Christoph Ort, Group Leader and Head of the Urban Water Maangement Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology dives into the world of wastewater surveillance or wastewater-based epidemiology, techniques, intricacies, use-cases and the broader societal implications. We trace his journey in leading a "band" of disciplines in supporting society during a crisis moment, namely the COVID pandemic, with valuable information on the spread of infections - all by just holding a "magnifying glass" into our sewer systems.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and a discussion around two props
8:37 Getting into Christoph's story - culture engineering
12:07 The PhD - Dynamics of sewers and micropollutants
19:48 Introducing wastewater based epidemiology or surveillance
21:21 Terminology around WWBE and sewer sociology
23:44 Detecting illicit drugs in sewer systems
26:57 Briefly - how to detect using analytical chemistry methods
32:17 Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic
39:30 The MS2Field - A mobile lab in a trailer
41:30 His vision, the institutional context and where is Christoph heading
45:25 The future of wastewater-based surveillance
46:48 Syndromic surveillance - the indirect but powerful alternative
51:26 Rock n' Roll?
56:08 Q&A Start
56:25 What does innovation mean to you?
58:56 Key event, person, book
1:00:42 Time Management
1:03:20 Favourite Childhood Memory
1:04:33 Biggest challenge in career to date
1:05:55 Advice for young researchers
1:07:39 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:08:30 Where can people find you?
1:09:19 Final Message
1:09:38 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #8 tests whether NotebookLM can play "Broken Telephone". We generate an audio overview of a paper and use it as the basis to generate a new audio overview - rinse and repeat 20 times! What about across languages? Mashael Yazdanie (ep42) and I react to the final result. Will NotebookLM go off the rails or will it manage to keep the core message of the key research paper we used as a basis? Listen in to find out so that you do not have to test it yourself!

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Guest Intro & Welcome Back
4:25 Mashael's Prior experience with AI
5:51 The children's game of "Broken Telephone”
8:19 The human summary
13:29 How this experiment works and expectations
18:12 Live Reaction Original Summary
30:27 Impressions of Original Summary
36:14 Live Reaction - Version 20
50:18 Impressions of Version 20
52:08 Explaining the next Broken Telephone experiment
53:49 Live Reaction - Multilingual Version 20
1:02:42 Post-discussion
1:10:40 What is the future for AI?
1:14:43 Wrap up
1:15:22 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Wei Shan Chen, also known as "Momo", Assistant Professor at Wageningen University shares his journey from Materials Engineering into the environment, from Taiwan to The Netherlands and from the Carbon Cycle to the Water Cycle. We discuss the issue of food waste and its broader implications among other approaches he has taken to recover carbon and close the loop. We also hear about Momo's foray into Blue-Green Infrastructure planning and how stakeholder engagement has changed his perspective on doing impactful research and implementing the knowledge in the form of usable tools.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and the mystery behind the name Momo
5:21 Tracing Momo's steps from materials in Taiwan to Wageningen
11:29 Closing the carbon cycle with microbial fuel cells
15:28 Momo's work in reducing fossil fuel use - it gets technical
17:21 Retrieving carbon from waste
21:20 Valuing and closing the loop on food waste
32:04 How to deal with the composition of food waste?
35:21 The Bin2Bean Project in Amsterdam
38:38 Going into the Water cycle for Carbon and Food
42:28 Momo's venture into BGI Tools
49:04 Modelling the planning for biodiversity
56:09 Carbon and Water, what next?
58:23 Q&A Start
58:37 What does innovation mean to you?
1:01:16 Key event, book, person
1:03:11 Time Management
1:05:27 Favourite childhood memory
1:08:58 Biggest challenge to date
1:10:57 Advice for young researchers
1:12:38 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:14:11 Where can people find you?
1:15:06 Final Message
1:15:46 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/