Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / BI Weekend: NJIT Science & Tech, Boeing Earnings

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BI Weekend: NJIT Science & Tech, Boeing Earnings · Bloomberg Intelligence

0:00
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg Intelligence
0:11
Speaker 1: with Alex Steel and Paul Sweeney.
0:13
Speaker 2: The real app performance has been in US corporate high yield.
0:17
Speaker 3: Are the companies lean enough? Have they trimmed all the fats?
0:19
Speaker 2: The semiconductor business is a really cyclical business.
0:22
Speaker 1: Breaking market headlines and corporate news from across the globe.
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Speaker 3: Do investors like the M and A that we've seen?
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Speaker 4: These are two.
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Speaker 2: Big time blue chip companies.
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Speaker 5: Window between the peak and cunt changing super fast.
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence with Alex Steele and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
0:42
Speaker 2: On Today's Bloomberg Intelligence Show, we dig inside the big
0:45
Speaker 2: business stories impacting Wall Street and the global markets. Each
0:48
Speaker 2: and every week we provide in depth research and data
0:50
Speaker 2: on some of the two thousand companies and one hundred
0:51
Speaker 2: and thirty industries our analysts cover worldwide. Today, well look
0:55
Speaker 2: at why the planemaker Boeing reported first quarter results that
0:58
Speaker 2: exceeded Wall Street's expectation. Plus we'll discuss how one company
1:02
Speaker 2: develops advanced technologies for recycling lithium ion batteries. But first
1:07
Speaker 2: we would begin with some of our best conversations this
1:09
Speaker 2: week from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. This week
1:13
Speaker 2: co hosts Alex Steele and I, we're at NJIT where
1:15
Speaker 2: they enroll more than thirteen thousand students and are really
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Speaker 2: some of the leaders of science and technology in the US. There,
1:22
Speaker 2: we spoke with Wunmi Sadic NJIT, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
1:27
Speaker 2: and Environmental Science and founder of the Biosmart Center. She
1:30
Speaker 2: discussed the development of nanoscience analytical sensors for measuring pain
1:34
Speaker 2: in the human body, and I first asked Wunmi to
1:37
Speaker 2: talk about what she's working on in the Biosmart Center.
1:41
Speaker 6: The Biosmas Center, our goal is to look for sustainable
1:46
Speaker 6: materials in terms of chemistry, to create technologies that will
1:51
Speaker 6: help people. One of us technologies actually, you know, to
1:57
Speaker 6: detect pain. Over one hundred US adults live with chronic
2:03
Speaker 6: pain and more than ten million individuals struggle with prescription medications.
2:11
Speaker 6: But every time you go to the hospital and the clinicians,
2:15
Speaker 6: physicians are required to measure pain. And the only way
2:19
Speaker 6: we do that, despite advancement, is to show you a
2:25
Speaker 6: facial skills.
2:27
Speaker 5: They wear on the scale, like what faces are you
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Speaker 5: right now?
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Speaker 4: Exact?
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Speaker 3: So what would your research be able to do.
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Speaker 6: So Basically, my research says pain is biochemical in nature,
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Speaker 6: and when you have chronic pain, there's a lot of inflammation.
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Speaker 6: And when there's inflammation, there are chemicals that are biochemicals
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Speaker 6: that are produced by the body. By measuring, first of all,
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Speaker 6: by knowing those biochemicals and measuring how much they are,
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Speaker 6: we can relate this to pain that people are feeling.
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Speaker 6: You don't need the subjective approach to measure pain because
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Speaker 6: if you have infants, for example, if you have elderly,
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Speaker 6: if you have people who are conscious, they're not able
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Speaker 6: to articulate their pain. And so you can actually use
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Speaker 6: our bio sensors or smart biosensors to give you the
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Speaker 6: level of pain that people are going through.
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Speaker 2: So where are you in terms of your.
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Speaker 6: Research our sensors that are being used currently? Uh you know,
3:27
Speaker 6: you know, we have collaborators in opposite New York and
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Speaker 6: they take human blood samples and they measure the levels
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Speaker 6: of molecules called cyclopgenis too or inducible nitros oxide and taste,
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Speaker 6: and they measure the level. We combine this with artificial
3:49
Speaker 6: intelligence to be able to give you the exact amount
3:54
Speaker 6: of pain that people are going through. And for the
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Speaker 6: most part, we've been able to think the level that
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Speaker 6: people suggest to the level that we're majoring from.
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Speaker 5: Ours are how far away from like regular doctors and nurses.
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Speaker 3: Using it in hospitals currently?
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Speaker 6: I mean it's we've looked at close to one thousand
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Speaker 6: individuals and we're getting eighty percent accuracy in terms of
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Speaker 6: what people tell you. At the end of the day,
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Speaker 6: pain is also individualistic, right, There are aspects of pain
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Speaker 6: that you know, you know it depends on individuals.
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Speaker 3: You have pay tolerance, right exactly.
4:34
Speaker 6: You know you have you know, you have saturation, you
4:36
Speaker 6: can so there are so many other components that impacted.
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Speaker 6: But in terms of being able to actually test this out,
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Speaker 6: we're doing this already.
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Speaker 2: So how does doing research at a place like an
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Speaker 2: NJAI T How does that work? How do you balance
4:49
Speaker 2: like I guess, research with teaching and all that, because
4:52
Speaker 2: I know most professors have to deal with that across
4:54
Speaker 2: various disciplines.
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Speaker 6: In actual fact, there's correlation because in the classroom I
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Speaker 6: teach graduate students, I teach them the fundamentals, and then
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Speaker 6: we take it further from the classroom and actually do
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Speaker 6: this in the lab, and so there is a connection
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Speaker 6: between what you do in the classroom, what you're teaching
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Speaker 6: the classroom, and what you're actually doing your love.
5:19
Speaker 5: We talk a lot on Bloomberg here about tariff risks,
5:22
Speaker 5: but economic risks.
5:24
Speaker 3: About products being in short supply.
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Speaker 5: Is any of that relevant to the work that you do, Like,
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Speaker 5: are you worried about getting certain materials or products to
5:34
Speaker 5: fund and continue moving your research along?
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Speaker 6: Suddenly we're going to be affected because, as you know,
5:41
Speaker 6: most research at the momental funded by the federal government,
5:45
Speaker 6: and so if there's less funding, there's less time that
5:51
Speaker 6: will not be able to support students to be able
5:53
Speaker 6: to do the work, and so ultimately it will impact
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Speaker 6: our research. It would impact the classroom.
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Speaker 4: And what we do.
6:01
Speaker 2: What's the next step for you in your research?
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Speaker 4: Are you?
6:04
Speaker 2: Are you working with a team other professors, maybe other universities.
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Speaker 2: What's your team work?
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Speaker 6: Like my team at at the moment we have six
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Speaker 6: PhD students, we have post dogs, we have clinicians that
6:17
Speaker 6: are working with us. We have computer scientists who are
6:19
Speaker 6: looking at the AI component of our work. So it's
6:23
Speaker 6: a whole center activity.
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Speaker 3: How did you come to research this particular part?
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Speaker 5: I always find that really fascinating when you like narrow
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Speaker 5: it down, like the field must be so broad, right,
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Speaker 5: Like why measuring pain?
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Speaker 6: That's a very good I'm sorry, that's a very good
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Speaker 6: question because I have always developed sensors for different things.
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Speaker 6: We developed sensors or the environment. We developed sensors to
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Speaker 6: measure different things. But I had a friend whose daughter
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Speaker 6: was suffering from sickle cell and you know, and she asks,
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Speaker 6: you know a view. You know, many times she's in crisis.
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Speaker 6: Physicians scientificately, they cannot really assess what No, she's in pain.
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Speaker 3: And I thought, well, that should be easy.
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Speaker 6: As long as we can find a particular molecule, we
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Speaker 6: can measure that.
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Speaker 3: And I thought somebody should have done that. It seems
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Speaker 3: so obvious. Now I'm kidding, but we did.
7:17
Speaker 6: We looked in literature and we'll realize it's actually no.
7:20
Speaker 6: And this is where we studied the work fifteen years ago.
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Speaker 2: Oh thanks to one Sadi Njit, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
7:28
Speaker 2: and Environmental Science. We continue with some of the best
7:31
Speaker 2: conversations from NJIT. Their co hosts Alex Steel and I
7:35
Speaker 2: spoke with Eric Fortune NJIT, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences.
7:40
Speaker 2: Eric discussed how he recently led a team of scientists
7:43
Speaker 2: in a contest to see who could count the most
7:45
Speaker 2: creatures in a square kilometer of the Amazon rainforest, and
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Speaker 2: his team walked away with a five million dollar prize
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Speaker 2: awarded by X Prize Foundation at the G twenty Social
7:55
Speaker 2: Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I first asked Eric to
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Speaker 2: walk us through what his experience was like and how
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Speaker 2: he did it.
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Speaker 7: Well, it's a super exciting project that we were part of.
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Speaker 7: It was sponsored by this group called the X Prize,
8:10
Speaker 7: and their goal is to incentivize fields where otherwise there
8:16
Speaker 7: weren't sufficient finances to drive things. So they feel like
8:21
Speaker 7: they're responsible for the current space exploration that's occurring in
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Speaker 7: the private sector because they sponsored Next Prize thirty years
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Speaker 7: ago that drove that market. So their goal with this
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Speaker 7: X Prize was to drive the same kind of development
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Speaker 7: and innovation in the area of biodiversity. So their rules
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Speaker 7: were that they would give us a few months ahead
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Speaker 7: of time, a random location in some rainforest on the planet,
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Speaker 7: give us one day to sample with only drones and
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Speaker 7: other kinds of remote sensing technologies. No human was allowed
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Speaker 7: to go into this square kilometer, and then forty eight
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Speaker 7: hours to analyze the data and provide a report about
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Speaker 7: the biodiversity that we encountered in that time.
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Speaker 2: What did you find here? Findings? What was the bio
9:08
Speaker 2: I can't think of a more biodiverse area maybe than
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Speaker 2: a rainforest.
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Speaker 7: Well, we went to perhaps the most biodiverse place on Earth.
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Speaker 7: So this was a habitat in the Amazon rainforest. And
9:20
Speaker 7: so we had a square kilometer just outside of Manaos
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Speaker 7: in Brazil, and so we deployed our drones and these
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Speaker 7: devices that sat on top of the rainforest canopy and
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Speaker 7: they collected insects and sound and environmental DNA, and we
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Speaker 7: were able to take like twenty seven million samples of
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Speaker 7: genetic information from the forest, identified more species of birds
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Speaker 7: that exist in all of North America in this one
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Speaker 7: one kilometer area, and then measure hundreds of thousands of
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Speaker 7: insects all in this twenty four hour period. It's really unprecedented.
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Speaker 5: So okay, so you take this, you analyze that you
9:57
Speaker 5: have a tremendous amount of research.
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Speaker 7: Then what then what? Well, that's I think the big
10:03
Speaker 7: problem that Exerprise is trying to identify, which is first
10:07
Speaker 7: to develop the technology so that we can do this
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Speaker 7: kind of analysis, and then the next steps the part
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Speaker 7: that we're in now is to try and develop and
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Speaker 7: address the market for biodiversity monitoring, not only in rainforest
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Speaker 7: and critically important habitats like the Amazon Basin, but across
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Speaker 7: the planet.
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Speaker 2: So what are the next technological frontiers for monitoring.
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Speaker 7: So we've now developed and tested and proven these technologies,
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Speaker 7: so our goal now is to translate these things into businesses.
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Speaker 7: So our team alone has generated six or seven new
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Speaker 7: businesses that are each focusing on components of this biodiversity
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Speaker 7: monitoring that are entering the market at this moment. And
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Speaker 7: the other teams that we compete it with, some of
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Speaker 7: their teams are also generating these new companies, new companies
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Speaker 7: that do things like monitoring environmental DNA at a particular location.
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Speaker 7: So if you're building a power plant somewhere along an
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Speaker 7: endangered forest, you want to know what your impacts are.
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Speaker 7: You measure the environmental DNA to know what species were
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Speaker 7: there before andies what your impact is on species later.
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Speaker 2: Do sense changing winds out there in terms of funding,
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Speaker 2: terms of support for biodiversity and just environment in general.
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Speaker 7: Well, I mean it's complicated, of course with changing political winds,
11:26
Speaker 7: but we all live on this planet and that's not changing,
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Speaker 7: and I think anyone of our age and I don't
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Speaker 7: mean to say anything about how old any of us are,
11:34
Speaker 7: but it's inescapable that during your lifetime you have observed
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Speaker 7: changes in climate and in biodiversity that occurs, and so
11:45
Speaker 7: whether we like it or not, this is something that
11:48
Speaker 7: we're going to have to deal with. The question I
11:50
Speaker 7: think from a business perspective, of course, is what's the
11:52
Speaker 7: time horizon of that? Is it one year, ten years,
11:55
Speaker 7: one hundred years? And that's a complicated thing that I
11:58
Speaker 7: am not equipped to answer.
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Speaker 3: What's next for you guys?
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Speaker 7: So I'm personally. I've started a company that came out
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Speaker 7: of this X Prize competition, and so we have our
12:10
Speaker 7: first order, and so I'm busy building things, building these
12:14
Speaker 7: high tech devices that are deployable into these kinds of
12:17
Speaker 7: habitats that collect this kind of data. And we see
12:20
Speaker 7: that as at least on a small scale, a sustainable
12:23
Speaker 7: business for quite quite some time. Anyone who owns land
12:26
Speaker 7: and is interested in in the biodiversity there, starting with
12:30
Speaker 7: like national parks or local and city parks, or any
12:34
Speaker 7: other business that have large landing holdings, they're going to
12:37
Speaker 7: need over time devices like this to answer regulatory and
12:43
Speaker 7: their customers demands about biodiversity.
12:47
Speaker 2: Our thanks to air Fortune and j It Associate Professor
12:49
Speaker 2: of Biological Sciences. Coming up will break down what it
12:52
Speaker 2: means to stimulate the brain and the benefits that come
12:55
Speaker 2: with it. You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio,
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Speaker 2: providing end up research and data on two thousand companies
13:01
Speaker 2: and one hundred and thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg
13:03
Speaker 2: Intelligence via Bigo on the terminal. I'm Paul Sweeney.
13:06
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13:13
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13:28
Speaker 2: We continue with some of our best conversations this week
13:31
Speaker 2: from the New Jersey Institute of Technology co hosts Alex
13:33
Speaker 2: Steele and Irat and Jit, where they enrolled more than
13:36
Speaker 2: thirteen thousand students and are really some of the leaders
13:39
Speaker 2: of science and technology in the US. There, we spoke
13:42
Speaker 2: with chaw yon Njit, alumnus, co founder and CEO Princeton
13:47
Speaker 2: New Energy also known as PNE. He discussed how P
13:50
Speaker 2: and E develops advanced technologies for recycling lithium ion batteries.
13:55
Speaker 2: I first asked Chow to talk about his company and
13:57
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do.
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Speaker 4: So President Edit, we have a great technology and the
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Speaker 4: using plasma to recycle LiTi ion battery with much lower
14:06
Speaker 4: cost roughly forty fifty percent lower than the traditional recycling
14:10
Speaker 4: technology and also much more cleaner compared with the traditional
14:14
Speaker 4: lead as a leaching process. So that's why recycling technology
14:19
Speaker 4: we need in the US is cleaner and cheaper. So
14:23
Speaker 4: talk about the supply chain for the battery. The biggest
14:26
Speaker 4: problem for the US right now is that the EV
14:28
Speaker 4: is still too expensive, so how we can reduce the
14:32
Speaker 4: cost for the EV is important. So there is a
14:35
Speaker 4: more than half of the costs inside the battery, which
14:38
Speaker 4: is they call the cathode active materials. So the direct
14:41
Speaker 4: recycling our technology is to direct extract those cathode active
14:46
Speaker 4: materials outside from the old batteries that you can reuse.
14:50
Speaker 4: And at the same time, we do not want to
14:52
Speaker 4: produce a lot of waste. So in the traditional way,
14:55
Speaker 4: using the software acid you leaching all the metals and
14:59
Speaker 4: know as any you can do a lot of the
15:00
Speaker 4: sodium software and we don't have the place to dumb
15:04
Speaker 4: them right now, so that's why we need the great
15:06
Speaker 4: technology to do that and which is a much lower cost.
15:09
Speaker 4: So that's what we are doing.
15:10
Speaker 3: So let's go to the cathoin part first. So you're
15:12
Speaker 3: doing that for cheaper than competitors.
15:15
Speaker 4: How so Yeah, because of the traditional way, you need
15:19
Speaker 4: to break the old batteries to downb to the element.
15:23
Speaker 4: So using the acid, so we don't destroy the cathode materials,
15:28
Speaker 4: we just fix them reuse them. So that's how we
15:31
Speaker 4: reduce the cost and using our plasma technology.
15:35
Speaker 2: So where are we with just battery technology and recycling,
15:40
Speaker 2: I mean, are there more advances to go here? Because
15:42
Speaker 2: it feels like that's such a key part of electric vehicles,
15:47
Speaker 2: just electric power going forward.
15:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's not only for the EVA, but also
15:53
Speaker 4: like the ANDRE storage batteries. Yes, as the big the
15:57
Speaker 4: storage system. So traditional tech tchnology we're trying to build
16:01
Speaker 4: in the US, but it's very expensive and the processing
16:04
Speaker 4: costs is also very expensive. So that's why in the
16:07
Speaker 4: US we're try to scaling up our technology. So the
16:10
Speaker 4: company was founded in twenty nineteen and we have technology
16:14
Speaker 4: and after that we have the large space lab in
16:17
Speaker 4: New Jersey which is a close to Princeton. And also
16:19
Speaker 4: we have a build up pilot production line which is
16:22
Speaker 4: about three four years ago right now is upruning about
16:25
Speaker 4: two years which is in Dallas, Texas and starting from
16:29
Speaker 4: last year we are building the first commercial scale the
16:32
Speaker 4: production line in South Karina and Chester County. So in
16:35
Speaker 4: this one we are able to recycle five thousand towns
16:38
Speaker 4: as a phase one and we target to expand to
16:40
Speaker 4: thirty thousand towns as end to recycle the batteries, do
16:43
Speaker 4: you have to have end.
16:44
Speaker 5: Buyers that will contract that material for you to feel
16:47
Speaker 5: confident putting in that kind of capex.
16:49
Speaker 4: Yes, we need that and do you have that? We
16:52
Speaker 4: do have the feed stock provider which give us the
16:55
Speaker 4: WETE batteries and it were comeing from like a sale
16:58
Speaker 4: manufacturers who make the batteries there are manufacturing scrap, so
17:02
Speaker 4: we do have a contract with them to recycle their
17:05
Speaker 4: manufacturing scrap. We do have a contract with auto Ems
17:09
Speaker 4: and also the Junkyard players who have a lot of
17:13
Speaker 4: waste batteries, so we also have a contract for.
17:15
Speaker 3: That one who's buying them now.
17:17
Speaker 4: So currently we are selling to the leaching companies who
17:20
Speaker 4: need those batteries to continue to get the medals for
17:23
Speaker 4: the later usage.
17:25
Speaker 2: How are you funding your company? I'm a former banker,
17:27
Speaker 2: so I always think about the money. How are you
17:29
Speaker 2: funding this company?
17:30
Speaker 4: That's a very important part. So we close the two
17:33
Speaker 4: rounds of the investment. We call a cias run and
17:36
Speaker 4: a RAND. So we have a private investors who interest
17:40
Speaker 4: with US investor US and supporting US, and those the
17:43
Speaker 4: investors some of the finishing investors AHOW Strategy investor so.
17:48
Speaker 4: And on top of this we get a big support
17:50
Speaker 4: from the Department Energy in the past six years, starting
17:54
Speaker 4: from like a smaller grand spr later on we have
17:57
Speaker 4: a larger grant, so we got a rough about twenty
17:59
Speaker 4: minute dollars.
18:00
Speaker 3: Pouring us will What is your level of confidence that
18:03
Speaker 3: that continues.
18:05
Speaker 4: I think for the United States critical minerals are very important,
18:09
Speaker 4: so we don't have so many minds in the US.
18:12
Speaker 4: What we need is how we can leverage those waste
18:16
Speaker 4: stuff and how to reuse them. So that's why I
18:19
Speaker 4: think recycling technology is a critical for US to secure
18:23
Speaker 4: the critical minerals and this will link to the US
18:27
Speaker 4: energy security. So I think for our technology is very
18:31
Speaker 4: critical for the United States for the materials what we
18:35
Speaker 4: need and also for the batteries what we're going to build.
18:38
Speaker 4: So that's what we need, and just give you a
18:41
Speaker 4: little bit numbers. So currently us don't produce any castle
18:44
Speaker 4: the materials, so all the materials we import from outside,
18:48
Speaker 4: so directly recycling, we use the waste batteries and produce
18:53
Speaker 4: the castle the materials to make new batteries and that's
18:56
Speaker 4: content more than half of the value inside the little
18:59
Speaker 4: I M. So how important is That's why we believe
19:03
Speaker 4: the grant will continue to support this critical minerals research
19:07
Speaker 4: and also the support our energy security.
19:10
Speaker 2: So you get your masters and your PhD here.
19:12
Speaker 4: Right, that's right in chemistry department. That sounds fun.
19:16
Speaker 3: How was your experience here?
19:18
Speaker 4: It's awesome. I really enjoyed the research here. So basically
19:24
Speaker 4: it's built up my very strong research and engineering foundation.
19:30
Speaker 4: So I think that's would be very critical because once
19:32
Speaker 4: you move into the next step, so doing research basically
19:37
Speaker 4: finished pH no one's going to teach you how to
19:39
Speaker 4: do it. You have very strong the experience how to
19:43
Speaker 4: design your research, how to set up everything, and then
19:47
Speaker 4: after research, how to write a paper and the publications,
19:51
Speaker 4: and more important, how to find the research topics, write
19:55
Speaker 4: the proposals to get a grant. So yeah, we got
19:57
Speaker 4: I get a pretty good foundation here.
20:00
Speaker 2: Thanks to cell John nj alumnus, co founder and CEO
20:04
Speaker 2: of Princeton New Energy. We continue with some of our
20:06
Speaker 2: best conversations from NJIT. Their co host Alex deel and
20:10
Speaker 2: I spoke with Alisa kelly Onemi, Assistant Professor of biomedical
20:14
Speaker 2: Engineering at NJIT. She discussed what it means to stimulate
20:18
Speaker 2: the brain and the benefits that come with it. I
20:20
Speaker 2: first asked Elisa what kind of research she's focusing on
20:23
Speaker 2: these days.
20:24
Speaker 8: The biggest question my research is trying to understand how
20:28
Speaker 8: to modulate the brain safely and precisely. So we already
20:33
Speaker 8: know that several brain disorders have like abnormal brain activities,
20:39
Speaker 8: but we don't know.
20:40
Speaker 3: What causes them.
20:42
Speaker 8: I'm kind of like, how can we normalize them? And
20:45
Speaker 8: that's where prain stimulation comes from. So prain stimulation is
20:48
Speaker 8: a method where we can actually modulate the brain safely.
20:51
Speaker 5: Modulate the brain does I mean like fix it or
20:54
Speaker 5: change the brain waves or what does that mean?
20:56
Speaker 3: So basically it's kind.
20:58
Speaker 8: Of like the radio, So like it with the radio,
21:00
Speaker 8: you can find two things. So with this one, we
21:02
Speaker 8: are applying these like small energy pulses to the brain
21:07
Speaker 8: that are totally safe, and these energy pulses are able
21:12
Speaker 8: to change your brain activity.
21:15
Speaker 4: Wow.
21:15
Speaker 2: So give us like a typical example of kind of
21:19
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do with a patient who may
21:21
Speaker 2: have some brain issues. What's an example?
21:23
Speaker 8: Yeah, So, well, for example, considering medications. So medications are
21:29
Speaker 8: life saving for many individuals, but the challenge is that,
21:33
Speaker 8: like some people get side effects, some people don't just
21:38
Speaker 8: like tolerate them, some people just don't get like any response,
21:43
Speaker 8: and obviously that's a problem because then we don't have
21:45
Speaker 8: any treatments for those. So what I'm trying to do
21:47
Speaker 8: with my research is kind of like help those individuals
21:50
Speaker 8: who don't get help from the pharmaceuticals. So with these
21:54
Speaker 8: brain simulation methods, we kind of like fill that gap
21:58
Speaker 8: and try to help them. So we try to develop
22:01
Speaker 8: methods that we could kind of like a whatever problem
22:04
Speaker 8: they have in their brain, we could elevate their symptoms.
22:09
Speaker 3: And then in that case it's sort of customized per
22:11
Speaker 3: person to do that. So I mean that's amazing, that's
22:15
Speaker 3: like a life saving thing.
22:16
Speaker 5: You say it's totally safe, but you say electric magnetic
22:18
Speaker 5: pulses in your brain.
22:19
Speaker 3: And you're like, WHOA, I don't know. That sounds scary.
22:22
Speaker 3: Give me the pitch for why it's safe.
22:24
Speaker 8: So so basically with h this these path is we
22:28
Speaker 8: can just reach the surface of the brain and then
22:32
Speaker 8: like your brain is already naturally electrical. So what we're
22:36
Speaker 8: basically doing is that we just like a initiate the
22:39
Speaker 8: activity that you would be initiating yourself as well, but
22:42
Speaker 8: we just do it externally and then whatever was supposed
22:46
Speaker 8: to happen in your brain will happen. So it's kind
22:48
Speaker 8: of like we just initiate the domino.
22:51
Speaker 3: Effects, so to speak.
22:52
Speaker 2: Where are you in your research now in terms of
22:55
Speaker 2: maybe getting at some point two practical applications.
22:59
Speaker 8: So my LAP is rather new, So I've been an
23:02
Speaker 8: NHT only like two and a half years, so I
23:05
Speaker 8: would say that we're still at the kind of like
23:07
Speaker 8: the first steps. But we already have some industry collaborations,
23:12
Speaker 8: so we've worked with so there's a for example, this
23:16
Speaker 8: program and SFI coorse so that that's a program where
23:20
Speaker 8: we collaborate with industry and then kind of like a
23:24
Speaker 8: try to kind of like get an idea of where
23:27
Speaker 8: we could help with our research. So I've had a
23:30
Speaker 8: couple of student teams done that and then but basically,
23:34
Speaker 8: like everything that we do, the end goal is to
23:37
Speaker 8: help patients so somehow, because I mean, this is electricity,
23:41
Speaker 8: so obviously like that's where the engineering comes from. But
23:44
Speaker 8: like in addition, obviously we have to understand other feels
23:47
Speaker 8: like neuroscience and clinical things.
23:49
Speaker 3: But like a from my.
23:50
Speaker 8: Labs perspective, we're trying to kind of like provide the
23:53
Speaker 8: engineering perspective. So what do you need to do or
23:56
Speaker 8: what can we do through an engineer's perspective to to
24:00
Speaker 8: model like kind of like improve.
24:01
Speaker 5: These methods so this could become you could commercialize what
24:05
Speaker 5: you're doing.
24:06
Speaker 8: So this this technology is already commercialized, Okay. So so
24:11
Speaker 8: basically this was invented about thirty years ago. So there
24:15
Speaker 8: are several companies I believe currently there's like thirty in
24:19
Speaker 8: different companies that are developing these these methods and there
24:22
Speaker 8: are FDA approved at treatments. So why we still need
24:26
Speaker 8: like our research is because like we have this problem
24:28
Speaker 8: that like we know that this works, but we don't
24:32
Speaker 8: really understand the interaction between the brain and the electricity
24:36
Speaker 8: that well, so okay, we know that it works in
24:39
Speaker 8: this one individual, but then like how do we modify
24:41
Speaker 8: to the second individual. That's the mystery. So we're trying
24:45
Speaker 8: to kind of like find find out that what is
24:47
Speaker 8: the like what do we have to do, like what
24:49
Speaker 8: do we have to change? So currently it's FDA approved
24:52
Speaker 8: things like depression OCDS, so obsessive compulsive disorder and micrants
24:57
Speaker 8: with ours. But everything's like one size with all. So
25:02
Speaker 8: if you have like let's say, like your tenetics somehow different,
25:07
Speaker 8: it's like it might not work for you. But then
25:10
Speaker 8: currently we don't really know why and what should we.
25:13
Speaker 2: Do our Thanks toy, Lisa Kayaleo and Yemi Assistant Professor
25:17
Speaker 2: of Biomedical Engineering at NJIT. Coming up on the program,
25:21
Speaker 2: we'll break down how one startup is trying to develop
25:23
Speaker 2: virtual reality solutions for treating vision disorders. You're listening to
25:27
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in depth research
25:30
Speaker 2: and data on two thousand companies and one hundred and
25:32
Speaker 2: thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg Intelligence VI A B.
25:35
Speaker 2: I go on the terminal.
25:37
Speaker 4: I'm Paul Sweeney.
25:38
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg.
25:46
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch the program
25:50
Speaker 1: live weekdays at ten a m. Eastern on Applecarplay and
25:53
Speaker 1: Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also
25:56
Speaker 1: listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York's
26:00
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg. Eleven thirty.
26:04
Speaker 2: We continue with some of our best conversations this week
26:07
Speaker 2: from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. This week, co
26:10
Speaker 2: host Alex Steele and I were at NJIT, where they
26:12
Speaker 2: enroll more than thirteen thousand students and are really some
26:15
Speaker 2: of the leaders of science and technology in the US. There,
26:18
Speaker 2: we spoke with Tara Alvarez, and JIT Distinguished Professor of
26:22
Speaker 2: Biomedical Engineering. She's also the founder of the startup Oculo
26:25
Speaker 2: Motor Technologies. Tara discussed how the company tries to develop
26:29
Speaker 2: virtual reality solutions for optometrists to use in diagnosing and
26:33
Speaker 2: treating vision disorders. I first asked Tara about the work
26:37
Speaker 2: she's doing and the types of vision disorders she's looking at.
26:40
Speaker 9: Glasses is what most people think of when they think
26:43
Speaker 9: about an eye disorder, and if you can imagine, it's
26:46
Speaker 9: very difficult to know what clear vision looks like. Unless
26:50
Speaker 9: you've been fitted for your first pair of glasses. My
26:54
Speaker 9: expertise is in how the brain brings visual information into
26:58
Speaker 9: the brain, which is the idea of using the eyes
27:00
Speaker 9: as a team to get the information into the brain.
27:04
Speaker 9: And if you don't do that well, you might not
27:07
Speaker 9: even realize you have it, but it can result in
27:10
Speaker 9: problems when doing near work such as reading, working on
27:13
Speaker 9: your phone, working on computers, and vision therapy works quite
27:18
Speaker 9: well for this condition known as convergence insufficiency, which is
27:22
Speaker 9: the inability of the eyes to work well as a team.
27:28
Speaker 9: How do you fix that?
27:29
Speaker 3: I guess or how do you find it? And then
27:31
Speaker 3: how do you fix it?
27:32
Speaker 9: Great questions. So vision therapy, which is basically like a
27:36
Speaker 9: form of physical or occupational therapy for your eyes, strengthens
27:40
Speaker 9: the eye muscles and the communication between the brain and
27:43
Speaker 9: the eyes. My work has been funded mostly through the
27:47
Speaker 9: National Institutes of Health, which is very critical in funding
27:51
Speaker 9: research that has direct impact to our society. You can
27:55
Speaker 9: find this by going to an eye doctor, so an
27:58
Speaker 9: optometrist or an ophthalmologist and they can do an exam.
28:02
Speaker 9: But most people don't even know that they have it,
28:04
Speaker 9: so they don't even realize that this is a problem.
28:07
Speaker 9: So typical problems people can have as they get headaches
28:10
Speaker 9: while reading, they feel like they read slowly, they get
28:13
Speaker 9: blurry vision, double vision, and it takes them much longer.
28:16
Speaker 9: So it's not that they have a cognitive or a
28:20
Speaker 9: problem in learning, it's that they're struggling to get the
28:23
Speaker 9: visual information into the brain.
28:25
Speaker 2: How common is this affliction or this.
28:28
Speaker 9: Issue, So depending on how you do, the diagnosis is
28:31
Speaker 9: present in between four and twelve percent, so you can
28:35
Speaker 9: say roughly eight percent of the population.
28:39
Speaker 5: You mentioned the funding. What's your level of confidence that
28:42
Speaker 5: funding for this kind of study will stay.
28:45
Speaker 9: I'm unclear right now. So right now we have I'm
28:50
Speaker 9: on my second randomized clinical trial where we're concentrating on
28:54
Speaker 9: concussions because we have the CDC released in December of
29:00
Speaker 9: twenty four that concussion costs is about forty billion dollars
29:04
Speaker 9: a year, and if you have had a concussion, especially
29:08
Speaker 9: multiple concussions, you can develop persistent postconcussive symptoms. And out
29:13
Speaker 9: of that population, about half of them have this convergence
29:17
Speaker 9: and sufficiency, which is that teeming problem of the eyes.
29:21
Speaker 9: So it is quite common, it's very impactful. My program
29:25
Speaker 9: officer at the National Eye Institute within the National Institutes
29:28
Speaker 9: of Health is extremely excited about our work, and in
29:32
Speaker 9: the past administration, I would have much more confidence that
29:35
Speaker 9: we would have funding to continue this very important work,
29:38
Speaker 9: but it is something I have a lot of concerns
29:40
Speaker 9: about right now.
29:42
Speaker 2: How often do you get funded or how often do
29:44
Speaker 2: most researchers get fund Is this an annual thing?
29:48
Speaker 9: So typically you get what's called an ro one, which
29:52
Speaker 9: is five years of funding, and you are reviewed every
29:55
Speaker 9: year and typically with a randomized clinical trial, which is
29:59
Speaker 9: what I'm leading. That's done in collaboration with Children's Hospital
30:04
Speaker 9: Philadelphia as well as Rutgers chop Yess and Rutgers University.
30:10
Speaker 9: It takes time because this is a rehabilitation and it's
30:13
Speaker 9: a longitudinal study, and it's also done with Saless University
30:16
Speaker 9: of Drexel, so it's not something that happens overnight. It
30:21
Speaker 9: takes time to acquire this data. But it's really critical
30:25
Speaker 9: because the knowledge that I'm gaining from this study has
30:28
Speaker 9: been patented, where MNGT holds the patents, and that led
30:31
Speaker 9: to our startup company, Ocular Motor Technologies. And the key
30:35
Speaker 9: reason I became a biomedical engineer is I want to
30:38
Speaker 9: have a positive impact on others, specifically in the healthcare sector.
30:43
Speaker 9: And it's my children that actually inspired the core technology
30:48
Speaker 9: of our company, which is the idea of trying to
30:51
Speaker 9: do the therapy that works very well but is incredibly boring.
30:55
Speaker 9: So if you can put the therapy in a virtual
30:58
Speaker 9: reality headset and make it in to a game. If
31:01
Speaker 9: you have a child in mine or almost all grown now,
31:04
Speaker 9: but it's not difficult to get a kid to play
31:07
Speaker 9: a VR game. And in essence, we are sugar coating
31:09
Speaker 9: the therapy and they think they're having fun, but in actuality,
31:13
Speaker 9: it's sugar coating a ton of science to get those
31:16
Speaker 9: eyes to work better together.
31:18
Speaker 3: It's like when I put kale in the oven.
31:21
Speaker 10: Correct.
31:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of lines exactly.
31:25
Speaker 5: So what is the exit strategy for the startup and
31:29
Speaker 5: can do get outside funding at the same time.
31:31
Speaker 9: So we have been funded through the NSF through SBIR,
31:36
Speaker 9: which is the Small Business Investigator grants. We've had both
31:39
Speaker 9: Phase one and Phase two, and we also participated in
31:42
Speaker 9: an nng T iCore program, and we did a national
31:48
Speaker 9: version of iCore, which is basically teaching professors how to
31:52
Speaker 9: create and translate their science out of the lab and
31:56
Speaker 9: to have a positive impact.
31:58
Speaker 2: Our thanks to Alvaros and Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
32:03
Speaker 2: We move next to earnings from the planemaker Boeing. This week,
32:06
Speaker 2: Boeing reported first quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations,
32:09
Speaker 2: and the company said it's ramping up jet production, aiming
32:12
Speaker 2: to raise output of its seven thirty seven Max jetliner.
32:15
Speaker 2: Boeing CEO Kelly Ordberg says this would help generate cash
32:19
Speaker 2: that's been depleted by a recent strike and manufacturing crises.
32:23
Speaker 2: For more guests, Isabelle and I were joined by George
32:25
Speaker 2: ferguson Bloomberg Intelligence senior Aerospace, Defense and Airlines analysts. We
32:29
Speaker 2: first asked George what his takeaways were from Boeing's first
32:32
Speaker 2: quarter results.
32:33
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest issue there was
32:36
Speaker 11: a cash generation came in a billion dollars better than expectations.
32:42
Speaker 10: I mean, I kind of get the sense that Boeing
32:43
Speaker 10: management has sort of.
32:46
Speaker 11: Give us some pretty conservative estimates for cash generation for
32:50
Speaker 11: the year. I think they showed it in the first
32:52
Speaker 11: quarter coming out pretty strong. I think there's a real
32:56
Speaker 11: good potential that Boeing could be sort of cash flat,
33:02
Speaker 11: meaning no usage for the year or maybe even a
33:04
Speaker 11: bit of generation.
33:06
Speaker 10: What we've heard is the tariff effects are.
33:10
Speaker 11: Pretty manageable outside of China. China is a bit of
33:13
Speaker 11: a challenge. They know that, but again a lot of
33:16
Speaker 11: the backlog is not Chinese airplanes. A lot of that's
33:19
Speaker 11: been the Chinese haven't placed many orders, and you know
33:22
Speaker 11: boe has been sort of busy getting deliveries out to
33:24
Speaker 11: them to get some of those airplanes they've already built
33:27
Speaker 11: for them off the balance sheet. So China the major
33:31
Speaker 11: issue again, not big though, and the rest of tariff
33:36
Speaker 11: world sounds like where there's occasions that they have to pay,
33:39
Speaker 11: they're paying, they can claw back some of those costs
33:43
Speaker 11: from the administration. So it sounds like I would say
33:47
Speaker 11: things are continued to be on track for a recovery,
33:51
Speaker 11: for a strong recovery, hopefully this year.
33:53
Speaker 12: Yes, and Boeing less earned a profit in mid twenty
33:55
Speaker 12: twenty one, and it's definitely coming off. It's worse the year,
33:58
Speaker 12: and it's century long history. We have the cee Okay
34:02
Speaker 12: ord break saying at twenty twenty five is the turnaround?
34:05
Speaker 12: You what is going to do differently?
34:09
Speaker 10: Well, I mean I think they're going to deliver airplanes. Right.
34:11
Speaker 10: So that's that's the biggest challenge.
34:13
Speaker 11: When you're an aircraft manufacturer and you stop delivering airplanes
34:18
Speaker 11: and you have quality problems, that's why they stop delivering.
34:21
Speaker 10: You're just not going to generate cash. They've really been
34:24
Speaker 10: trying to keep.
34:26
Speaker 11: The supply chain I would say warm by buying components
34:31
Speaker 11: from the supply chain, and that's why they've seen inventories
34:34
Speaker 11: balloon to.
34:35
Speaker 10: Like eighty seven billion dollars.
34:38
Speaker 11: So, I mean a lot of the turnaround is build
34:40
Speaker 11: those airplanes with existing inventory. Means the cash generation for
34:44
Speaker 11: the airplanes they build and deliver ought to be higher
34:48
Speaker 11: than historically. Use that money to pay do on debt,
34:52
Speaker 11: keep the balance sheet, or heal the balance sheet.
34:55
Speaker 10: That's the recovery plane.
34:57
Speaker 4: George.
34:57
Speaker 2: I know, if I'm talking to you and reading your research,
34:59
Speaker 2: the CA story hinges in large part on getting those
35:02
Speaker 2: seven three sevens out the door. Talk to us about
35:06
Speaker 2: where production is today and where do you think it's
35:09
Speaker 2: going to go in the future.
35:10
Speaker 11: Yeah, So they said that they were the factory was
35:14
Speaker 11: building at thirty low thirties number of aircraft per month.
35:19
Speaker 11: You know, we've kind of been tracking it. I think
35:20
Speaker 11: we saw high twenty, so probably Kelly's got maybe just
35:23
Speaker 11: a more current number on that. I think that they'll
35:28
Speaker 11: they'll get up to the thirty eight limit. This is
35:31
Speaker 11: all in the seven thirty seven that the FA is
35:34
Speaker 11: put in place for them this year, and go past that.
35:37
Speaker 11: I think they'll get an FA approval for that, and
35:40
Speaker 11: probably at the back half of the year, we're kind
35:42
Speaker 11: of looking for them to be forty ish and so
35:46
Speaker 11: again that you know, the more the more you use
35:48
Speaker 11: the factory, the more overhead gets absorbed over over a
35:51
Speaker 11: larger number of airplanes. The more profitable you are, the
35:55
Speaker 11: more cash you're going to generate. Part of that story,
35:58
Speaker 11: can you talk to.
35:58
Speaker 12: Us a bit more about how much the tariff headwind
36:01
Speaker 12: will affect the company's top line or bottom line, especially
36:05
Speaker 12: with this really heated tit for tat it seems with China, well.
36:10
Speaker 11: So again, China has really become much less of an
36:15
Speaker 11: issue for Boeing. The Chinese have placed sixteen orders.
36:18
Speaker 10: This decade for airplanes.
36:20
Speaker 11: There's some four hundred orders on the Boeing books. Still,
36:24
Speaker 11: that's of a backlog that's six thousand large. Kelly Orberger
36:28
Speaker 11: is talking on the call that you know he's prepared to.
36:32
Speaker 11: He was planning and delivering forty to fifty into China
36:35
Speaker 11: this year, so not a lot of airplanes. That would
36:37
Speaker 11: be mostly seven thirty sevens and that's out of an
36:40
Speaker 11: expected build of maybe four hundred and seven thirty sevens
36:43
Speaker 11: or so this year. So you can already see the
36:45
Speaker 11: sizes and that large. And he's ready to go out
36:47
Speaker 11: and he's going to talk to the customers, see what
36:50
Speaker 11: they want to do, and he's ready to go out
36:52
Speaker 11: and remarket those airplanes. I think we've already seen Air
36:54
Speaker 11: India raise their hand say hey, we'd take some airplanes.
36:57
Speaker 11: And there's other folks around the world that just haven't
37:00
Speaker 11: got the deliveries they wanted. They're ready to take airplanes too.
37:02
Speaker 11: So on the top line, I just don't see China
37:05
Speaker 11: impacting things that much.
37:08
Speaker 2: Our Thanks to George First and Bloomberg Intelligence senior Aerospace,
37:11
Speaker 2: defense and airlines analysts.
37:13
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37:21
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