You can image that preparing a TED talk is no small task. However, a demonstration as ambitious and technical as shooting mosquitoes with lasers proved to be quite a feat.
Between enhancing and cleaning up the software, assembling and mounting all the components, and just making sure everything looked nice and polished, we had a half dozen people occupied for over a month. During the last minute scrabble, some valuable lessons were learned. First, when the shipping company delivers the wrong crate to TED, effectively losing the world’s only Photonic Fence, it helps not to panic. Also, we now know that hotel water glasses are great places to grow extra mosquitoes when you’re running low.
Getting ready for TED was a lot of work, but nevertheless fun and surreal. We are excited about the enthusiastic response following Nathan’s talk, and can’t wait to share our next big idea with you.
Tags: 3ric Johanson, Barcin Acar, Daniel MacDonald, Dave Nash, Emma Mullen, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Nathan Myhrvold, Nathan Pegram, Pablos Holman, Phil Rutschman, Photonic Fence, TED
In our efforts to fight malaria, the Photonic Fence has been getting all the attention lately, but this is just one of several ideas that we are actively working on to combat disease. Another key malaria project is Epidemiological Modeling. This is a highly detailed computer simulation that predicts how the disease spreads at local, regional and global scales. The model takes into account many variables that affect transmission such as temperature, population, transportation, and the use of vaccines, bed nets and even innovations such as the Photonic Fence.
There are a wide variety of epidemiological modeling approaches that many groups use to study malaria. Ultimately, our work and other existing approaches are used to evaluate and predict effective strategies for malaria eradication.
Mathematician, Philip Eckhoff, and computational scientist, Karima Nigmatulina, explain the project and software.
