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The Power of Revolutionary Thinking: What Today's Scientists Can Teach You About Driving Innovation In Your Organization

Moderator: Alf Nucifora
Robert Cassanova Penelope Boston Dava Newman SM '89, PhD '92 Bradley Edwards: September 22, 2005; Running Time: 1:30:05

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

“You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.”

While Dr. Seuss may not have been a direct inspiration, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” seems especially suited to these four “brainy and footsy people” with exceptional reach.

Take Bradley Carl Edwards, who is designing a space elevator 62 thousand miles long, made out of a three-foot wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes, with one end attached to earth and the other sticking out in space. Send up solar panel satellites and you’ve got a constant, inexpensive supply of power for the world.

And there’s Dava Newman, who is working on a spacesuit made out of liquefied polymers and electro active materials. Her “shrink-wrapped” Biosuit system is intended for “extreme explorers” on multi-year missions to the moon and beyond, who need second skins to augment human performance and minimize bone and muscle loss typical in low gravity environments.

Or Penelope Boston, whose investigation of our planet’s harshest caves is leading to models for human habitation in subterranean lava tubes on Mars. Deploy “microbots” to reconnoiter for danger and signs of life in these deep and dangerous places, suggests Boston, then develop life support mechanisms in preparation for human colonies on other worlds.

Are these merely flights of fancy? Robert Cassanova thinks not. His NIAC serves as incubator to these “really good revolutionary ideas,” which he believes stretch the imagination but that will also end up as credible technologies.

Lecture Details

Location: Georgia Public Television

About the Speakers

Moderator: Alf Nucifora

Chairman, Nucifora Consulting Group Marketing consultant

Nucifora previously worked as the Chairman of Earle Palmer Brown/Southeast ad agency. He was a top manager with the Fahlgren & Swink ad agency of Atlanta, and also a product manager for International Playtex, Inc. and marketing director with Coca-Cola Bottlers, in Brisbane, Australia.

Nucifora holds a B.A. from the University of Queensland, Australia and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Robert Cassanova

Director, NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)

Prior to becoming the Director of NIAC, Cassanova was Director of the Aerospace and Transportation Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). While at GTRI and in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech, he performed research in biofluid mechanics, solar thermal energy, acoustics, combustion and rarefied gas dynamics. He received a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology; an M.S. in Space Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tennessee; and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Penelope Boston

Director of Cave and Karst Studies and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology Director of Research for Complex Systems Research, Inc.

Boston specializes in cave microbiology, microbial life in extreme environments, astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth, human life support in space, Mars research and human exploration of the solar system. She is the author of more than 70 papers and an upcoming book on extreme life forms. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research; an M.S. in Microbiology and Atmospheric Chemistry, and a B.S. in Microbiology, Geology, and Psychology, from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dava Newman SM '89, PhD '92

Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems Director of Technology and Policy Program and MacVicar Faculty Fellow

Professor Dava Newman is currently the director of the Technology and Policy Program and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. She is professor of Aeronautics and the Astronautics and Engineering Systems Division as well as an affiliate faculty in the Harvard-MIT Health, Sciences and Technology Division. Professor Newman’s research contributes to the fundamental knowledge of human performance in extreme environments by interweaving biomechanics, human factors engineering, modeling, and design.

In the space environment, she quantifies astronaut motion and studies the subtle mechanisms underlying neuron-musculoskeletal adaptation, which are not easily studied on earth. She is currently developing her fourth space flight experiment, the MICRO-G experiment, which will fly on the International Space Station in a few years.

Newman is concurrently designing a revolutionary, advanced spacesuit for future exploration missions, the BioSuit System, which she targets for 2020. She has been honored with a NASA Manned Flight Awareness Team Award and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She is a recognized AIAA Distinguished Lecturer and recently received the National Aerospace Educator Award.

In addition to teaching classes in leadership and engineering at MIT, she has published and presented more than 200 papers in refereed journals and at conferences and other professional groups. She is a regular speaker and participant at engineering conferences given by groups such as the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and International Design for Extreme Environments Assembly (IDEEA) among many others. In 2001, she published her first book entitled Interactive Aerospace Engineering and Design.

Newman earned a Ph.D. from MIT in Aeronautics, Biomedicine and Engineering.

Bradley Edwards

President and Founder, Carbon Designs

Edwards has led development of the space elevator project, and managed a research staff of 70 people at the Institute for Scientific Research. Previously, Edwards spent 11 years as a staff member at Los Alamos National laboratory (LANL) leading advanced technology efforts for lunar missions, optical cryocooler development, and a Europa orbiter mission. He has appeared on the cover of Discover and Science News. Edwards received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1990.