Photo credit: Halcyon
We can confirm that Miss America is not a robot! At least not yet. According to the Halcyon Dialogue event and report titled Shaping Robotics Policy for the 21st Century at Halcyon in Georgetown, DC, robots are reshaping human life with the rapidly expanding use of automation and artificial intelligence. Halcyon Dialogue was a series of expert round-tables involving global leaders and innovators focused on the topic of robots and their broad implications for global society. So, we were really really happy to meet Cara Mund, the REAL Miss America 2018, in person.
Cara Mund, Miss America 2018 Photo credit: Janet Donovan
We sat down with the REAL Miss America where she told Hollywood on the Potomac that she wants to be the Governor of North Dakota …… and hey, why not. Cara was the first Miss America from North Dakota and she was really excited about that because she loves North Dakota. “I think the best part is the people. People are always like ‘Oh, what should I go see when I come to North Dakota?’ And I’m always like ‘you don’t really need to go see anything, all you have to do is meet the people.’ You won’t find them anywhere else. You know, I have lived in Providence, Rhode Island. I went to school at Brown. I’ve lived in DC. I’ve lived in New York. You just don’t meet the type of kindness and hard workers that are in North Dakota. What I realized when I was working here in DC on the Hill, I loved representing them and serving as a voice for them. I think sometimes North Dakota has a stereotype and so I really like to break that.” Think Fargo! “People are just so humble and so kind. Going into Miss America [contest] that was one of the first things I said in my interview was that I don’t want you to overlook me. That’s exactly what I did and I became Miss America.”
Kate Goodall, CEO of Halcyon and Miss America Cara Mund with Hitachi’s EMIEW3
Platform Issue: A Make-A-Wish Passion with Fashion. Talent: Self-Choreographed Jazz Dance to “The Way You Make Me Feel.” My Interesting Fact: I am related to Victoria Claflin Woodhull — the first woman to run for U.S. President, the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and one of the first females to found a newspaper. Since it runs in the family, what will be my first?
Speaking of firsts, we asked her what her first childhood memory was and she told us it was when she went to Disney World when she was about five. “That’s the first image I kind of have of my childhood; the Cinderella’s castle.” So being a performer started young. “I would say I was always a performer. I love that aspect which was also so magical that I kind of just realized, you know, how great it is to have dreams and to make those dreams come true. That’s the whole thing about Disney, you know, is making dreams come true.”
Cara Mund chats with Halcyon Incubator Cohort 7 Fellow, Amira Idrist Photo credit: Janet Donovan
The day after she was crowned Miss America at 11 PM on a Sunday, she was already en route to New York on Monday morning. “Then I spent a week in LA and then I made a pit stop in North Dakota. Then I went back to Atlantic City, then I came here. I leave tomorrow for Georgia. So on average I change locations about every 48 hours. I wasn’t expecting to win so I just have everything that was with me from the Miss America contest. I was actually supposed to go to law school this fall. Then when I won Miss North Dakota, I ended up deferring. Now I’ll defer one more year. After that I will be able to use the scholarship money I earned through Miss America. I earned fifty thousand dollars. And prior to that with my involvement in the Miss America Outstanding Teen and Miss America and the times that I didn’t win Miss North Dakota, I had about forty-five thousand dollars. Almost one hundred thousand dollars that can go towards my education.” We suggested she buy us lunch. “I have to pay off all these student loans,” she joked.
Dr. Sachiko Kuno (Founder and Chairwoman, Halcyon), Rep. Will Hurd (Texas) and Dr. Rush Holt (CEO, AAAS
Halcyon House was built in 1787 by First Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert, with gardens designed by Pierre L’Enfant, DC’s original architect. While the property’s historical significance is grounded in the past, the house has been transformed to meet the needs of forward-thinking individuals solving modern-day challenges. Halcyon House is steps away from one of the most vibrant areas in the nation’s capital where students, residents and tourists alike mingle and interact in the shops, galleries, cafes and restaurants.
In November 2011 the Halcyon House was sold to Dr. Sachiko Kuno and Dr. Ryuji Ueno, after having changed hands several times including a nephew of Mark Twain and the wife of a Swedish Ambassador. The house is currently used as headquarters for the Halcyon, a non-profit whose mission is to “catalyze emerging creatives striving for a better world.”
Theodore Lowen of Hitachi with Dr. Kuno Photo credit: Janet Donovan
Dr. Kuno described owning the famous residence this way: “I think actually I’m supposed to be living here,” she joked. “It should be the new owner that is living here, but soon after we bought it I saw that this is not only my house but should be the house or the space for the next generation of people in Georgetown or Washington, DC, or even the United States. That is why I started to remodel the house and transform it to be the new place for every generation of people to share time and space and to think about what we can do for the future. It is a platform, and we could say an ecosystem for special social entrepreneurs or civic minded artists or civic minded scientists. I think this is a great space and a future space and a virtual space as well so Halcyon could be the … some sort of wonderful heart, Washington-based heart, and we can be sending a message to the world why. So that is why we are here.”
Ami Aronson and Tammy Haddad Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“The ability to think about the future is so essential and what Halcyon does is it gives us the platform to have what I consider cross-pollination across different sectors of business, biomedical, philanthropy, art, history, politics,” Ami Aronson of the Bernstein Family Foundation told us. “This is an incredible platform to be able to really think about social impact. People are being afforded the ability to dream and take risks and be entrepreneurial. Whether you’re a for-profit or non-profit, it’s all about being able to dream and have impact in the world. So it’s been an honor to serve on the honorary board, but it’s also giving me time to dream and reflect–how do we do family philanthropy smarter, more imaginative, more creative? So our family has been investing in Dr. Kuno and what’s she afforded to do here.”
Halcyon Incubator Cohort 7 Fellows: Steve Carter and Dan Turner Photo credit: Janet Donovan
Which takes us to Halcyon Incubator fellows, two engineers that get to do their laundry at Halcyon because they actually live there temporarily. We love the fellows because they have invented an under the surface cable that may put monopoly Comcast out of business which makes us grateful. That’s under the surface, not underground. …. invisible to the eye. TRAXyL has developed a new way to distribute optical fiber we call FiberTRAX. “As we begin roll-out, FiberTRAX is demonstrating exciting results. Our new technique is faster and less expensive than existing fiber distribution methods. Early adopters of this disruptive innovation are beginning to use this technique to distribute fiber right now,” Dan explained. “We’ve developed a new way of installing optical fiber where we avoid the trenching and utility holes and we put tiny fibers strands directly on top of the road surface and then encase them in protective coatings. They’re very durable, protective coatings. They fit the profile of it actually fits underneath this road approved material already. It’s essentially like painting fiber onto the road.”
Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“If you want a trench a parking lot, by all means go do it. But if you’d rather just run across that parking lot with fiber on top of it, the way that it is shown here … You could do that or along a road. And a little background on us, we’re actually a part of the housing on incubator. We’re one of the businesses that’s part of the cohort 7. They take us in to do a lot of early stage development of the company, ideas, connections, and network. You know, kind of partner us with the right people to make sure that we develop our ideas. There is an application process. They take a couple of years. We were selected 9 among at least a couple to a few hundred. I’m not sure exactly the number. We live at a house, but we are both Virginia natives. Dr. Kuno, she’s got a wing section all for herself. And she’s in and out as in wherever and whenever she seems to need. I don’t know exactly how often she is here but sometimes we have to go do laundry on that side of the house. It feels like a bachelor lifestyle all the time. Stay tuned with big things to come in 2017!” Thanks TRAXyL. We’re in!
Paul Wikening Photo credit: Janet Donovan
We talked to engineers Paul Wilkening and Yunus Sevimli from Galen Robotics who showed us a surgical robot. “The whole idea is this is aimed towards ear, nose, and throat procedures primarily because for those procedures, most of the surgical tools have to be fairly long because you’re entering into the throat through the sinus. This is actually just our tool, but we have tools here that are more surgical. That goes down your throat to work on your vocal chords,” Wilkening told us. “The idea is surgeons train to reduce their hand tremor, but even if you have just a little bit of hand tremor, at the handle of the tool, at the tip, it’s amplified. If you tremor over here, it gets magnified there.” We were feeling a bit queazy as he asked me to try it out. “The whole idea here is that the surgeon is still in control. They’re manipulating their tool, but we’ve adapted this tool adapter tool that you just slide onto the robot. Even though they’re free to manipulate it as they normally would. We’re giving them some extra abilities. We get rid of all the tremor that they’re introducing. We have a force sensor here. We detect the force they exert and calculate the movement they want, and then filter out the high frequency neuroids that’s in a hand tremor.”
Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“Put your foot on the left petal there. That’s your gas petal, so when you push it the faster it’ll go. Touch the tips of these. It’s kind of surgical training, and you can do some pretty simple things with it. Try to see how simple that feels. Get a sense for it, and then take the tool off and see whether you feel like you could do that freehand. Try that free hand. Even with surgeons, it’s not easy to move it very still with no tremor at all. Hand tremor doesn’t matter a lot for some procedures, and there are other criteria as well. One of the big ones is time. For drilling, drilling into the inner ear, for example, hand tremor isn’t a huge factor for them, but the time is. If we can keep them out of sensitive areas, keep them away from nerves, things that can cause paralysis across the entire face, they have to worry less about that and they can just drill away. If you drill one of the nerves, or even if you drill too close to it, it heats up the nerve. You can get paralysis from this. This will help guide them away from doing that.It’s tremor, it’s being accurate, and it’s saving time. Those are the three things that, depending on the surgery, there are different grounds.”
“The history here is that of a research project that happened several years ago. Last year, Galen Robotics, the company was founded and licensed this technology. Our end goal is to take it out of the lab and turn it into a real medical product. The indications are any surgical procedure that requires high hand eye coordination, microsurgery, procedures in the head and neck, neurosurgery, that is what they’re for” Yunus told us. “For the record, we should add that this is an experimental medical device at this point. Anything you see here, it’s not ready for market.Our advisor is as is one of our collaborators. Dr. Russel Taylor. Everything we just mentioned are possible futures of the technology, but no promises that these will actually make it into the market.” Thanks guys, moving on before I pass out. Thanks for the test drive though.
En fin: We don’t know if robots are a good or a bad thing, but change is inevitable and if they clean my house, save my life, take off a work load and enhance what we do, we’re in.
The Q and A Panel:
Join us for the lively discussion:
