IMPOSSIBLE TO I'M POSSIBLE — DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING
11 Jun 2019
What is it that transforms the spark of an idea, or an insurmountable challenge, into reality? How do the likes of Elon Musk make the seemingly impossible possible?
Musk wishes to start a real city on Mars by 2050, he's realized almost all his goals. He's an engineer and a visionary with a flair for making dreams a reality, how does he do it? One thing's for sure, whether making his first billion online, or working with rocket science, he has always had an eye for data.
Data drives intelligent decision making. Put another way, we make informed decisions on the basis of hard facts and data.
Realising the impossible
In 218 BC a Carthaginian military leader led a military ambush unprecedented in the history of warfare. What does it take to catch an empire by its tail?
In AD 1962, while addressing a large crowd gathered at a sports stadium in Houston, Texas another leader defines an aim that will necessitate near incomprehensible technical ability to achieve. What is it that transforms the spark of an idea, or an insurmountable challenge, into reality?
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
Visions and plans
The Carthaginian general, Hannibal, chose not to cross the Alps because he thought it was a good idea. Hannibal chose to cross the Alps because he knew it was a good idea.
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
Hannibal's enemy, the Roman army, wasn't expecting to wake up to 37 elephants, 15,000 horses and 30,000 soldiers, coming over the mountains and into Italy. The space race against the Soviets had already started, they’d put a man in space, the U.S.A had to put one on the moon.
It’s 1963, we’re back in Texas, this time Dallas, it’s 12:30 pm — the 35th President of the United States is assassinated. A million conspiracy theories are launched. The space race presses on regardless.
And so it came to pass that in 1969 for the first time in human history an American named Neil walked on the moon. Could he possibly have seen the Great Wall of China from outer space? Is it possible that thousands of years before the ancient Egyptians took their inspiration from the lunar body to help layout their burial sites? Or was it aliens…
Data and facts, realizing visions and dreams
Kennedy didn’t put Armstrong on the moon. Not himself, he was no scientist, no pilot or engineer. 400,000 people over ten years did. Aliens didn’t help out with the pyramids, decades of belief in a story assisted by millions of man-hours of labour did. And Hannibal may have crossed the Alps but his elephants, men and horses didn’t make it over without one vital ingredient. Data.
Facts and data, data and facts
Data is the basis of facts, and on facts meaningful decisions made and actions taken.
Data ensured that Apollo 11 could travel 240,000 miles in 76 hours, that a general could make an apparently impossible mission. NASA used data to confirm that the Great Wall cannot be easily seen from space and certainly not from the moon.
Without raw data and facts, advisors would not have advised Kennedy to go ahead with his speech.
Big Data to Smart Data
The sheer amount of data we can now digitally draw upon allows us to make truly powerful decisions. We can now make real that which was previously perceived impossible.
We may have had dreams, such as autonomous driving before but they could never be realised without the ability to harness big data which is now possible. However, just as successive generations have had to manage their information to best realise its power, we also need to manage ours. Smart data is exactly how we make sense of it all in order to drive our decisions forward.
and finally... for the love of pizza// data data data
Put simply data-driven decision making can be boiled down to pizza making.
Big data can tell you everything about making a pizza. From to the optimal temperature of the air that’s breathed by water buffalos required for the production of mozzarella, to the entire history of the pizza across the world. It could tell you how pizza fits into our culture and when it might peak, it could, of course, go further into all foods related and unrelated, it could tell you more. However only smart data will tell you how to make the pizza you want to make. That’s of course, if you want a pizza at all…
A FRICTION FIGHTER WITH A DREAM
Growing up with two volcanologist parents on the seismically active eastern edge of Siberia, Sergei Glavatskih seemed destined to be a scientist too. Now he uses chemistry and physics to take lubrication to the next level.
The son of two volcanologists, Sergei Glavatskih had a pathway into research that was in some ways preordained. “I was, by default, set for science,” Glavatskih reflects from his nondescript office at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. Raised on Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, the land of volcanoes, he often “helped” his mother during summer research trips to geothermal fields and the Commander Islands.
Glavatskih says when he was growing up he always had a head full of questions, but at school he found his teachers tired and uninterested. Correspondence courses filled in some of the gaps in his learning, particularly in physics and mathematics, and there was the National Geographic, “one of the few magazines that remained relatively censor-free”, he says. In its pages he learned about people and places beyond his beautiful but cut-off homeland.
We should pursue impossible dreams sometimes, and if we are successful there will be incredible gains for society.
SERGEI GLAVATSKIH
Forgoing military service (and quite possibly, he believes, the war in Afghanistan) by attending university in Moscow, Glavatskih earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and went on to his first PhD, in cryogenics. He developed patented resonance sensors, later used in the refuelling system of a passenger aircraft, the TU-154, which operated on liquefied natural gas.
When the Cold War came to an end, Glavatskih left Russia, both to satisfy his yearning to travel and to begin his international research experience. “It was easier to come to Scandinavia, and I always liked the idea of Sweden,” he says. In Sweden Glavatskih embarked on his second PhD, in machine elements, which led to his work with Statoil on the development of environmentally adapted synthetic oils. The oils TURBWAY SE and TURBWAY SE LV became commercially available for rotating machinery.
Friction, as an area of research, has held increasing fascination for Glavatskih. He explains that it is one of the most fundamental areas in engineering and has been a concern of humankind since the earliest of times. Now it is more important than ever because of the amount of energy that the world produces and consumes, the associated losses and the consequent environmental implications.
Glavatskih says that many of today’s problems with machine efficacy come down to inappropriate lubricants and “just incremental” lubricant development over the years. Typically, he explains, machines are designed, and then it is decided which of the available lubricants to use based on viscosity.
“In many cases,” he says, “lubricants are regarded as chemical additives to an engineering solution.” Lubricant development is carried out by chemists and, as such, is considered almost a black art by mechanical engineers.
Sergei Glavatskih
“We need to incorporate more advanced lubricant technologies in machine design and even new properties previously not possible with traditional lubricants to ensure the necessary improvements,” he says. “This can be achieved through a mechano-chemical approach, so we should use our knowledge of chemistry on a molecular level and some physics and mechanics to give lubricants new properties to enable new technologies.
“If you look back at history, even in the 19th century, the great scientists did not define themselves as scientists in ‘machine elements’ or ‘thermo-dynamics’,” Glavatskih explains. “They did many things in many different subjects. Unfortunately, for some reason, as time went on, everything became more ‘siloed’ – it has all become so narrow. As a result of that we have to change things about the way we work.”
The way in which researchers and scientists work stems naturally from the way they’ve been educated. As a scientist Glavatskih feels strongly that the educational aspect of his work at KTH is just as important as the research he is engaged in. “We must further investigate and consider the way we are teaching and training the engineers of tomorrow,” he says, adding that his work will plant the seed for a non-linear, collaborative and innovative way of thinking and working.
At KTH, Glavatskih leads a diverse team of researchers from backgrounds such as nano-technology, chemistry and fluid mechanics. “Our starting point is that we consider a lubricant a machine element in itself,” he says. The notion of lubricant as an integral part of the machine is key to Glavatskih’s design philosophy.
One of Glavatskih’s current research projects, supported by the Swedish Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is an investigation into ionic liquids (room temperature molten salts). Glavatskih and his team are exploring the potential of these ionic compounds in lubrication. Their results show that ionic liquids can serve as a key technology enabler in lubrication. A multiscale approach to the lubricant design developed by the team enables tuning the temperature, pressure and shear response of the ionic liquids to provide lubricants with desired properties. Important aspects of the design procedure are sustainable synthesis paths and a lower environmental impact.
It is possible, in situ, to control friction performance of the tailored ionic liquids, which is unachievable with conventional molecular lubricants. His vision is to bring to the market the novel “active” approach to the problem of friction and wear reduction in lubricated contacts, manipulating in real time the rheology and near-surface structure of the lubricants based on the tailored ionic liquids.
“My job as a scientist is to be a little crazy,” says Glavatskih. “We should pursue impossible dreams sometimes, and if we are successful there will be incredible gains for society.”
Sergei Glavatskih
Born: 1966.
Lives: Stockholm, Sweden.
Works: Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, and Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Education: Master’s in mechanical engineering, honours diploma, 1989, Bauman Moscow State Technical University; PhD in cryogenics, 1994, Bauman Moscow State Technical University; PhD in machine elements, 2000, Lulea University of Technology (LUT); docent in machine elements, 2003, LUT.
Currently reading: Vikingarnas Värld(Viking World), by Kim Hjardar.
WHERE THE FUTURE LIES
KTH Royal Institute of Technology has served as one of Europe’s key centres of innovation and intellectual talent for almost two hundred years. Recognised as Sweden’s most prestigious technical university, KTH is also the country’s oldest and largest. Education and research spans from natural sciences to all the branches of engineering and includes architecture, industrial management and urban planning.
In 2016 I wrote the research articles for the yearbooks for both the School of Electrical Engineering and for the School of Industrial Management.
School of Electrical Engineering articles:
- Independent communication between robots
- Automising stem cell research
- The algorithm at the heart of automated truck safety
- 'Human organs on a chip' technology
- Sustainable power development
ADVANCED INNOVATION DETECTED
29 September 2017
The 2017 Saab Innovation Prize has gone to Dr. Henrik Holter for his invention of a new phased array antenna, which is central to the electronic warfare system of Gripen E.
“My invention is a wideband phased array antenna aperture for modern AESA systems,” says Henrik.
“The antenna aperture was especially developed for wideband electronic warfare systems. You can control the shape of the antenna beam by controlling the amplitude and phase of each antenna element and you can also both transmit and receive signals. It can also be used for wideband radar systems.”
The efficiency of the phased array system
Henrik’s antenna has not one antenna element but a full array of antennas. This means that the phased array system can simultaneously and independently track different targets. The system can also track targets independently of search volumes. Compared with traditional mechanical antenna systems it gives the pilot an enviable tactical advantage.
Although phased arrays are not new, they’ve existed since Second World War, they have had performance issues and have been expensive to manufacture. Despite this they have always had qualities much in demand; they are difficult to jam and have a lower probability of interception. Ultimately it is the speed with which the antenna beam can be scanned across a wide area for which they are most valued.
Solving the problem of cost
There are actually very few types of wide band phased array antennas on the market. Henrik‘s main challenge was to reduce cost using modern technology. Henrik estimates that compared with the earlier technology, his system is around 60% cheaper to make.
“In earlier technology the antennas were connected to each other, but with this one the antenna elements are not connected, which means that there are separate pieces, which is a real advantage when you put it together.” With several such antennas on each Gripen aircraft and a lot of Gripens being manufactured, this cost saving is very welcome.
Although Henrik claims that the main significance of his new antenna is its lower manufacturing cost Pontus de Laval, Saab’s CTO, disagrees saying Henrik is too modest. “I have never seen anything as good,” says de Laval. “Lots of people around the world view these antennas as key components and have spent millions to develop them. But Henrik has found very innovative solutions to this problem. And as well as being cheaper to make, the way he has actually made the antenna element in this array is quite unique. It is more effective.”
Antennas — a curiosity turned into a career
While serving his national service as a young naval officer Henrik first became interested in radar systems. “I served on surface attack ships and became a technical officer working with radars and communications.” His curiosity led him to study and then to teach. For his Masters of Science he specialised in electro physics and was named the best graduate of the year at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and its school of electrical engineering. He then undertook his PhD in electromagnetic field theory, also at KTH. This included a six-month posting to the Antenna Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts.
After finishing his PhD, Henrik became an Assistant Professor at KTH.
“It’s hard to say how I became interested in antennas,” Henrik says. “Antennas are a combination of theoretical and practical things and I found the combination interesting.”
Henrik has published around 40 papers within the antenna area. In 2001 he began developing phased array antennas and other antennas for Saab. To say Henrik is an expert in the antenna technology field would be an understatement.
After 12 years of research at Saab, Henrik became the manager for antenna and microwave development, and more recently the Head of Research & Technology at Saab’s electronic warfare division.
Henrik’s antenna is now being developed for use on other systems, beyond the Gripen.
Saab’s investment in innovators
“Saab spends 25% of its revenue on R&D. That’s a lot compared with other companies,” reflects Henrik. “People in the company can apply for patents if they have an idea. I have five myself, including one for this new antenna. If you submit an innovation it’s rewarded. Inventions are really important for Saab. It’s the reason why we exist,” he concludes.
Just the facts...
Name: Doctor Henrik Holter
Position: Head of Research & Technology, SAAB Surveillance, Electronic Warfare, Järfälla
Education: Master of Science in Electro Physics and PhD in Electromagnetic Field Theory, KTH
Career: Technical Officer in the Navy, Assistant Professor at KTH, Antenna and Microwave researcher at SAAB, Manager of Antenna and Microwave Development at SAAB
Hobbies: Mountain biking, kayaking, machine learning
Family: Wife Anne and 14-year-old daughter