Daily Archives: June 21, 2017

Ewald Hesse leads the Grid Singularity venture, rooted in his extensive experience in the energy sector and acute interest in distributed business models.

Ewald Hesse leads the Grid Singularity venture, rooted in his extensive experience in the energy sector and acute interest in distributed business models. Hesse has served as Regional director for business development and strategy in Southeast Europe at Andritz Hydro, a global supplier in renewable (hydro) energy technology. Earlier in his career, he explored technology transfer and joint ventures in China and European automobile sector at Metzler and ABB power and automation technologies group. Ewald holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Project Management from the University in Konstanz, Germany.

BizDev

Dr. Ana S. Trbovich is a member of the Grid Singularity founding team in charge of strategy and business development.

Dr. Ana S. Trbovich is a member of the Grid Singularity founding team in charge of strategy and business development. She teaches Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management at FEFA, a leading business school in Belgrade, Serbia, and consults on competitiveness and innovation policy for international organisations, including the EU and the World Bank. She has been actively engaged in Serbias economic reforms and the EU accession process both as a high government official and senior advisor. She holds a PhD and MALD from the Fletcher School, and MPA from Harvards Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Trbovich serves on boards of several business and civil society organisations, and the Belgrade Philharmonic.

CSO & Co-Founde

Erwin Smole is the Grid Singularity co-founder responsible for sales. Boasting over two decades of experience in the energy sector, Erwin held senior management positions in utilities, regulatory authority E-Control, and PwC.

Erwin Smole is the Grid Singularity co-founder responsible for sales. Boasting over two decades of experience in the energy sector, Erwin held senior management positions in utilities, regulatory authority E-Control, and PwC. He has further been engaged in strategic business advisory for government and international organizations (UNDP, EU), as well as a range of energy market entrepreneurs. Erwin is a recognized expert in development of new business cases in the both regulated and non-regulated energy market segments. He holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Graz, Austria and an MBA from the California Lutheran University, USA. He is Associate Professor at the University of Applied Science in Carinthia, Austria

Dr. Gavin Wood

Before founding Ethcore and co-founding Grid Singularity, Dr. Gavin Wood was the Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of the Ethereum Project.

Before founding Ethcore and co-founding Grid Singularity, Dr. Gavin Wood was the Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of the Ethereum Project. During his time with the project, he co-designed, formalised and implemented the Ethereum Protocol, created the Whisper protocol and devised the DEVp2p network protocol, the Solidity programming language and Mix IDE. Prior to Ethereum, he pushed the state-of-the-art in video synthesis tools, audio analysis software and programming paradigms, and co-founded several technology startups. Dr. Wood has given seminars and presented to numerous audiences around the world from keynotes at regional technology conferences to musings about the future of legal systems. He coined the terms 'web three' and 'allegality'.

Dr. Aeron Buchanan

Dr. Aeron Buchanan has helped Grid Singularity as a founding member form its blockchain vision. He received his doctorate from the Robotics Department of Oxford University in the field of Computer Vision.

Dr. Aeron Buchanan has helped Grid Singularity as a founding member form its blockchain vision. He received his doctorate from the Robotics Department of Oxford University in the field of Computer Vision, after working as algorithm designer for the special effects industry and reading Engineering and Computer Science for his undergraduate degree. He has since designed algorithms for UAVs, started tech companies building light-show controllers and blockchain technology, and acted as a consultant to economics and ecological research laboratories. He is head of research and development at EthCore, a company partnering with Grid Singularity and aiming to continue the advancements in consensus platform technology and more readily bring the benefits to society and the economy, not least in the energy industry.

Dr. Jutta Steiner

Before co-founding Grid Singularity and the blockchain technology company Ethcore Ltd, Dr. Jutta Steiner oversaw the security audit and integration for the Ethereum foundation prior to the launch of the public blockchain in 2015.

Before co-founding Grid Singularity and the blockchain technology company Ethcore Ltd, Dr. Jutta Steiner oversaw the security audit and integration for the Ethereum foundation prior to the launch of the public blockchain in 2015. She was a co-founder of Project Provenance Ltd., a London based start-up that employs blockchain technology to render supply chains more transparent. She worked for management consultancy McKinsey where she advised clients in banking and telecommunications on IT strategy. She holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics

Tobias Federico Market Design Leader

Tobias Federico is Market Design Leader at Grid Singularity, coordinating applications development.

Tobias Federico is Market Design Leader at Grid Singularity, coordinating applications development. Federico graduated in Energy and process engineering at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, and has a wealth of experience as a researcher and consultant on energy market design, integration of renewable energies, and utilities portfolio and risk management. He founded Energy Brainpool in 2003, where he developed the highly regarded energy market modelling and forecast application, Power2Sim.

Florian Schmitt

Florian Schmitt serves as advisor on branding and design for Grid Singularity. He is the Creative Director of Hi-ReS!, a creative agency he founded in 1999.

Florian Schmitt serves as advisor on branding and design for Grid Singularity. He is the Creative Director of Hi-ReS!, a creative agency he founded in 1999 and in January 2015 he was named Chief Creative Director of the SYZYGY Group, which acquired Hi-ReS! in 2008. After studying industrial design at Hochschule fr Gestaltung Offenbach, he worked as a visual effects supervisor and was soon promoted to promo and commercials director. A record deal with the seminal independent label NinjaTune lured Florian to London where he set up Hi-ReS! He has over the years achieved the highest accolades for digital media including D&AD Silver, Cannes Cyberlions, Clios, One Shows, BAFTA and Webby awards. He is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and BAFTA. Florian also runs Nanika with Andreas Muller, focusing on emerging technologies and interactive installation work beyond the traditional inputs and outputs.

Tina Hesse Operations Manage

Tina Hesse is Operations Manager at Grid Singularity. Simultaneously persistent and open-minded, she stirs the GSy administrative mechanism with commitment, diligence and enthusiasm.

Tina Hesse is Operations Manager at Grid Singularity. Simultaneously persistent and open-minded, she stirs the GSy administrative mechanism with commitment, diligence and enthusiasm. Passionate about numbers and learning, Tina holds a degree in Management and Economics from Paderborn University in Germany, where she specialized in Taxation, Accounting and Finance.

Stefanie Grndl MA, EventHorizon Project Leader

Stefanie Grndl is an experienced project manager, networking enthusiast, passionate connector and marketing content editor.

Stefanie Grndl is an experienced project manager, networking enthusiast, passionate connector and marketing content editor. She has successfully proven her ability to keep many balls in the air, keep track of different tasks and lead a diverse team to a successful outcome. Stefanie is an expert in building win-win partnerships and cooperations, with outstanding results in fundraising for events and projects. She holds a Masters degree in Management and International Business from the University of Styria, and has specialised in Sustainable Business and CSR Management during her studies at the University of Gteborg, Sweden.

Past Events

November 24, 2016 10th Munich Cleantech Conference, Munich, Germany Panel on Blockchain - Mythos, Hype - oder die Disruption der Energiewirtschaft?

November 15-17, 2016 European Utility Week 2016, Barcelona, Spain Panel on "Investing in Technology or Innovation?

November 7, 2016 Annual Smart Grid Austria Meeting, Vienna Grid Singularity is invited to talk about Blockchain in the Energy Sector

October 5-6, 2016 Cleantech Venture Day, Lahti, Finland Panel on Blockchain Revolution

September 29, 2016 Energietag 2016, Berlin, Germany Panel on Trends and Innovations in the Digital Energy World

September 28-29, 2016 Oesterreichs Energie Kongress in Salzburg, Austria Panel on Digitalisierte Erzeugung - Evolution oder Revolution?

September 21, 2016 Start-Up Night - Digitale Energiewelten in Berlin, Germany organized by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy - BMWi

September 19, 2016 Grid Singularity has been awarded for the Most Innovative Idea at Energy Start-up Networking, Berlin, Germany organized by Solarpraxis Neue Energiewelt AG

Upcoming Events

February 2, 2017 Energy Academy, Linz, Austria organized by O Energiesparverband Workshop on Solar-Stromspeicher in privaten Haushalten

March 13-14, 2017 Best of blockchain: Energy, Euroforum, Dsseldorf

March 20, 2017 Techfestival organized by DENA, Berlin, Germany

March 27-28, 2017 5th M2M/IOT Wien, Vienna, Austria

March 30-31, 2017 Innovationsforum Energie, Zurich, Switzerland

March 31, 2017 Schweizer Stadtwerkekongress, Biel, Switzerland Panel on Is Blockchain the next Big Thing in the Energy Business?

May 3-4, 2017 Digital Enterprise, Vienna, Austria

Original post:

Grid Singularity

Physicists have wondered for decades whether infinitely dense points known as singularities can ever exist outside black holes, which would expose the mysteries of quantum gravity for all to see. Singularities snags in the otherwise smooth fabric of space and time where Albert Einsteins classical gravity theory breaks down and the unknown quantum theory of gravity is needed seem to always come cloaked in darkness, hiding from view behind the event horizons of black holes. The British physicist and mathematician Sir Roger Penrose conjectured in 1969 that visible or naked singularities are actually forbidden from forming in nature, in a kind of cosmic censorship. But why should quantum gravity censor itself?

Now, new theoretical calculations provide a possible explanation for why naked singularities do not exist in a particular model universe, at least. The findings indicate that a second, newer conjecture about gravity, if it is true, reinforces Penroses cosmic censorship conjecture by preventing naked singularities from forming in this model universe. Some experts say the mutually supportive relationship between the two conjectures increases the chances that both are correct. And while this would mean singularities do stay frustratingly hidden, it would also reveal an important feature of the quantum gravity theory that eludes us.

Its pleasing that theres a connection between the two conjectures, said John Preskill of the California Institute of Technology, who in 1991 bet Stephen Hawking that the cosmic censorship conjecture would fail (though he actually thinks its probably true).

The new work, reported in May in Physical Review Letters by Jorge Santos and his student Toby Crisford at the University of Cambridge and relying on a key insight by Cumrun Vafa of Harvard University, unexpectedly ties cosmic censorship to the 2006 weak gravity conjecture, which asserts that gravity must always be the weakest force in any viable universe, as it is in ours. (Gravity is by far the weakest of the four fundamental forces; two electrons electrically repel each other 1 million trillion trillion trillion times more strongly than they gravitationally attract each other.) Santos and Crisford were able to simulate the formation of a naked singularity in a four-dimensional universe with a different space-time geometry than ours. But they found that if another force exists in that universe that affects particles more strongly than gravity, the singularity becomes cloaked in a black hole. In other words, where a perverse pinprick would otherwise form in the space-time fabric, naked for all the world to see, the relative weakness of gravity prevents it.

Santos and Crisford are running simulations now to test whether cosmic censorship is saved at exactly the limit where gravity becomes the weakest force in the model universe, as initial calculations suggest. Such an alliance with the better-established cosmic censorship conjecture would reflect very well on the weak gravity conjecture. And if weak gravity is right, it points to a deep relationship between gravity and the other quantum forces, potentially lending support to string theory over a rival theory called loop quantum gravity. The unification of the forces happens naturally in string theory, where gravity is one vibrational mode of strings and forces like electromagnetism are other modes. But unification is less obvious in loop quantum gravity, where space-time is quantized in tiny volumetric packets that bear no direct connection to the other particles and forces. If the weak gravity conjecture is right, loop quantum gravity is definitely wrong, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study who co-discovered the weak gravity conjecture.

The new work does tell us about quantum gravity, said Gary Horowitz, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 1991, Preskill and Kip Thorne, both theoretical physicists at Caltech, visited Stephen Hawking at Cambridge. Hawking had spent decades exploring the possibilities packed into the Einstein equation, which defines how space-time bends in the presence of matter, giving rise to gravity. Like Penrose and everyone else, he had yet to find a mechanism by which a naked singularity could form in a universe like ours. Always, singularities lay at the centers of black holes sinkholes in space-time that are so steep that no light can climb out. He told his visitors that he believed in cosmic censorship. Preskill and Thorne, both experts in quantum gravity and black holes (Thorne was one of three physicists who founded the black-hole-detecting LIGO experiment), said they felt it might be possible to detect naked singularities and quantum gravity effects. There was a long pause, Preskill recalled. Then Stephen said, You want to bet?

The bet had to be settled on a technicality and renegotiated in 1997, after the first ambiguous exception cropped up. Matt Choptuik, a physicist at the University of British Columbia who uses numerical simulations to study Einsteins theory, showed that a naked singularity can form in a four-dimensional universe like ours when you perfectly fine-tune its initial conditions. Nudge the initial data by any amount, and you lose it a black hole forms around the singularity, censoring the scene. This exceptional case doesnt disprove cosmic censorship as Penrose meant it, because it doesnt suggest naked singularities might actually form. Nonetheless, Hawking conceded the original bet and paid his debt per the stipulations, with clothing to cover the winners nakedness. He embarrassed Preskill by making him wear a T-shirt featuring a nearly-naked lady while giving a talk to 1,000 people at Caltech. The clothing was supposed to be embroidered with a suitable concessionary message, but Hawkings read like a challenge: Nature Abhors a Naked Singularity.

The physicists posted a new bet online, with language to clarify that only non-exceptional counterexamples to cosmic censorship would count. And this time, they agreed, The clothing is to be embroidered with a suitable, truly concessionary message.

The wager still stands 20 years later, but not without coming under threat. In 2010, the physicists Frans Pretorius and Luis Lehner discovered a mechanism for producing naked singularities in hypothetical universes with five or more dimensions. And in their May paper, Santos and Crisford reported a naked singularity in a classical universe with four space-time dimensions, like our own, but with a radically different geometry. This latest one is in between the technical counterexample of the 1990s and a true counterexample, Horowitz said. Preskill agrees that it doesnt settle the bet. But it does change the story.

The new discovery began to unfold in 2014, when Horowitz, Santos and Benson Way found that naked singularities could exist in a pretend 4-D universe called anti-de Sitter (AdS) space whose space-time geometry is shaped like a tin can. This universe has a boundary the cans side which makes it a convenient testing ground for ideas about quantum gravity: Physicists can treat bendy space-time in the cans interior like a hologram that projects off of the cans surface, where there is no gravity. In universes like our own, which is closer to a de Sitter (dS) geometry, the only boundary is the infinite future, essentially the end of time. Timeless infinity doesnt make a very good surface for projecting a hologram of a living, breathing universe.

Despite their differences, the interiors of both AdS and dS universes obey Einsteins classical gravity theory everywhere outside singularities, that is. If cosmic censorship holds in one of the two arenas, some experts say you might expect it to hold up in both.

Horowitz, Santos and Way were studying what happens when an electric field and a gravitational field coexist in an AdS universe. Their calculations suggested that cranking up the energy of the electric field on the surface of the tin can universe will cause space-time to curve more and more sharply around a corresponding point inside, eventually forming a naked singularity. In their recent paper, Santos and Crisford verified the earlier calculations with numerical simulations.

But why would naked singularities exist in 5-D and in 4-D when you change the geometry, but never in a flat 4-D universe like ours? Its like, what the heck! Santos said. Its so weird you should work on it, right? There has to be something here.

In 2015, Horowitz mentioned the evidence for a naked singularity in 4-D AdS space to Cumrun Vafa, a Harvard string theorist and quantum gravity theorist who stopped by Horowitzs office. Vafa had been working to rule out large swaths of the 10500 different possible universes that string theory naively allows. He did this by identifying swamplands: failed universes that are too logically inconsistent to exist. By understanding patterns of land and swamp, he hoped to get an overall picture of quantum gravity.

Working with Arkani-Hamed, Lubo Motl and Alberto Nicolis in 2006, Vafa proposed the weak gravity conjecture as a swamplands test. The researchers found that universes only seemed to make sense when particles were affected by gravity less than they were by at least one other force. Dial down the other forces of nature too much, and violations of causality and other problems arise. Things were going wrong just when you started violating gravity as the weakest force, Arkani-Hamed said.The weak-gravity requirement drowns huge regions of the quantum gravity landscape in swamplands.

Weak gravity and cosmic censorship seem to describe different things, but in chatting with Horowitz that day in 2015, Vafa realized that they might be linked. Horowitz had explained Santos and Crisfords simulated naked singularity: When the researchers cranked up the strength of the electric field on the boundary of their tin-can universe, they assumed that the interior was classical perfectly smooth, with no particles quantum mechanically fluctuating in and out of existence. But Vafa reasoned that, if such particles existed, and if, in accordance with the weak gravity conjecture, they were more strongly coupled to the electric field than to gravity, then cranking up the electric field on the AdS boundary would cause sufficient numbers of particles to arise in the corresponding region in the interior to gravitationally collapse the region into a black hole, preventing the naked singularity.

Subsequent calculations by Santos and Crisford supported Vafas hunch; the simulations theyre running now could verify that naked singularities become cloaked in black holes right at the point where gravity becomes the weakest force. We dont know exactly why, but it seems to be true, Vafa said. These two reinforce each other.

The full implications of the new work, and of the two conjectures, will take time to sink in. Cosmic censorship imposes an odd disconnect between quantum gravity at the centers of black holes and classical gravity throughout the rest of the universe. Weak gravity appears to bridge the gap, linking quantum gravity to the other quantum forces that govern particles in the universe, and possibly favoring a stringy approach over a loopy one. Preskill said, I think its something you would put on your list of arguments or reasons for believing in unification of the forces.

However, Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, one of the developers of loop quantum gravity, has pushed back, arguing that if weak gravity is true, there might be a loopy reason for it. And he contends that there is a path to unification of the forces within his theory a path that would need to be pursued all the more vigorously if the weak gravity conjecture holds.

Given the apparent absence of naked singularities in our universe, physicists will take hints about quantum gravity wherever they can find them. Theyre as lost now in the endless landscape of possible quantum gravity theories as they were in the 1990s, with no prospects for determining through experiments which underlying theory describes our world. It is thus paramount to find generic properties that such quantum gravity theories must have in order to be viable, Santos said, echoing the swamplands philosophy.

Weak gravity might be one such property a necessary condition for quantum gravitys consistency that spills out and affects the world beyond black holes. These may be some of the only clues available to help researchers feel their way into the darkness.

Excerpt from:

Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten - Quanta Magazine

Singularity University, a global community using exponential technologies to tackle the worlds greatest challenges, has announced it will hold its first international summit on the African continent in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 23-24.

The two-day SingularityU South Africa Summit is being hosted in collaboration with Standard Bank, and with key strategic partners such as Deloitte, MTN and SAP.

The event will convene exponential thought leaders, Singularity University faculty, and organisations from around the world to provide participants with insights into emerging exponential technologies and how they can be used to create positive change and economic growth in the region.

Singularity University is proud to be working with Standard Bank and Mann Made Media to host this first-ever SingularityU South Africa Summit, and to connect with Africas leaders and organizations shaping the future, said Rob Nail, associate founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Singularity University.

South Africa represents a microcosm of the challenges facing humanity worldwide and is fast gaining a solid reputation as a global centre. Through this Summit, we hope to connect and inspire leaders in the region to effect global impact.

Mic Mann, organiser of the SingularityU South Africa Summit, said South Africa has a unique opportunity to play a vital role in shaping an abundant future for all Africans.

Our ability to leverage and develop accelerating technologies in the coming years, will allow us to leapfrog legacy systems and compete in the global economy and have a massive impact on our growth and economic health. It is of the utmost importance for us to bring Singularity University to South Africa to educate, empower and inspire leaders and future leaders in Africa, he said.

Read the rest here:

Inaugural Singularity University Summit to be held in SA. - Disrupt Africa

Deep learning has transformed the field of artificial intelligence, but the limitations of conventional computer hardware are already hindering progress. Researchers at MIT think their new nanophotonic processor could be the answer by carrying out deep learning at the speed of light.

In the 1980s, scientists and engineers hailed optical computing as the next great revolution in information technology, but it turned out that bulky components like fiber optic cables and lenses didnt make for particularly robust or compact computers.

In particular, they found it extremely challenging to make scalable optical logic gates, and therefore impractical to make general optical computers, according to MIT physics post-doc Yichen Shen. One thing light is good at, though, is multiplying matricesarrays of numbers arranged in columns and rows. You can actually mathematically explain the way a lens acts on a beam of light in terms of matrix multiplications.

This also happens to be a core component of the calculations involved in deep learning. Combined with advances in nanophotonicsthe study of lights behavior at the nanometer scalethis has led to a resurgence in interest in optical computing.

Deep learning is mainly matrix multiplications, so it works very well with the nature of light, says Shen. With light you can make deep learning computing much faster and thousands of times more energy-efficient.

To demonstrate this, Shen and his MIT colleagues have designed an all-optical chip that can implement artificial neural networksthe brain-inspired algorithms at the heart of deep learning.

In a recent paper in Nature, the group describes a chip made up of 56 interferometerscomponents that allow the researchers to control how beams of light interfere with each other to carry out mathematical operations.

The processor can be reprogrammed by applying a small voltage to the waveguides that direct beams of light around the processor, which heats them and causes them to change shape.

The chip is best suited to inference tasks, the researchers say, where the algorithm is put to practical use by applying a learned model to analyze new data, for instance to detect objects in an image.

It isnt great at learning, because heating the waveguides is relatively slow compared to how electronic systems are reprogrammed. So, in their study, the researchers trained the algorithm on a computer before transferring the learned model to the nanophotonic processor to carry out the inference task.

Thats not a major issue. For many practical applications its not necessary to carry out learning and inference on the same chip. Google recently made headlines for designing its own deep learning chip, the TPU, which is also specifically designed for inference and most companies that use a lot of machine learning split the two jobs.

In many cases they update these models once every couple of months and the rest of the time the fixed model is just doing inference, says Shen. People usually separate these tasks. They typically have a server just doing training and another just doing inference, so I dont see a big problem making a chip focused on inference.

Once the model has been programmed into the chip, it can then carry out computations at the speed of light using less than one-thousandth the energy per operation compared to conventional electronic chips.

There are limitations, though. Because the chip deals with light waves that operate on the scale of a few microns, there are fundamental limits to how small these chips can get.

"The wavelength really sets the limit of how small the waveguides can be. We wont be able to make devices significantly smaller. Maybe by a factor of four, but physics will ultimately stop us, says MIT graduate student Nicholas Harris, who co-authored the paper.

That means it would be difficult to implement neural nets much larger than a few thousand neurons. However, the vast majority of current deep learning algorithms are well within that limit.

The system did achieve a significantly lower accuracy on the task than a standard computer implementing the same deep learning model, correctly identifying 76.7 percent of vowels compared to 91.7 percent.

But Harris says they think this was largely due to interference between the various heating elements used to program the waveguides, and that it should be easy to fix by using thermal isolation trenches or extra calibration steps.

Importantly, the chips are also built using the same fabrication technology as conventional computer chips, so scaling up production should be easy. Shen said the group has already had interest in their technology from prominent chipmakers.

Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, a professor of optics at the University of Arizona, said hes very excited by the paper, which he said complements his own work. But he cautioned against getting too carried away.

This is another milestone in the progress toward useful optical computing. But we are still far away to be competitive with electronics, he told Singularity Hub in an email. The argumentation about scalability, power consumption, speed etc. [in the paper] use a lot of conditional tense and assumptions which demonstrate that, if there is potential indeed, there is still a lot of research to be done.

In particular, he pointed out that the system was only a partial solution to the problem. While the vast majority of neuronal computation involves multiplication of matrices, there is another component: calculating a non-linear response.

In the current paper this aspect of the computation was simulated on a regular computer. The researchers say in future models this function could be carried out by a so-called saturable absorber integrated into the waveguides that absorbs less light as the intensity increases.

But Blanche notes that this is not a trivial problem and something his group is actually currently working on. It is not like you can buy one at the drug store, he says. Bhavin Shastri, a post-doc at Princeton whose group is also working on nanophotonic chips for implementing neural networks, said the research was important, as enabling matrix multiplications is a key step to enabling full-fledged photonic neural networks.

Overall, this area of research is poised to usher in an exciting and promising field, he added. Neural networks implemented in photonic hardware could revolutionize how machines interact with ultrafast physical phenomena. Silicon photonics combines the analog device performance of photonics with the cost and scalability of silicon manufacturing.

Stock media provided by across/Pond5.com

See the rest here:

Deep Learning at the Speed of Light on Nanophotonic Chips - Singularity Hub