The event organized by our American partner ‘MIT Technology Review’, has focused on neuroengineering, robotics amognst many other topics
Nearly 300,000 genomes could be sequenced this year all over the world, said the president of sequencing company Illumina, Francis de Souza, during his speech at the emerging technologies conference at EmTech 2014 celebrated in Boston (USA). De Souza’s prognostic puts to the test how the advance in technology can change society and the way it works (reading one genome doesn’t cost more that 1,000 euros, against the 2.000 million dollars it was costing a decade ago). This was the objective of the annual meeting, organized by Opinno’s American partner, MIT Technology Review.
This year’s edition has had over 700 attendees that have been able to enjoy this epicentre of technological information focused of topics such as nueroengineering, robotics, the Internet and artificial intelligence, amongst other topics. The deputy director of the publication, Brian Bergstein, has had the opportunity to evaluate the event for Opinno and, in his words “it was satisfactory to have talked about such important topics”. The panels were made up of a total of 55 speakers, represented by the most important directors and technological experts of our time.
Next to them, the 35 global Innovators Under 35 who this year have been awarded by MIT Technology Review also had the opportunity to present their projects to the audience. The line-up included the presence of de Santiago Villegas and Rand Hindi who have already been selected as Under 35 Innovators in their respective regional editions, organized by Opinno.
The three day event started on the 23rd of September with a speech by MIT Technology Review editor and chief, Jason Pontin, under the name Emerging Technologies That Matter. The talk, spoken next to the Google X laboratory boss, Astro Teller, talked about the global impact of technology in society and its ability to change it.
Other main themes at EmTech were for example, the Internet, in which they talked about the way the possibility of connecting any device to the Internet affects society. Your toaster could turns on by itself when your alarm goes off thanks to this technology. In the same way, the advances in genetic sequencing will be able to obtain data that thanks to big data that swill be analysed in order to give patients specialized treatments in which they will be able to know beforehand the effect the medicine will have on their body.
One of the most spectacular speeches was that of Engineering Professor at Harvard University’s Jennifer Lewis. With a group of students, Lewis demonstrated live how a 3D printer is able to generate human tissue complete with blood vessels.
Para Bergstein, the confluence of presentation on topics ranging from “energy and natural resources to artificial intelligence” took notice of how all of these things “complement each other”. This is precisely the point of view that the meeting shares with Opinno and, conscious of this, we have taken on the job of spreading this message to the world through events like EmTech, that in 2014, is celebrated in three different countries: Spain, Mexico and Colombia. This is how we have managed to make the event grow so that is communicates with society whilst is connects the young innovators of the world with experts that can guide them and give them access to the latest technological trends.
With this last objective, EmTech Boston 2014 has counted on the presence of the 10 Spanish Innovators Under 35 awarded by Opinno in this years edition. Their attendance of the event formed part of the award sponsored by the Rafael del Pino Foundation that consists in an entrepreneurial ecosystem immersion program and American innovation. The program includes a week of training activities in the Cambridge – Boston axis consisting in business meetings, investment funds and the most relevant technology centres such as MIT Media Lab and FabLab Boston.
