
Speaker 4: to kill fungi, a lot of times there's off target
Speaker 4: effects that are basically side effects to the human beings
Speaker 4: taking them. And so one of the things we do
Speaker 4: in the group is that we look for the mechanisms
Speaker 4: that fungi use in warfare against other fungi and the
Speaker 4: tools that they've developed through evolution to develop the next
Speaker 4: generation of fungal therapeutics. So fungu i have gotten pretty
Speaker 4: good at killing each other without themselves, and so that's
Speaker 4: the lesson we learned from them, and that's historically a
Speaker 4: lot of the way drugs are developed. If you think
Speaker 4: about penicillin, that came from the discovery that a particular
Speaker 4: fung guy on a peatriot dish stopped bacteria from growing,
Speaker 4: and so the funguy made antibacterial agents. And we now
Speaker 4: know that those are antibiotics, and we prescribe them all
Speaker 4: the time. So we take a similar approach, but we
Speaker 4: focus a lot on fungui to kill fungi. It's kind
Speaker 4: of interesting to think about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, it kind of makes sense. Well, I just
Speaker 3: think it's interesting because we talked to doctor Sharfstein from
Speaker 3: the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School the public health. There are
Speaker 3: areas right about viruses and public health and the importance
Speaker 3: of it and you know how it saves all of
Speaker 3: our lives. And I just wonder, you know, is it
Speaker 3: one of those things that is not getting the attention
Speaker 3: that maybe it needs to. And I don't know how
Speaker 3: you see it, like when you talk about it, when
Speaker 3: you talk about it with you know, public health officials,
Speaker 3: I don't know, what are you hearing, what are you seeing?
Speaker 4: You know, I think this is my conjecture, you know,
Speaker 4: I think that human beings in society are really good
Speaker 4: to responding to emergencies, but prepared for emergencies or something
Speaker 4: I don't think we do as well. And so I
Speaker 4: think in the community, we've all known for a while
Speaker 4: that we don't have off the shelf treatments or treatment
Speaker 4: strategies for fungi in general. And you know, I think,
Speaker 4: to be honest that, you know, until we have that
Speaker 4: imminent threat, I'm concerned that we're not going to do enough.
Speaker 4: And so when I talk about it, I think from
Speaker 4: a scientific perspective, people acknowledge it's truth, but yet you
Speaker 4: don't really see that much investment in those technologies. Now,
Speaker 4: now that said, I'm part of a fairly large a
Speaker 4: group of scientists that's funded by Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
Speaker 4: and we are looking specifically at this problem. But I
Speaker 4: don't think it's enough, you know, I think that there
Speaker 4: needs to be an effort ftterally from the NIH. That's
Speaker 4: my position and take on this issue.
Speaker 1: So is there you mentioned NIH, and we're always interested
Speaker 1: in funding, especially government funding of science. Is there a
Speaker 1: concern that there may not be the same kind of
Speaker 1: funding scope in terms of where scientific research money is
Speaker 1: coming from.
Speaker 4: There's a tremendous concern. So to bring some facts, you know,
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety eight, the National Institutes of Health established
Speaker 4: a modular budgetary system. So you know, when you write
Speaker 4: a proposal to the NIH asking for research money, you
Speaker 4: can kind of, you know, do it an itemized way,
Speaker 4: or you could just ask for a standard budget. That
Speaker 4: standard budget was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety eight, and it is two hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars in twenty twenty four. And so what this
Speaker 4: means is the research funding that used to support the
Speaker 4: training of eight scientists or so, now you know, will
Speaker 4: support two and a half scientists. And so the number
Speaker 4: of people and workforce that we're training and putting towards
Speaker 4: solving these really incredible, incredible, incredibly important problems and human
Speaker 4: health is dramatically reduced. And so there is obviously a
Speaker 4: funding issue out there, and it's concerning, you know. I
Speaker 4: think the other part of it is traditionally there's been
Speaker 4: a significant amount of investment from the private sector, in
Speaker 4: particular from pharmaceutical companies into the type of research we do.
Speaker 4: And I know that since two thousand and eight. The
Speaker 4: financial crisis at that point slowed that down and it
Speaker 4: hasn't quite recovered. So now we're in this situation where
Speaker 4: the people that actually fuel pharmaceutical pharmaceutical innovation and that
Speaker 4: whole industry are trained by research groups that are underfunded
Speaker 4: by both the pharmaceutical industry and the government. And so
Speaker 4: I don't know when this is going to catch up
Speaker 4: and when this is going to really be born out
Speaker 4: in terms of how much pharmaceutical innovation we can make,
Speaker 4: but it's certainly a looming problem from my perspective.
Speaker 1: So where else would universities like Caltech or MIIT or
Speaker 1: Harvard look for research foundation if perhaps the government and
Speaker 1: industry are curbing those numbers or they're not going as
Speaker 1: far as they used to.
Speaker 4: I think this ties into education, you know. From my
Speaker 4: perspective is that, you know, I think we need to
Speaker 4: do a better job educating on the undergraduate chemistry level
Speaker 4: for a couple of reasons. Number one is that's going
Speaker 4: to you know, continue a nice flow of tuition, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, things are getting really expensive, but tuition also
Speaker 4: goes and contributes to this research environment private donors, So
Speaker 4: people that go off and are successful and do well.
Speaker 4: Hopefully we'll look back at their chemistry courses and instead
Speaker 4: of you know, having PTSD, will look back favorably on
Speaker 4: what they learn there and hopefully make donations moving forward.
Speaker 4: And finally, I think education is super important so that
Speaker 4: the next round of policy makers will have had a
Speaker 4: favorable experience, undergraduate experience. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 4: we can look towards donors and philanthropy for money, and
Speaker 4: that's great, but I still think ultimately the path towards
Speaker 4: sustainability and scientific sustainability and competitiveness with the rest of
Speaker 4: the world is going to rely on influence in policy.
Speaker 2: Okay, we only have about forty seconds left. It's not
Speaker 2: a ton of time for my last question, But professor,
Speaker 2: is there something that keeps you up at night out there, like.
Speaker 3: A fun guy that's just gonna like recaunt your last.
Speaker 2: Of US comic on me?
Speaker 1: Think?
Speaker 4: And I know, yeah, you know, I think there's not
Speaker 4: a particular fun guy. And actually, you know, I'm up.
Speaker 4: I'm up a lot at night thinking about viruses too.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that Stars two, Uh, that was
Speaker 4: a very death disease. I think it was a thirty
Speaker 4: percent or some double digit percentage fatality. It just wasn't
Speaker 4: as infectious as as COVID or SARS three. And so
Speaker 4: you know, any you know, disease that has this you know,
Speaker 4: the potential as a contagion, and you know, and is
Speaker 4: much more lethal. I think, could have a much dramatic,
Speaker 4: much greater effect on society. And I'm afraid that we're
Speaker 4: you know, gonna be complacent because we made it out
Speaker 4: of COVID, you know, relatively intact as a society.
Speaker 3: And so like we've had a theme around this today,
Speaker 3: you know, and I think about this our conversation with
Speaker 3: you in an earlier guestjose and Nelson, professor of chemistry
Speaker 3: at California Institute of Technology, and our own Janet lore
Speaker 3: And of Bloomberg News. This is Bloomberg Business Week. Don't forget,
Speaker 3: of course, it's a huge week for AI and for Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet,
Speaker 3: Amazon and meta platforms. We've talked about this over the
Speaker 3: last couple of hours. All reporting earnings. In the coming days,
Speaker 3: traders will be paying close attention to their capex spending
Speaker 3: to gauge demand for Nvidia's chips, which are prized for
Speaker 3: AI computing. It's something we kind of kicked off at
Speaker 3: two pm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in Vidia is not reporting this week. But
Speaker 2: what we learn from these companies is how much demand
Speaker 2: there is for Invidia, their cap ax.
Speaker 3: These are their main customers, right, The bulk of what
Speaker 3: Nvidia sales comes from these guys.
Speaker 2: Well, I know Matt Olson's going to be watching this
Speaker 2: stuff closely. He's chief innovation officer over at Burns and McDonald.
Speaker 2: It's an employee owned engineering, architecture, construction, and environmental and
Speaker 2: consulting firm. It plays in a host of industries aviation, infrastructure, healthcare,
Speaker 2: military construction, consumer product manufacturing, food and beverage production, oil,
Speaker 2: gas and chemicals, renewable energy, telecom, and more. He joined
Speaker 2: the well all over the world too, Yeah, exactly. He
Speaker 2: joined us here in the Bloomberg Interactive at Broker's studio. Welcome,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's an exciting day,
Speaker 5: beautiful day here in New York.
Speaker 2: It is a nice day here in New York. Hasn't
Speaker 2: rained in a while, which is very dry, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's all good.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the frenzy around AI and public markets, how has
Speaker 2: that affected your job over the last couple of years?
Speaker 5: Yeah, a couple different ways. We plan two aspects of
Speaker 5: that market. One building the infrastructure, data centers, data centers,
Speaker 5: the paragrade, two things massively impacted by the deployment of AI,
Speaker 5: but then also on the need for our resources and
Speaker 5: our actual deployment of AI within our businesses.
Speaker 2: When you say resources are do you do you actually
Speaker 2: mean the production of electricity.
Speaker 5: One of the number of people we need that keep
Speaker 5: up with the market demand. You know, can we attract
Speaker 5: enough talent? Is there enough people graduating to execute all
Speaker 5: the work? The projects are big, you're moving faster than
Speaker 5: ever before, and we've had to look for ways. You know,
Speaker 5: as we're bringing more renewable energy onto the grid, we're
Speaker 5: dealing with a more complex situation. It's not just a
Speaker 5: few big plans anymore. Its sources all over the place,
Speaker 5: and so that means more planning, more construction projects, more
Speaker 5: things to engage with, and that requires more human capital
Speaker 5: to make that happen, and something that we haven't decent supply,
Speaker 5: but we could always use more of here in the US.
Speaker 3: Well, tell us about that, Like, what are you looking
Speaker 3: for in hires and new hires? What kind of backgrounds
Speaker 3: are you looking for?
Speaker 5: Experienced people with engineering over almost any discipline, a lot.
Speaker 3: And any engineers or are you looking.
Speaker 5: For any kind generally in MySpace, specifically electrical computer data
Speaker 5: scientist roles and responsibilities or a prime However, with the
Speaker 5: availability of labor, we are cross training people if they
Speaker 5: are do not necessarily have the background, and that's because
Speaker 5: we're looking to always be adding to our ranks.
Speaker 3: Matt, I'm wondering are you concerned about the presidential election
Speaker 3: outcome and what it might mean for immigration and especially
Speaker 3: those with the skills that you might be interested in
Speaker 3: and maybe are I don't know how much of your
Speaker 3: talent pool comes from outside the United States and you guys.
Speaker 5: Are, Yeah, we do projects worldwide. We're you know with
Speaker 5: the presidential election. Fortunately, in the infrastructure business runs on
Speaker 5: very long time cycles, so immediate impacts not one hundred
Speaker 5: percent clear to you know. Projects that we're working on
Speaker 5: now will be working on for the next eighteen to
Speaker 5: twenty four months.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: The key things are that we keep that project pipeline
Speaker 5: working effectively, that regulation that permits are getting approved, to
Speaker 5: keep our construction backlog strong and be able to let
Speaker 5: us complete all the projects that everybody wants to be completed.
Speaker 5: You know, infrastructure something that's the forefront of everybody's mind.
Speaker 5: It's something that we used to not talk a lot about,
Speaker 5: but every day I.
Speaker 3: Say infrastructure, Is it data centers or what else? Like
Speaker 3: what infrastructure covers so much? People can think bridges, but
Speaker 3: it can mean so much of it.
Speaker 5: It is, so I'm curious all of those items for
Speaker 5: Burns and McDonald, it's across all that space. It's you know,
Speaker 5: anything that we depend on from water and waste, water,
Speaker 5: roads and bridges. My specific discipline is mostly in the
Speaker 5: electrical space, so the power grid and the data centers,
Speaker 5: the fiber optic and telecommunications of a structure that ties
Speaker 5: those resources together. It used to be if you wanted power,
Speaker 5: you called up the electric utility and you made your
Speaker 5: interconnection request and your service would be provided, you know,
Speaker 5: some months later, maybe a year later. Now that's not
Speaker 5: always clear that that's going to happen in the marketplace
Speaker 5: that we're now in the space where we're having to
Speaker 5: really look at what can the grid support, where is
Speaker 5: available energy? And then that is one of the primary
Speaker 5: factors and where we're citing data centers and the scale
Speaker 5: and the speed of these projects is just getting larger
Speaker 5: and much faster.
Speaker 2: If you think about this like a chain with the
Speaker 2: weakest link, where is the weakest link right now? Is
Speaker 2: it the infrastructure? Is it the grid? What the grid
Speaker 2: can actually handle? Are there areas of the country that
Speaker 2: can't accommodate what needs will be desired for data centers
Speaker 2: for electrical consumption?
Speaker 5: Yes, I see. The biggest challenge is maybe time scales.
Speaker 5: It's that we can do a lot with the infrastructure
Speaker 5: that we have, with the grid that we have, but
Speaker 5: matching up the what is the source? You know, the
Speaker 5: super interesting thing about AI and data centers a continuous
Speaker 5: demand for energy with what are the sources available in
Speaker 5: that space? And then what is the interconnecting capacity coming
Speaker 5: through the grid? So is the also exist in one place? Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, but is.
Speaker 2: The conchainous demand portion the tough part because the way
Speaker 2: that demand has worked has been so based on the
Speaker 2: time of day.
Speaker 5: Traditionally, I think, traditionally the energy grid has been a
Speaker 5: demand driven infrastructure. Whatever the demand is, we'll build the
Speaker 5: supply to meet it. With renewable energy coming a bigger
Speaker 5: and bigger portion. We don't always uh you know, we'll
Speaker 5: say that it's consistent, but it can be intermittent that
Speaker 5: we have to you know, how are we going to
Speaker 5: put that puzzle together on any given day? And the
Speaker 5: most efficient thing is can we move the load around
Speaker 5: to match? You know, can we charge your car when
Speaker 5: we have an access supply? Challenging thing with data centers
Speaker 5: is generally they are a continuous load, although some technology
Speaker 5: providers are now looking how could we change that up?
Speaker 5: What you know, does it make sense to follow the
Speaker 5: sun around the world with our compute loads or only
Speaker 5: compute certain things? And an interesting diconomy when you're looking
Speaker 5: at the cost of buying all those chips, building all
Speaker 5: those data centers versus the supply of energy, which one
Speaker 5: how is that going to be balanced out? And which
Speaker 5: one is going to win at any given time. We
Speaker 5: always want our tweets faster and our you know, our
Speaker 5: text messages. We're not a patient society anymore, so how
Speaker 5: are we going to balance that with just frankly, you know,
Speaker 5: infrastructure takes a while. People come and they have an expectation,
Speaker 5: Oh well, you know, why can't you just get that
Speaker 5: for us done in a couple of months. You're like,
Speaker 5: there's a few things involved, so you.
Speaker 3: Know, we've dond so many stories about our grid being
Speaker 3: you know, overtaxed and it needs to build out. I
Speaker 3: am wondering. I'm thinking about our audience who are listening.
Speaker 3: It's an investing audience, you know, from your vantage point,
Speaker 3: what do they need to understand when it comes to
Speaker 3: our grid and our power needs. I get the data
Speaker 3: center and we're all investing. It's all wonderful about.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest perspective that I have is we're
Speaker 5: trying to do multiple things all at once. We have
Speaker 5: an asset, you know, it's a very large, complex system
Speaker 5: that took us a century to build and now in
Speaker 5: the next depending on which timescale you want, whether or
Speaker 5: not you're talking twenty thirty, twenty forty five, twenty fifty,
Speaker 5: we want to reduce our carbon component to that we
Speaker 5: want to make it more resilient, and we want it
Speaker 5: to support an additional load. And we want to de
Speaker 5: carbon iiced heating, and we want to change transportation and
Speaker 5: do it yesterday. And that is a lot of things
Speaker 5: to be done in one piece of infrastructure at the
Speaker 5: same time. So how do we balance all those priorities.
Speaker 2: The presidential campaign right now, we've.
Speaker 5: Got the great to take care of right now.
Speaker 3: Matt Olson, chief innovation Officer at Burns and McDonald, thank
Speaker 3: you so much, appreciate it.