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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence with Alex Steele and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: On Today's Bloomberg Intelligence Show, we dig inside the big
Speaker 2: business stories impacting Wall Street and the global markets. Each
Speaker 2: and every week we provide in depth research and data
Speaker 2: on some of the two thousand companies and one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty industries our analysts cover worldwide. Today, well look
Speaker 2: at why the planemaker Boeing reported first quarter results that
Speaker 2: exceeded Wall Street's expectation. Plus we'll discuss how one company
Speaker 2: develops advanced technologies for recycling lithium ion batteries. But first
Speaker 2: we would begin with some of our best conversations this
Speaker 2: week from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. This week
Speaker 2: co hosts Alex Steele and I, we're at NJIT where
Speaker 2: they enroll more than thirteen thousand students and are really
Speaker 2: some of the leaders of science and technology in the US. There,
Speaker 2: we spoke with Wunmi Sadic NJIT, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
Speaker 2: and Environmental Science and founder of the Biosmart Center. She
Speaker 2: discussed the development of nanoscience analytical sensors for measuring pain
Speaker 2: in the human body, and I first asked Wunmi to
Speaker 2: talk about what she's working on in the Biosmart Center.
Speaker 6: The Biosmas Center, our goal is to look for sustainable
Speaker 6: materials in terms of chemistry, to create technologies that will
Speaker 6: help people. One of us technologies actually, you know, to
Speaker 6: detect pain. Over one hundred US adults live with chronic
Speaker 6: pain and more than ten million individuals struggle with prescription medications.
Speaker 6: But every time you go to the hospital and the clinicians,
Speaker 6: physicians are required to measure pain. And the only way
Speaker 6: we do that, despite advancement, is to show you a
Speaker 6: facial skills.
Speaker 5: They wear on the scale, like what faces are you
Speaker 5: right now?
Speaker 4: Exact?
Speaker 3: So what would your research be able to do.
Speaker 6: So Basically, my research says pain is biochemical in nature,
Speaker 6: and when you have chronic pain, there's a lot of inflammation.
Speaker 6: And when there's inflammation, there are chemicals that are biochemicals
Speaker 6: that are produced by the body. By measuring, first of all,
Speaker 6: by knowing those biochemicals and measuring how much they are,
Speaker 6: we can relate this to pain that people are feeling.
Speaker 6: You don't need the subjective approach to measure pain because
Speaker 6: if you have infants, for example, if you have elderly,
Speaker 6: if you have people who are conscious, they're not able
Speaker 6: to articulate their pain. And so you can actually use
Speaker 6: our bio sensors or smart biosensors to give you the
Speaker 6: level of pain that people are going through.
Speaker 2: So where are you in terms of your.
Speaker 6: Research our sensors that are being used currently? Uh you know,
Speaker 6: you know, we have collaborators in opposite New York and
Speaker 6: they take human blood samples and they measure the levels
Speaker 6: of molecules called cyclopgenis too or inducible nitros oxide and taste,
Speaker 6: and they measure the level. We combine this with artificial
Speaker 6: intelligence to be able to give you the exact amount
Speaker 6: of pain that people are going through. And for the
Speaker 6: most part, we've been able to think the level that
Speaker 6: people suggest to the level that we're majoring from.
Speaker 5: Ours are how far away from like regular doctors and nurses.
Speaker 3: Using it in hospitals currently?
Speaker 6: I mean it's we've looked at close to one thousand
Speaker 6: individuals and we're getting eighty percent accuracy in terms of
Speaker 6: what people tell you. At the end of the day,
Speaker 6: pain is also individualistic, right, There are aspects of pain
Speaker 6: that you know, you know it depends on individuals.
Speaker 3: You have pay tolerance, right exactly.
Speaker 6: You know you have you know, you have saturation, you
Speaker 6: can so there are so many other components that impacted.
Speaker 6: But in terms of being able to actually test this out,
Speaker 6: we're doing this already.
Speaker 2: So how does doing research at a place like an
Speaker 2: NJAI T How does that work? How do you balance
Speaker 2: like I guess, research with teaching and all that, because
Speaker 2: I know most professors have to deal with that across
Speaker 2: various disciplines.
Speaker 6: In actual fact, there's correlation because in the classroom I
Speaker 6: teach graduate students, I teach them the fundamentals, and then
Speaker 6: we take it further from the classroom and actually do
Speaker 6: this in the lab, and so there is a connection
Speaker 6: between what you do in the classroom, what you're teaching
Speaker 6: the classroom, and what you're actually doing your love.
Speaker 5: We talk a lot on Bloomberg here about tariff risks,
Speaker 5: but economic risks.
Speaker 3: About products being in short supply.
Speaker 5: Is any of that relevant to the work that you do, Like,
Speaker 5: are you worried about getting certain materials or products to
Speaker 5: fund and continue moving your research along?
Speaker 6: Suddenly we're going to be affected because, as you know,
Speaker 6: most research at the momental funded by the federal government,
Speaker 6: and so if there's less funding, there's less time that
Speaker 6: will not be able to support students to be able
Speaker 6: to do the work, and so ultimately it will impact
Speaker 6: our research. It would impact the classroom.
Speaker 4: And what we do.
Speaker 2: What's the next step for you in your research?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 2: Are you working with a team other professors, maybe other universities.
Speaker 2: What's your team work?
Speaker 6: Like my team at at the moment we have six
Speaker 6: PhD students, we have post dogs, we have clinicians that
Speaker 6: are working with us. We have computer scientists who are
Speaker 6: looking at the AI component of our work. So it's
Speaker 6: a whole center activity.
Speaker 3: How did you come to research this particular part?
Speaker 5: I always find that really fascinating when you like narrow
Speaker 5: it down, like the field must be so broad, right,
Speaker 5: Like why measuring pain?
Speaker 6: That's a very good I'm sorry, that's a very good
Speaker 6: question because I have always developed sensors for different things.
Speaker 6: We developed sensors or the environment. We developed sensors to
Speaker 6: measure different things. But I had a friend whose daughter
Speaker 6: was suffering from sickle cell and you know, and she asks,
Speaker 6: you know a view. You know, many times she's in crisis.
Speaker 6: Physicians scientificately, they cannot really assess what No, she's in pain.
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, that should be easy.
Speaker 6: As long as we can find a particular molecule, we
Speaker 6: can measure that.
Speaker 3: And I thought somebody should have done that. It seems
Speaker 3: so obvious. Now I'm kidding, but we did.
Speaker 6: We looked in literature and we'll realize it's actually no.
Speaker 6: And this is where we studied the work fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks to one Sadi Njit, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
Speaker 2: and Environmental Science. We continue with some of the best
Speaker 2: conversations from NJIT. Their co hosts Alex Steel and I
Speaker 2: spoke with Eric Fortune NJIT, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences.
Speaker 2: Eric discussed how he recently led a team of scientists
Speaker 2: in a contest to see who could count the most
Speaker 2: creatures in a square kilometer of the Amazon rainforest, and
Speaker 2: his team walked away with a five million dollar prize
Speaker 2: awarded by X Prize Foundation at the G twenty Social
Speaker 2: Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I first asked Eric to
Speaker 2: walk us through what his experience was like and how
Speaker 2: he did it.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a super exciting project that we were part of.
Speaker 7: It was sponsored by this group called the X Prize,
Speaker 7: and their goal is to incentivize fields where otherwise there
Speaker 7: weren't sufficient finances to drive things. So they feel like
Speaker 7: they're responsible for the current space exploration that's occurring in
Speaker 7: the private sector because they sponsored Next Prize thirty years
Speaker 7: ago that drove that market. So their goal with this
Speaker 7: X Prize was to drive the same kind of development
Speaker 7: and innovation in the area of biodiversity. So their rules
Speaker 7: were that they would give us a few months ahead
Speaker 7: of time, a random location in some rainforest on the planet,
Speaker 7: give us one day to sample with only drones and
Speaker 7: other kinds of remote sensing technologies. No human was allowed
Speaker 7: to go into this square kilometer, and then forty eight
Speaker 7: hours to analyze the data and provide a report about
Speaker 7: the biodiversity that we encountered in that time.
Speaker 2: What did you find here? Findings? What was the bio
Speaker 2: I can't think of a more biodiverse area maybe than
Speaker 2: a rainforest.
Speaker 7: Well, we went to perhaps the most biodiverse place on Earth.
Speaker 7: So this was a habitat in the Amazon rainforest. And
Speaker 7: so we had a square kilometer just outside of Manaos
Speaker 7: in Brazil, and so we deployed our drones and these
Speaker 7: devices that sat on top of the rainforest canopy and
Speaker 7: they collected insects and sound and environmental DNA, and we
Speaker 7: were able to take like twenty seven million samples of
Speaker 7: genetic information from the forest, identified more species of birds
Speaker 7: that exist in all of North America in this one
Speaker 7: one kilometer area, and then measure hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 7: insects all in this twenty four hour period. It's really unprecedented.
Speaker 5: So okay, so you take this, you analyze that you
Speaker 5: have a tremendous amount of research.
Speaker 7: Then what then what? Well, that's I think the big
Speaker 7: problem that Exerprise is trying to identify, which is first
Speaker 7: to develop the technology so that we can do this
Speaker 7: kind of analysis, and then the next steps the part
Speaker 7: that we're in now is to try and develop and
Speaker 7: address the market for biodiversity monitoring, not only in rainforest
Speaker 7: and critically important habitats like the Amazon Basin, but across
Speaker 7: the planet.
Speaker 2: So what are the next technological frontiers for monitoring.
Speaker 7: So we've now developed and tested and proven these technologies,
Speaker 7: so our goal now is to translate these things into businesses.
Speaker 7: So our team alone has generated six or seven new
Speaker 7: businesses that are each focusing on components of this biodiversity
Speaker 7: monitoring that are entering the market at this moment. And
Speaker 7: the other teams that we compete it with, some of
Speaker 7: their teams are also generating these new companies, new companies
Speaker 7: that do things like monitoring environmental DNA at a particular location.
Speaker 7: So if you're building a power plant somewhere along an
Speaker 7: endangered forest, you want to know what your impacts are.
Speaker 7: You measure the environmental DNA to know what species were
Speaker 7: there before andies what your impact is on species later.
Speaker 2: Do sense changing winds out there in terms of funding,
Speaker 2: terms of support for biodiversity and just environment in general.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean it's complicated, of course with changing political winds,
Speaker 7: but we all live on this planet and that's not changing,
Speaker 7: and I think anyone of our age and I don't
Speaker 7: mean to say anything about how old any of us are,
Speaker 7: but it's inescapable that during your lifetime you have observed
Speaker 7: changes in climate and in biodiversity that occurs, and so
Speaker 7: whether we like it or not, this is something that
Speaker 7: we're going to have to deal with. The question I
Speaker 7: think from a business perspective, of course, is what's the
Speaker 7: time horizon of that? Is it one year, ten years,
Speaker 7: one hundred years? And that's a complicated thing that I
Speaker 7: am not equipped to answer.
Speaker 3: What's next for you guys?
Speaker 7: So I'm personally. I've started a company that came out
Speaker 7: of this X Prize competition, and so we have our
Speaker 7: first order, and so I'm busy building things, building these
Speaker 7: high tech devices that are deployable into these kinds of
Speaker 7: habitats that collect this kind of data. And we see
Speaker 7: that as at least on a small scale, a sustainable
Speaker 7: business for quite quite some time. Anyone who owns land
Speaker 7: and is interested in in the biodiversity there, starting with
Speaker 7: like national parks or local and city parks, or any
Speaker 7: other business that have large landing holdings, they're going to
Speaker 7: need over time devices like this to answer regulatory and
Speaker 7: their customers demands about biodiversity.
Speaker 2: Our thanks to air Fortune and j It Associate Professor
Speaker 2: of Biological Sciences. Coming up will break down what it
Speaker 2: means to stimulate the brain and the benefits that come
Speaker 2: with it. You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio,
Speaker 2: providing end up research and data on two thousand companies
Speaker 2: and one hundred and thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Intelligence via Bigo on the terminal. I'm Paul Sweeney.
Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg.
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 2: We continue with some of our best conversations this week
Speaker 2: from the New Jersey Institute of Technology co hosts Alex
Speaker 2: Steele and Irat and Jit, where they enrolled more than
Speaker 2: thirteen thousand students and are really some of the leaders
Speaker 2: of science and technology in the US. There, we spoke
Speaker 2: with chaw yon Njit, alumnus, co founder and CEO Princeton
Speaker 2: New Energy also known as PNE. He discussed how P
Speaker 2: and E develops advanced technologies for recycling lithium ion batteries.
Speaker 2: I first asked Chow to talk about his company and
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do.
Speaker 4: So President Edit, we have a great technology and the
Speaker 4: using plasma to recycle LiTi ion battery with much lower
Speaker 4: cost roughly forty fifty percent lower than the traditional recycling
Speaker 4: technology and also much more cleaner compared with the traditional
Speaker 4: lead as a leaching process. So that's why recycling technology
Speaker 4: we need in the US is cleaner and cheaper. So
Speaker 4: talk about the supply chain for the battery. The biggest
Speaker 4: problem for the US right now is that the EV
Speaker 4: is still too expensive, so how we can reduce the
Speaker 4: cost for the EV is important. So there is a
Speaker 4: more than half of the costs inside the battery, which
Speaker 4: is they call the cathode active materials. So the direct
Speaker 4: recycling our technology is to direct extract those cathode active
Speaker 4: materials outside from the old batteries that you can reuse.
Speaker 4: And at the same time, we do not want to
Speaker 4: produce a lot of waste. So in the traditional way,
Speaker 4: using the software acid you leaching all the metals and
Speaker 4: know as any you can do a lot of the
Speaker 4: sodium software and we don't have the place to dumb
Speaker 4: them right now, so that's why we need the great
Speaker 4: technology to do that and which is a much lower cost.
Speaker 4: So that's what we are doing.
Speaker 3: So let's go to the cathoin part first. So you're
Speaker 3: doing that for cheaper than competitors.
Speaker 4: How so Yeah, because of the traditional way, you need
Speaker 4: to break the old batteries to downb to the element.
Speaker 4: So using the acid, so we don't destroy the cathode materials,
Speaker 4: we just fix them reuse them. So that's how we
Speaker 4: reduce the cost and using our plasma technology.
Speaker 2: So where are we with just battery technology and recycling,
Speaker 2: I mean, are there more advances to go here? Because
Speaker 2: it feels like that's such a key part of electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: just electric power going forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's not only for the EVA, but also
Speaker 4: like the ANDRE storage batteries. Yes, as the big the
Speaker 4: storage system. So traditional tech tchnology we're trying to build
Speaker 4: in the US, but it's very expensive and the processing
Speaker 4: costs is also very expensive. So that's why in the
Speaker 4: US we're try to scaling up our technology. So the
Speaker 4: company was founded in twenty nineteen and we have technology
Speaker 4: and after that we have the large space lab in
Speaker 4: New Jersey which is a close to Princeton. And also
Speaker 4: we have a build up pilot production line which is
Speaker 4: about three four years ago right now is upruning about
Speaker 4: two years which is in Dallas, Texas and starting from
Speaker 4: last year we are building the first commercial scale the
Speaker 4: production line in South Karina and Chester County. So in
Speaker 4: this one we are able to recycle five thousand towns
Speaker 4: as a phase one and we target to expand to
Speaker 4: thirty thousand towns as end to recycle the batteries, do
Speaker 4: you have to have end.
Speaker 5: Buyers that will contract that material for you to feel
Speaker 5: confident putting in that kind of capex.
Speaker 4: Yes, we need that and do you have that? We
Speaker 4: do have the feed stock provider which give us the
Speaker 4: WETE batteries and it were comeing from like a sale
Speaker 4: manufacturers who make the batteries there are manufacturing scrap, so
Speaker 4: we do have a contract with them to recycle their
Speaker 4: manufacturing scrap. We do have a contract with auto Ems
Speaker 4: and also the Junkyard players who have a lot of
Speaker 4: waste batteries, so we also have a contract for.
Speaker 3: That one who's buying them now.
Speaker 4: So currently we are selling to the leaching companies who
Speaker 4: need those batteries to continue to get the medals for
Speaker 4: the later usage.
Speaker 2: How are you funding your company? I'm a former banker,
Speaker 2: so I always think about the money. How are you
Speaker 2: funding this company?
Speaker 4: That's a very important part. So we close the two
Speaker 4: rounds of the investment. We call a cias run and
Speaker 4: a RAND. So we have a private investors who interest
Speaker 4: with US investor US and supporting US, and those the
Speaker 4: investors some of the finishing investors AHOW Strategy investor so.
Speaker 4: And on top of this we get a big support
Speaker 4: from the Department Energy in the past six years, starting
Speaker 4: from like a smaller grand spr later on we have
Speaker 4: a larger grant, so we got a rough about twenty
Speaker 4: minute dollars.
Speaker 3: Pouring us will What is your level of confidence that
Speaker 3: that continues.
Speaker 4: I think for the United States critical minerals are very important,
Speaker 4: so we don't have so many minds in the US.
Speaker 4: What we need is how we can leverage those waste
Speaker 4: stuff and how to reuse them. So that's why I
Speaker 4: think recycling technology is a critical for US to secure
Speaker 4: the critical minerals and this will link to the US
Speaker 4: energy security. So I think for our technology is very
Speaker 4: critical for the United States for the materials what we
Speaker 4: need and also for the batteries what we're going to build.
Speaker 4: So that's what we need, and just give you a
Speaker 4: little bit numbers. So currently us don't produce any castle
Speaker 4: the materials, so all the materials we import from outside,
Speaker 4: so directly recycling, we use the waste batteries and produce
Speaker 4: the castle the materials to make new batteries and that's
Speaker 4: content more than half of the value inside the little
Speaker 4: I M. So how important is That's why we believe
Speaker 4: the grant will continue to support this critical minerals research
Speaker 4: and also the support our energy security.
Speaker 2: So you get your masters and your PhD here.
Speaker 4: Right, that's right in chemistry department. That sounds fun.
Speaker 3: How was your experience here?
Speaker 4: It's awesome. I really enjoyed the research here. So basically
Speaker 4: it's built up my very strong research and engineering foundation.
Speaker 4: So I think that's would be very critical because once
Speaker 4: you move into the next step, so doing research basically
Speaker 4: finished pH no one's going to teach you how to
Speaker 4: do it. You have very strong the experience how to
Speaker 4: design your research, how to set up everything, and then
Speaker 4: after research, how to write a paper and the publications,
Speaker 4: and more important, how to find the research topics, write
Speaker 4: the proposals to get a grant. So yeah, we got
Speaker 4: I get a pretty good foundation here.
Speaker 2: Thanks to cell John nj alumnus, co founder and CEO
Speaker 2: of Princeton New Energy. We continue with some of our
Speaker 2: best conversations from NJIT. Their co host Alex deel and
Speaker 2: I spoke with Alisa kelly Onemi, Assistant Professor of biomedical
Speaker 2: Engineering at NJIT. She discussed what it means to stimulate
Speaker 2: the brain and the benefits that come with it. I
Speaker 2: first asked Elisa what kind of research she's focusing on
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 8: The biggest question my research is trying to understand how
Speaker 8: to modulate the brain safely and precisely. So we already
Speaker 8: know that several brain disorders have like abnormal brain activities,
Speaker 8: but we don't know.
Speaker 3: What causes them.
Speaker 8: I'm kind of like, how can we normalize them? And
Speaker 8: that's where prain stimulation comes from. So prain stimulation is
Speaker 8: a method where we can actually modulate the brain safely.
Speaker 5: Modulate the brain does I mean like fix it or
Speaker 5: change the brain waves or what does that mean?
Speaker 3: So basically it's kind.
Speaker 8: Of like the radio, So like it with the radio,
Speaker 8: you can find two things. So with this one, we
Speaker 8: are applying these like small energy pulses to the brain
Speaker 8: that are totally safe, and these energy pulses are able
Speaker 8: to change your brain activity.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: So give us like a typical example of kind of
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do with a patient who may
Speaker 2: have some brain issues. What's an example?
Speaker 8: Yeah, So, well, for example, considering medications. So medications are
Speaker 8: life saving for many individuals, but the challenge is that,
Speaker 8: like some people get side effects, some people don't just
Speaker 8: like tolerate them, some people just don't get like any response,
Speaker 8: and obviously that's a problem because then we don't have
Speaker 8: any treatments for those. So what I'm trying to do
Speaker 8: with my research is kind of like help those individuals
Speaker 8: who don't get help from the pharmaceuticals. So with these
Speaker 8: brain simulation methods, we kind of like fill that gap
Speaker 8: and try to help them. So we try to develop
Speaker 8: methods that we could kind of like a whatever problem
Speaker 8: they have in their brain, we could elevate their symptoms.
Speaker 3: And then in that case it's sort of customized per
Speaker 3: person to do that. So I mean that's amazing, that's
Speaker 3: like a life saving thing.
Speaker 5: You say it's totally safe, but you say electric magnetic
Speaker 5: pulses in your brain.
Speaker 3: And you're like, WHOA, I don't know. That sounds scary.
Speaker 3: Give me the pitch for why it's safe.
Speaker 8: So so basically with h this these path is we
Speaker 8: can just reach the surface of the brain and then
Speaker 8: like your brain is already naturally electrical. So what we're
Speaker 8: basically doing is that we just like a initiate the
Speaker 8: activity that you would be initiating yourself as well, but
Speaker 8: we just do it externally and then whatever was supposed
Speaker 8: to happen in your brain will happen. So it's kind
Speaker 8: of like we just initiate the domino.
Speaker 3: Effects, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Where are you in your research now in terms of
Speaker 2: maybe getting at some point two practical applications.
Speaker 8: So my LAP is rather new, So I've been an
Speaker 8: NHT only like two and a half years, so I
Speaker 8: would say that we're still at the kind of like
Speaker 8: the first steps. But we already have some industry collaborations,
Speaker 8: so we've worked with so there's a for example, this
Speaker 8: program and SFI coorse so that that's a program where
Speaker 8: we collaborate with industry and then kind of like a
Speaker 8: try to kind of like get an idea of where
Speaker 8: we could help with our research. So I've had a
Speaker 8: couple of student teams done that and then but basically,
Speaker 8: like everything that we do, the end goal is to
Speaker 8: help patients so somehow, because I mean, this is electricity,
Speaker 8: so obviously like that's where the engineering comes from. But
Speaker 8: like in addition, obviously we have to understand other feels
Speaker 8: like neuroscience and clinical things.
Speaker 3: But like a from my.
Speaker 8: Labs perspective, we're trying to kind of like provide the
Speaker 8: engineering perspective. So what do you need to do or
Speaker 8: what can we do through an engineer's perspective to to
Speaker 8: model like kind of like improve.
Speaker 5: These methods so this could become you could commercialize what
Speaker 5: you're doing.
Speaker 8: So this this technology is already commercialized, Okay. So so
Speaker 8: basically this was invented about thirty years ago. So there
Speaker 8: are several companies I believe currently there's like thirty in
Speaker 8: different companies that are developing these these methods and there
Speaker 8: are FDA approved at treatments. So why we still need
Speaker 8: like our research is because like we have this problem
Speaker 8: that like we know that this works, but we don't
Speaker 8: really understand the interaction between the brain and the electricity
Speaker 8: that well, so okay, we know that it works in
Speaker 8: this one individual, but then like how do we modify
Speaker 8: to the second individual. That's the mystery. So we're trying
Speaker 8: to kind of like find find out that what is
Speaker 8: the like what do we have to do, like what
Speaker 8: do we have to change? So currently it's FDA approved
Speaker 8: things like depression OCDS, so obsessive compulsive disorder and micrants
Speaker 8: with ours. But everything's like one size with all. So
Speaker 8: if you have like let's say, like your tenetics somehow different,
Speaker 8: it's like it might not work for you. But then
Speaker 8: currently we don't really know why and what should we.
Speaker 2: Do our Thanks toy, Lisa Kayaleo and Yemi Assistant Professor
Speaker 2: of Biomedical Engineering at NJIT. Coming up on the program,
Speaker 2: we'll break down how one startup is trying to develop
Speaker 2: virtual reality solutions for treating vision disorders. You're listening to
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in depth research
Speaker 2: and data on two thousand companies and one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg Intelligence VI A B.
Speaker 2: I go on the terminal.
Speaker 4: I'm Paul Sweeney.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch the program
Speaker 1: live weekdays at ten a m. Eastern on Applecarplay and
Speaker 1: Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also
Speaker 1: listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York's
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg. Eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: We continue with some of our best conversations this week
Speaker 2: from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. This week, co
Speaker 2: host Alex Steele and I were at NJIT, where they
Speaker 2: enroll more than thirteen thousand students and are really some
Speaker 2: of the leaders of science and technology in the US. There,
Speaker 2: we spoke with Tara Alvarez, and JIT Distinguished Professor of
Speaker 2: Biomedical Engineering. She's also the founder of the startup Oculo
Speaker 2: Motor Technologies. Tara discussed how the company tries to develop
Speaker 2: virtual reality solutions for optometrists to use in diagnosing and
Speaker 2: treating vision disorders. I first asked Tara about the work
Speaker 2: she's doing and the types of vision disorders she's looking at.
Speaker 9: Glasses is what most people think of when they think
Speaker 9: about an eye disorder, and if you can imagine, it's
Speaker 9: very difficult to know what clear vision looks like. Unless
Speaker 9: you've been fitted for your first pair of glasses. My
Speaker 9: expertise is in how the brain brings visual information into
Speaker 9: the brain, which is the idea of using the eyes
Speaker 9: as a team to get the information into the brain.
Speaker 9: And if you don't do that well, you might not
Speaker 9: even realize you have it, but it can result in
Speaker 9: problems when doing near work such as reading, working on
Speaker 9: your phone, working on computers, and vision therapy works quite
Speaker 9: well for this condition known as convergence insufficiency, which is
Speaker 9: the inability of the eyes to work well as a team.
Speaker 9: How do you fix that?
Speaker 3: I guess or how do you find it? And then
Speaker 3: how do you fix it?
Speaker 9: Great questions. So vision therapy, which is basically like a
Speaker 9: form of physical or occupational therapy for your eyes, strengthens
Speaker 9: the eye muscles and the communication between the brain and
Speaker 9: the eyes. My work has been funded mostly through the
Speaker 9: National Institutes of Health, which is very critical in funding
Speaker 9: research that has direct impact to our society. You can
Speaker 9: find this by going to an eye doctor, so an
Speaker 9: optometrist or an ophthalmologist and they can do an exam.
Speaker 9: But most people don't even know that they have it,
Speaker 9: so they don't even realize that this is a problem.
Speaker 9: So typical problems people can have as they get headaches
Speaker 9: while reading, they feel like they read slowly, they get
Speaker 9: blurry vision, double vision, and it takes them much longer.
Speaker 9: So it's not that they have a cognitive or a
Speaker 9: problem in learning, it's that they're struggling to get the
Speaker 9: visual information into the brain.
Speaker 2: How common is this affliction or this.
Speaker 9: Issue, So depending on how you do, the diagnosis is
Speaker 9: present in between four and twelve percent, so you can
Speaker 9: say roughly eight percent of the population.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the funding. What's your level of confidence that
Speaker 5: funding for this kind of study will stay.
Speaker 9: I'm unclear right now. So right now we have I'm
Speaker 9: on my second randomized clinical trial where we're concentrating on
Speaker 9: concussions because we have the CDC released in December of
Speaker 9: twenty four that concussion costs is about forty billion dollars
Speaker 9: a year, and if you have had a concussion, especially
Speaker 9: multiple concussions, you can develop persistent postconcussive symptoms. And out
Speaker 9: of that population, about half of them have this convergence
Speaker 9: and sufficiency, which is that teeming problem of the eyes.
Speaker 9: So it is quite common, it's very impactful. My program
Speaker 9: officer at the National Eye Institute within the National Institutes
Speaker 9: of Health is extremely excited about our work, and in
Speaker 9: the past administration, I would have much more confidence that
Speaker 9: we would have funding to continue this very important work,
Speaker 9: but it is something I have a lot of concerns
Speaker 9: about right now.
Speaker 2: How often do you get funded or how often do
Speaker 2: most researchers get fund Is this an annual thing?
Speaker 9: So typically you get what's called an ro one, which
Speaker 9: is five years of funding, and you are reviewed every
Speaker 9: year and typically with a randomized clinical trial, which is
Speaker 9: what I'm leading. That's done in collaboration with Children's Hospital
Speaker 9: Philadelphia as well as Rutgers chop Yess and Rutgers University.
Speaker 9: It takes time because this is a rehabilitation and it's
Speaker 9: a longitudinal study, and it's also done with Saless University
Speaker 9: of Drexel, so it's not something that happens overnight. It
Speaker 9: takes time to acquire this data. But it's really critical
Speaker 9: because the knowledge that I'm gaining from this study has
Speaker 9: been patented, where MNGT holds the patents, and that led
Speaker 9: to our startup company, Ocular Motor Technologies. And the key
Speaker 9: reason I became a biomedical engineer is I want to
Speaker 9: have a positive impact on others, specifically in the healthcare sector.
Speaker 9: And it's my children that actually inspired the core technology
Speaker 9: of our company, which is the idea of trying to
Speaker 9: do the therapy that works very well but is incredibly boring.
Speaker 9: So if you can put the therapy in a virtual
Speaker 9: reality headset and make it in to a game. If
Speaker 9: you have a child in mine or almost all grown now,
Speaker 9: but it's not difficult to get a kid to play
Speaker 9: a VR game. And in essence, we are sugar coating
Speaker 9: the therapy and they think they're having fun, but in actuality,
Speaker 9: it's sugar coating a ton of science to get those
Speaker 9: eyes to work better together.
Speaker 3: It's like when I put kale in the oven.
Speaker 10: Correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of lines exactly.
Speaker 5: So what is the exit strategy for the startup and
Speaker 5: can do get outside funding at the same time.
Speaker 9: So we have been funded through the NSF through SBIR,
Speaker 9: which is the Small Business Investigator grants. We've had both
Speaker 9: Phase one and Phase two, and we also participated in
Speaker 9: an nng T iCore program, and we did a national
Speaker 9: version of iCore, which is basically teaching professors how to
Speaker 9: create and translate their science out of the lab and
Speaker 9: to have a positive impact.
Speaker 2: Our thanks to Alvaros and Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
Speaker 2: We move next to earnings from the planemaker Boeing. This week,
Speaker 2: Boeing reported first quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations,
Speaker 2: and the company said it's ramping up jet production, aiming
Speaker 2: to raise output of its seven thirty seven Max jetliner.
Speaker 2: Boeing CEO Kelly Ordberg says this would help generate cash
Speaker 2: that's been depleted by a recent strike and manufacturing crises.
Speaker 2: For more guests, Isabelle and I were joined by George
Speaker 2: ferguson Bloomberg Intelligence senior Aerospace, Defense and Airlines analysts. We
Speaker 2: first asked George what his takeaways were from Boeing's first
Speaker 2: quarter results.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest issue there was
Speaker 11: a cash generation came in a billion dollars better than expectations.
Speaker 10: I mean, I kind of get the sense that Boeing
Speaker 10: management has sort of.
Speaker 11: Give us some pretty conservative estimates for cash generation for
Speaker 11: the year. I think they showed it in the first
Speaker 11: quarter coming out pretty strong. I think there's a real
Speaker 11: good potential that Boeing could be sort of cash flat,
Speaker 11: meaning no usage for the year or maybe even a
Speaker 11: bit of generation.
Speaker 10: What we've heard is the tariff effects are.
Speaker 11: Pretty manageable outside of China. China is a bit of
Speaker 11: a challenge. They know that, but again a lot of
Speaker 11: the backlog is not Chinese airplanes. A lot of that's
Speaker 11: been the Chinese haven't placed many orders, and you know
Speaker 11: boe has been sort of busy getting deliveries out to
Speaker 11: them to get some of those airplanes they've already built
Speaker 11: for them off the balance sheet. So China the major
Speaker 11: issue again, not big though, and the rest of tariff
Speaker 11: world sounds like where there's occasions that they have to pay,
Speaker 11: they're paying, they can claw back some of those costs
Speaker 11: from the administration. So it sounds like I would say
Speaker 11: things are continued to be on track for a recovery,
Speaker 11: for a strong recovery, hopefully this year.
Speaker 12: Yes, and Boeing less earned a profit in mid twenty
Speaker 12: twenty one, and it's definitely coming off. It's worse the year,
Speaker 12: and it's century long history. We have the cee Okay
Speaker 12: ord break saying at twenty twenty five is the turnaround?
Speaker 12: You what is going to do differently?
Speaker 10: Well, I mean I think they're going to deliver airplanes. Right.
Speaker 10: So that's that's the biggest challenge.
Speaker 11: When you're an aircraft manufacturer and you stop delivering airplanes
Speaker 11: and you have quality problems, that's why they stop delivering.
Speaker 10: You're just not going to generate cash. They've really been
Speaker 10: trying to keep.
Speaker 11: The supply chain I would say warm by buying components
Speaker 11: from the supply chain, and that's why they've seen inventories
Speaker 11: balloon to.
Speaker 10: Like eighty seven billion dollars.
Speaker 11: So, I mean a lot of the turnaround is build
Speaker 11: those airplanes with existing inventory. Means the cash generation for
Speaker 11: the airplanes they build and deliver ought to be higher
Speaker 11: than historically. Use that money to pay do on debt,
Speaker 11: keep the balance sheet, or heal the balance sheet.
Speaker 10: That's the recovery plane.
Speaker 4: George.
Speaker 2: I know, if I'm talking to you and reading your research,
Speaker 2: the CA story hinges in large part on getting those
Speaker 2: seven three sevens out the door. Talk to us about
Speaker 2: where production is today and where do you think it's
Speaker 2: going to go in the future.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So they said that they were the factory was
Speaker 11: building at thirty low thirties number of aircraft per month.
Speaker 11: You know, we've kind of been tracking it. I think
Speaker 11: we saw high twenty, so probably Kelly's got maybe just
Speaker 11: a more current number on that. I think that they'll
Speaker 11: they'll get up to the thirty eight limit. This is
Speaker 11: all in the seven thirty seven that the FA is
Speaker 11: put in place for them this year, and go past that.
Speaker 11: I think they'll get an FA approval for that, and
Speaker 11: probably at the back half of the year, we're kind
Speaker 11: of looking for them to be forty ish and so
Speaker 11: again that you know, the more the more you use
Speaker 11: the factory, the more overhead gets absorbed over over a
Speaker 11: larger number of airplanes. The more profitable you are, the
Speaker 11: more cash you're going to generate. Part of that story,
Speaker 11: can you talk to.
Speaker 12: Us a bit more about how much the tariff headwind
Speaker 12: will affect the company's top line or bottom line, especially
Speaker 12: with this really heated tit for tat it seems with China, well.
Speaker 11: So again, China has really become much less of an
Speaker 11: issue for Boeing. The Chinese have placed sixteen orders.
Speaker 10: This decade for airplanes.
Speaker 11: There's some four hundred orders on the Boeing books. Still,
Speaker 11: that's of a backlog that's six thousand large. Kelly Orberger
Speaker 11: is talking on the call that you know he's prepared to.
Speaker 11: He was planning and delivering forty to fifty into China
Speaker 11: this year, so not a lot of airplanes. That would
Speaker 11: be mostly seven thirty sevens and that's out of an
Speaker 11: expected build of maybe four hundred and seven thirty sevens
Speaker 11: or so this year. So you can already see the
Speaker 11: sizes and that large. And he's ready to go out
Speaker 11: and he's going to talk to the customers, see what
Speaker 11: they want to do, and he's ready to go out
Speaker 11: and remarket those airplanes. I think we've already seen Air
Speaker 11: India raise their hand say hey, we'd take some airplanes.
Speaker 11: And there's other folks around the world that just haven't
Speaker 11: got the deliveries they wanted. They're ready to take airplanes too.
Speaker 11: So on the top line, I just don't see China
Speaker 11: impacting things that much.
Speaker 2: Our Thanks to George First and Bloomberg Intelligence senior Aerospace,
Speaker 2: defense and airlines analysts.
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