I recently gave a talk at NVidia’s beautiful headquarters to a roomful of scientists. My goal was to talk about what motivates us at work, and get the teams excited about using some of the very same tools and techniques we use daily in our AI research.
Our team at Google has been sponsoring NASA Frontier Development Lab’s annual summer programs. FDL (as they’re commonly known) is run by James Parr as forum for collaboration between space agencies and private enterprise. James divides the work into individual projects that he calls “challenges.” Each challenge has a targeted question that is tackled over an intense, 8-week program. Private companies chip in some cash, hardware and services. Space agencies like NASA pitch in data and expertise. Both teams also contribute scientists as mentors. James then applies his organizatinal and co-collaboration wisdom to turn these assemblages of people and equipment into teams with a mission, weekly goals, and deliverables. We talked about our work on expoplanets and space weather last year.