Nadja Kunz, Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada shares her insights on the role of water in mining and the importance of critical minerals for the sustainable energy transition. Most notably, we gain insights into the complexity of the mining industry and its diverse and often forgotten stakeholders. What is required for us to make mining more sustainable, equitable, safe and future-proof?

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, traditional owners, mountains and beaches
6:00 Nadja, the network queen
7:51 Water in the mining sector - Nadja's PhD
10:04 From double degree to industry and PhD
16:54 Working in Switzerland and Monglia
21:51 Moving to UBC Vancouver, Canada
24:08 Comparing the Australian and Canadian mining landscapes
25:53 The significance of water management in mining
31:41 Trying to solve water management holistically in mining
35:52 From water management to water stewardship
38:03 Pressing issues in Canada's mining? Critical Minerals
48:24 Quantified evidence - the example of tailings dams
59:09 Nadja's Future Plans
1:01:59 Q&A Start
1:02:24 What does innovation mean to you?
1:04:03 Key person book event
1:05:27 Time Management
1:07:29 Favourite childhood memory
1:08:09 Biggest challenge to date
1:11:08 Advice for young professionals
1:12:33 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:14:13 Final Message
1:15:15 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/

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/

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 #7 attempts to create a connected story on the topic of headwater streams - Belinda Hatt (ep20) reacts to how NotebookLM produces a deep dive discussion some of her ongoing work on headwater streams, using a whopping 22 sources, from Water Acts to Strategy Documents, journal papers, design documents and documentation of data sets. Will NotebookLM be able to focus on the key topic or will it go off on endless tangents? What about its infamous analogies?

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
1:27 Guest Intro - Reflections on the first podcast
3:00 Introducing the broad topic area
4:46 Guest's prior experience with AI
8:37 How this experiment works
14:09 The prompt and human's summary and expectation
18:20 Live Reaction
55:58 Post-discussion
1:02:59 Thoughts and wishes for the future of AI
1:06:11 Wrap up
1:07:40 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/

Mark Swinnerton, CEO of Green Gravity, shares his journey from metallurgy to mining operations and currently gravitational storage technology to support the energy transition. We get an in-depth look into how he is transforming the renewable energy storage industry and giving old mine shafts a new lease on life, an insight into the technology and logistics and how businesses are evolving in this new digital age. Tune in for some amazing advice from someone with decades of global experience in a major industry and influences so many aspects of our daily lives!

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

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and Wollongong, Australia
3:52 Mark's infamous selfie-stick - communicating authenticity
9:10 Mark's journey from metallurgy to mining
15:17 Reflecting on Mark's 9 years in Singapore
18:16 Handling large responsibilities
20:19 The challenge of mining legacy issues
23:01 Mark's own perception of mining legacy issues
24:26 What is Green Gravity? - the concept of gravitational storage
32:30 VIsualizing the scale of mines
35:30 Increasing importance of energy storage
38:31 Building up Partnerships in preparation for technology readiness
42:00 Multiple benefits of Green Gravity’s technology
46:02 What is Mark most excited about?
47:42 Relationship between mines and urban areas - the Ballarat example
52:29 The changing world of business - from corporation to startup
1:00:48 Q&A Start
1:01:09 What does innovation mean to you?
1:03:42 Key moment, book, person
1:09:26 Time Management
1:11:39 Favourite childhood memory
1:14:15 Biggest challenge in career to date
1:16:39 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:17:57 Where can people find you?
1:18:38 Final Message
1:19:04 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 #6 attempts to create a biographical piece - Lena Mutzner (ep45) reacts to how NotebookLM produces a deep dive discussion about her, using all her available publications, her PhD Thesis and up-to-date CV as sources. Will NotebookLM be able to capture the essence of her work and career to date?

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 and AI Impressions
3:12 Guest prior experience with AI
8:49 AI for Graphic Design in Research & Communication
9:59 How this experiment works
12:16 The human summary - or setting expectations
13:47 Live Reaction
41:39 Post-discussion
47:23 Evaluating the analogies
49:29 Discussing the accuracy and inner workings
52:53 Wrap Up
54:46 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/

Lena Mutzner, Group Leader in the Urban Water Management Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science & Technology discusses the intricacies of stormwater quality monitoring. We learn a bit about how water quality is sampled, different pollutant types that she has focussed on and the ongoing challenge around contaminants of emerging concern. We also discuss the apparent paradox of repeating research cycles despite having done similar work 40 years ago, the importance of a holistic approach to stormwater management and how she is developing her research career into the uncertain future.

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 & Meditative Activities
4:16 Nordic Countries vs. Switzerland
7:36 Lena's Mission in Water Quality
10:53 How it all started - engineering or psychiatry?
13:18 Contaminants of emerging concern
16:48 Studying Water Quality 101
26:28 Which contaminants does Lena focus on?
29:28 Tyre wear leachate and 6PPD-Quinone
33:01 Data issues towards building water quality understanding
36:45 Different types of common micropollutants
40:55 Interplay of Modelling and Water Quality Data Collection
46:18 Effect-based measurements
48:19 The holistic view - integration as a the way forward
51:05 Mitigation of pollution through Blue-Green Infrastructures
54:00 Lena's Future Research Trajectory
56:49 Q&A Start
57:24 What does innovation mean to you?
1:00:30 Key Moment, Person, Event
1:03:52 Women in STEM - Lena's drive to be a role model
1:06:40 Time Management
1:10:24 Favourite childhood memory
1:12:55 Biggest challenge to date
1:18:17 Advice for young researchers
1:20:00 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:21:15 Where can people find you?
1:21:57 Final Message
1:22:15 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/