I have a new book coming out early next year, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. As the title suggests, my subject matter is the outer limits of human potential and the question of what might actually be possible for our species.

During the course of writing this book, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of amazing people interested in this very same question. This is a story about one of them, a really nice guy named Jim Kwik. It’s also a story about learning and education, innovation and entrepreneurship, and, well, superheroes. Actually, mostly, it’s a story about superheroes.

Of course, since I’m telling you this is a story about superheroes, I now have to satisfy two additional requirements. There has to be a superpower; there has to be an origin story. Let’s take them one at a time.

Jim Kwik’s superpower is learning. He’s the CEO of Kwik Learning for a reason. Kwik is really, really quick. He can learn faster than mere mortals.

A lot faster.

As learning requires reading, well, Kwik can read alright. Most folks put away text between 200-250 words-per-minute (wpm). Kwik fires through heavy technical tomes at about 500 wpm; he devours light fiction at upwards of 1300 wpm. And he can remember what he reads.

Actually, he can remember a lot more than that. If you’ve ever seen Kwik on stage or attended one of his seminars, then you’ve seen him memorize the names of every face in the crowd. Or long strings of random numbers. Most people struggle to remember all seven digits of a phone number. Kwik can remember phone numbers all day long. Hundreds of them. And this isn’t a parlor trick: as was mentioned before, Kwik also remembers what he reads.

Consider what this really means. Books are the best way to store and transport knowledge we have ever developed. Years and years of back-breaking research go into books. And we can access that research in hours? How crazy is that.

It’s also for this reason that leaders are readers. This is true for American Presidents (JFK, Carter, Clinton, etc.) and American business leaders. In fact, Bill Gates—also a voracious reader—was once asked what superpower he most wanted. What did he choose? “Being able to read superfast.”

Warren Buffett, who was sharing the stage with him at the time, agreed, saying: “I’ve probably wasted ten years reading slowly.”

Now, for those of us raised on Shazam and the Wonder Twins, fast reading and better recall may not seem like true superpowers, but that’s only because we haven’t done the math.

Kwik did the math:

“The average person reads 200-250 words-per-minute and spends 3 to 4 hours of their work day reading. That’s more than one-third of their time on the job. If that person makes $60,000 a year, then at least $20,000 of that money is paying for them to read. But proper training can easily double the average person’s reading speed (up to 400-450 w.p.m.). That cuts 3 to 4 hours down to 1 to 2. That’s a savings of over an hour a day. If you do that for 365 days a year, that’s 9 different 40 hour work weeks saved. That’s real time productivity. Imagine what you could do with all that extra time.”

But you can do more than imagine. Because there’s another side to superherodom that’s relevant here—Kwik’s origin story.

Kwik Origins

Jim Kwik wasn’t always a great learner. In fact, just the opposite. At the age of 5, he suffered a head trauma and afterwards felt broken. Like his brain was broken. Like he could never keep up.

And, truthfully, he never could keep up. Growing up in Westchester, New York, he was exceptionally challenged in school. His friends seemed to excel effortlessly, while Kwik had to struggle privately just stay in the game. Worse, this led him to be painfully shy. The combination almost proved his undoing.

Kwik was temporarily relieved by the chance to go college. “It was supposed to be great,” he recounts. “College was a place where no one knew me. They didn’t know I had trouble learning. They knew nothing about me. I thought I could be anyone—even a smart guy.”

On his way towards smart, Kwik overloaded himself with classes. Once again, very quickly, the burden proved too much to bear. Unwilling to let himself slip behind, Kwik sacrificed everything at the alter of study. He stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped exercising. The neglect took its toll.

One day, Kwik passed out at the public library. He fell down a flight of stairs and woke up in the hospital. He was battered and bruised, dehydrated and exhausted. A nurse brought him a cup of tea. There was an Albert Einstein quote printed on the side: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Old Al was singing his song.

The quote got Kwik thinking. Instead of thinking about what he was failing to learn, he started thinking about learning itself. The brain was supposed to be this supercomputer, right? So why did his supercomputer keep malfunctioning? Why couldn’t he focus? Why couldn’t he remember what he read? Why did he keep losing his damn keys?

And the longer he thought about it, the more he came to one conclusion: School—this place he had spent all these years trying to get smarter—is a great place to learn what to learn. But it’s not necessarily a great place to learn how to learn.

“If Rip Van Winkle woke up today,” says Kwik, “the only thing he would recognize is our education system. It was created for 18th century needs, to train people to work in factories or the farm. Today, we’re paid by what’s between our ears. We’re knowledge workers. We’re paid for our ability to learn. Yet we have an educational system that doesn’t teach people how to learn. How to focus, listen, innovate, think, remember, problem solve. Why do most people have poor reading skills? One reason is that the last time most people took a class called “reading” they were probably five years old.”

So, Kwik made the art of studying his study. He started pouring through tomes on neuroscience, adult development, and meta-learning—which is the science of how we learn. He discovered there was a lot to learn.

He also applied this knowledge. To his incredible surprise, progress came quickly. After spending less than 30 days working on new learning habits, Kwik could focus better, read faster, retain more. After 60 days, he was getting better grades and in far less time. His self-image started to change. His confidence started to soar. Hell, before long, he barely recognized himself.

For the sheer joy of sharing, Kwik started tutoring others in what he learned about learning. One of his first students was a young woman desperate to read more quickly.

The woman struggled with the technique. Speed reading isn’t skimming and it isn’t scanning. Done properly, and augmented with memory work, it’s very high comprehension and high retention. And not easy to learn

But this woman was incredibly determined. She kept at it. Eventually, something clicked. And it kept clicking. She read 30 books in 30 days—an absolutely amazing total. So amazing, that Kwik had to ask the purpose. Why 30 in 30? What could possibly be the hurry?

Her mother was the hurry. She was in the hospital dying of cancer. Doctors had given her 60 days to live. Kwik’s student was speed reading books on health and wellness. It was a last ditch effort to save her mother’s life.

Kwik was 19 years old at the time and this was not the kind of answer he was expecting.

“I didn’t even know what to say to that,” he recounts. “I also didn’t think it would ever work.

Six months later, Kwik got a call from the woman. Her mother had survived the cancer. “It was a miracle,” says Kwik. “The doctors had no idea what was keeping her alive. But her mother believes she’s alive because of all the great advice she got from her daughter when she was sick. The same advice, her daughter had gotten reading 30 books in 30 days.”

That was when it all came together for him. “If knowledge is power,” he says, “that was the moment I realized that learning is a superpower.”

More importantly, as Kwik himself points out, “I’m not special. I didn’t naturally have these superpowers. They were learned. And if I can learn them, anyone can learn them—regardless of age, background or education.”

A School for Superheroes

After college, Kwik kept on teaching people to harness this superpower. He started Kwik Learning, has trained students at over 30 institutions (Harvard etc.), and worked with companies like Nike, Virgin and Zappos. Along the way, he also started to realize that having a superpower meant using that power for good. It might sound corny. Kwik was serious.

Education and the environment were his core issues, so he and his wife, Alexis, started saving the rainforest; they built schools in places like Guatemala. It was a significant (and ongoing) effort, but, for Kwik, not nearly enough. But what would be enough?

This was about the time Kwik started thinking about building a school for superheroes.

His thinking was straightforward. Every animal has been optimized by evolution; thus every animal has a superpower—that thing they do best in the world. Birds fly. Fish swim. Spider’s weave. So what can humans do? Well, studies show that human’s have a near-infinite capacity to learn—it’s what neuroplasticity really means. In Scientific American, Northwestern psychologist Paul Reber explains it like this:The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, running out of space would be a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the space in an iPod or a USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.

In other words, Kwik wasn’t wrong: learning really is our superpower.

He also figured, to effect real change in the world—the kind that might be enough—the easiest way was teach everyone in the world how to develop their superpower. Simple really. Make the planet smarter.

And, seriously, why not? Why not build a school that teaches all how-to-learn stuff not taught in school. A school that shows us how to optimize brain performance, mental math, rapid recall, that heighten problem-solving, elevates creativity, enhances flow, increases innovation, this list goes on and on.

Of course, this school should also be free; and available online.

Superhero You was born.

The Largest Citizen Science Project In History.

Superhero You has since grown into a community over 100,000 strong. It is a collection of free videos. It is an ongoing series of live events. It is an eclectic assembly of top experts in all things brain optimization. Sir Ken Robinson on creativity; Dr. Peter Diamandis on innovation; Dr. Daniel Amen on brain health. My organization, the Flow Genome Project, has also been involved since nearly the beginning.

At the heart of this community are a trio of important ideas. The first is straight-forward: the ability to learn quickly is a distinct and powerful competitive advantage in business. It enables all success in a fast paced, fast changing world.

The second should also be clear by now: human performance is hackable. Learning is hackable. The brain is hackable. Literally.

The term “hacker” originally described someone interested in tinkering with technology in an attempt to improve performance. Our biology no different. When Kwik teaches memory he tells people to exaggerate the things they are trying to remember. Why? Because the brain craves novelty. If you are trying to remember where you put your car keys, having an image of them 60 feet tall and dressed in drag helps. Exaggeration, then, is a simple memory hack.

But exaggeration is also one of the keys to building memory palaces which is one of the keys to remembering everything you read. It’s what the road to mastery looks like from the inside.

More importantly, exaggeration only one example. There are millions more. Honestly, barring violations of the laws of physics, just about whatever superpower you desire, someone out there has figured out how to hack it. My organization, in fact, the Flow Genome Project is dedicated to hacking flow states—check us out here.

And that brings us to the third idea at the heart of Kwik’s message—we can teach each other these hacks. We can build schools for it. We can have conferences. But most importantly, we can do it online—which means we can do it at scale.

The Internet gives us the ability to open source ultimate human performance. We can turn hacking our better selves into the largest citizen science project in history. We can, collectively, try to figure out how to become superheroes.

Stay Tuned: Superhero You just teamed up with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s downtown Vegas Project to put on a super-learning super-summit.

Steven Kotler is an author, journalist and Director of Research for the Flow Genome Project, an organization dedicated to decoding the science of ultimate human performance. His books include “Abundance,” “A Small Furry Prayer,” “West of Jesus,. and “The Angle Quickest For Flight.” His articles have appeared in over 60 publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Wired, Forbes, GQ, National Geographic, Popular Science, and Discover. He has a deep interest in the intersection of science, technology, and culture, with specific focus on the extreme edges of the discussion—both larger philosophical implications and completely personal applications.

[images: glowing brain and man concentrating courtesy Shutterstock]

Technology has always ridden far out ahead of the laws that govern it. As the pace accelerates, that gap may widen. The US Patent Office issued the first gene patent thirty years ago. Tens of thousands of patents later, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on the issue earlier this year.

On June 13^th, the court ruled against biotech firm, Myriad Genetics, saying the company may not patent isolation of naturally ocurring genes. However, the court also upheld patents of synthetically created genes, known as complementary DNA or cDNA. The decision affects genetic research, testing, and the growing field of synthetic biology.

The case dealt specifically with Myriad’s patents of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, mutations of which are associated with increased risk of ovarian and breast cancer. Because Myriad had discovered the BRCA genes and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted a patent on them, the firm had control over all research and genetic tests involving the genes.

The court, however, invalidated Myriad’s BRCA patents, distinguishing the discovery of “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” from the invention or discovery of a “new and useful . . . composition of matter.”

Naturally occurring genes—or those that have evolved over millions of years—fall into the former category, even when they have been isolated from the DNA strand; whereas, synthetic genes assembled or invented in a lab belong to the latter.

The court argued that the isolated DNA Myriad uses in its BRCA test contains all the nucleotides from the original strand including ‘introns’, or sections that aren’t used during the creation of proteins. However, although cDNA may contain the same sequence of functional nucleotides, these non-functional introns are typically removed, thus, making cDNA chemically different and therefore artificially derived.

The court was clearly working on the premise of chemical composition as opposed to information. An organization that discovers what a particular gene is for and wants to make a test for it can’t get a patent. But they can patent an informationally identical, albeit chemically different, lab-built version of the gene.

This distinction may seem like semantics. But the court wanted to find a way to open information while maintaining incentives to invent: “Patent protection strikes a delicate balance between creating “incentives that lead to creation, invention, and discovery” and “imped[ing] the flow of information that might permit, indeed spur, invention.”

To learn how the decision will affect research and the biotech industry, Singularity Hub contacted Professor David Berry, director of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s Graduate Program in Intellectual Property Law.

Professor Berry said, “The USPTO has been granting patents on isolated human genes and similar molecules for many years. Companies that built patent portfolios based on naturally occurring molecules lose, because many, if not most, of those patents now are likely invalid.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the decision could affect as many as 4,000 patents on isolated genes. However, companies like Myriad also hold patents on cDNA. Myriad’s chief counsel, Richard Marsh, told the New York Times, ”We have 24 patents, more than 500 patent claims, the vast majority of which are still valid and enforceable.”

Meanwhile, abolishing patents on naturally occurring genes may spur research and reduce the price of genetic tests by subjecting them to competition. Myriad’s test, for example, costs $4,000 to isolate and analyze just two genes. That’s very expensive at a time when whole genome sequencing is under $10,000.

Berry thinks the decision will also benefit genetic researchers as they no longer face the threat of infringement. “If the decision results in expanded research and innovation, then the public at large will win, since investment in innovation results in new products, better products, and less expensive products.”

All that said, no one knows exactly how the decision will play out.

According to Berry, patent law has been subject to “enormous” change since 2005. Apart from the Supreme Court, the lower courts, Congress, and even the White House have had a hand at it. Berry says, “The most pressing issue in the patent field right now is for the USPTO, the courts, and patent owners to sort through all the changes, and understand what it all means.”

One wonders what new genetic applications and methods biotech will invent by the time that process is complete. It’s good the conversation is taking place, and the best laws are written with enough flexibility to accomodate unforeseen change. But perhaps in parallel, we should discuss how legal and regulatory processes might be modernized to more easily keep pace.

Image Credit: Miki Yoshihito/Flickr (featured, banner), Col Ford and Natasha de Vere/Flickr (body), 

Science and engineering can be awe-inspiring. The language of science and engineering? Not so much. Imagine a carnival crier trying to sell robots using technical jargon. You there! Yes you! Step right up and see an automaton algorithmically determine the end-effector velocity of variable joint speeds with a matrix of first-order partial derivatives!

Terrible. It’s no wonder only 6% of US high school students go on to get a science-related degree. To help bridge the gap and share the awe, Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman’s Two Bit Circus is producing the STEAM Carnival, a hands-on event featuring “robots, fire, and lasers to inspire young inventors in science, technology, engineering, art, and math.” Doesn’t that sound lovely?

Two Bit Circus successfully funded their $100,000 Kickstarter to underwrite two events, one in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco.

The show includes techie takes on carnival classics like the milk bottle ring toss—with a two foot flame when you nail your throw—and the test your strength hammer game measured in voltage. Then there’s a giant Space Invaders video game, a mechanical bull hooked up to  a motion capture suit, and laser maze limbo.

Low and mid-level pledges will receive stickers, tickets, posters, or a rotocube (“your friends will admire your taste in laser cut wooden automata”). Meanwhile, top tier pledges can send their favorite school to the carnival or rent it out for a party.

STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) is a good thing, but adding an ‘a’ for art acknowledges inspiration is the keystone. The world at our doorstep is weird, wild, magnificent, awe-inspiring, and terrifying—when we remember to look closely. Speaking of which, here’s an excellent reminder of the importance of awe from one of our favorite carnival criers for science and tech, Jason Silva:

If you’re fascinated with the latest news about science, technology, and trends shaping the future, then you’ve definitely found a home at Singularity Hub where we serve up daily stories that make minds happy. But what if you’re ready for the next level, say you want to start discussing your ideas with others interested in tech, read some of the great books from thought leaders like Ray Kurzweil, discover new startups from entrepreneurs around the world tackling some of our time’s grand challenges, or perhaps get a glimpse at some of the programs happening at Singularity University?

Put another way, where’s a tech enthusiast excited about the future to hang out online?

The short answer: the Singularity Hub Membership Program.

Launched in early 2012, the Singularity Hub Membership Program has grown into a dynamic group that includes a wide range of people interested in tech from CEOs of burgeoning startups to bloggers who can’t wait to share all the cool advances happening in the world with readers. Members enjoy engaging discussions, promotional opportunities like front-page ads on our main site, videos from the large library at Singularity University, and opportunities to engage with the movers and shakers in technology, such as Peter Diamandis, who recently reached out to members to tell them about the Arkyd space telescope Kickstarter campaign.

In fact, this Monday is the launch of the much anticipated 2013 Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University, and SH members will be able to watch exclusive videos from incredible speakers over the course of the 10-week program. For anyone interested in this program, our video archive will give you back door access that you can’t get anywhere else.

And there’s more in the works. We are actively building a new community portal that will provide members with countless opportunities to interact in groups, build out their profiles, and promote everything from events to projects. As Singularity Hub continues to expand into a media network that covers all the exciting advances being made in science and technology, our community will be empowered to not only learn more about all the is happening but become involved in helping us carry forth Singularity University’s commitment to impacting billions of lives around the world.

Interested in becoming a member? It’s easy! head on over to our designated site and join the community today!

[image: robots courtesy Shutterstock]

Mathemati-phobes rejoice. You may one day swap coffee and cramming for a trusty set of head-mounted electrodes. According to a team of researchers, hailing from the UK and Austria, non-invasive electrical brain stimulation may improve math learning. However, the results, while intriguing, require a few requisite grains of salt: The trial was small, and as yet, there is no proven physiological explanation.

The technique, called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), sends weak electrical impulses racing between electrodes attached to the forehead. An early study using the technique suggested TRNS works by stimulating the brain’s ability to generate and propagate electrical potential, thus making it easier to forge new neural pathways.

The five day experiment tested shallow cognitive processing—students memorizing their times tables, for example—and deep cognitive processing, or the ability to learn a mathematical principle and apply it to solve a novel problem.

Participants were similarly proficient on initial testing, but the TRNS group exhibited significantly higher learning rates in both categories compared to the control group after the trial. According to the paper, “TRNS facilitated the speed of learning for both calculation and drill regimes.”

The researchers recalled participants six months later. Though only 12 returned, the six who had been given TRNS had retained some benefits of the therapy—again outperforming the control individuals in new and old problems.

This most recent study is not the first to suggest weak electrical stimulation of the brain may enhance cognition. We recently covered several other studies using a similar technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Instead of random pulses, tDCS sends a steady current to the brain.

One study, conducted by the Mind Research Network last year, improved participant performance in threat assessment during training with a virtual reality simulation designed to help soldiers recognize improvised explosive devices. Participants not only performed better, they also reported feeling more focused and relaxed.

Similarly, the US Air Force employs tDCS to enhance drone pilot training. And other studies in 2005, 2008, and 2013 showed tDCS benefitted working memory, language learning, and visual short-term memory respectively.

The evidence seems to indicate something is going on here—but the trials have been limited and few in number. In this case, the test group was 25 and those returning six months later just 12. It’s not uncommon to find interesting results in small trials only to see them vanish in larger populations. Further, though the researchers have no evidence the method is dangerous, they warn not to try it at home.

According to Nature, however, Cohen Kadosh, leader of the TRNS math trial, hopes to expand the research to include university students in a classroom setting. He hopes someday it might be a key resource folks with dyscalculia—a kind of math dyslexia thought to affect roughly 7% of the population.

Image Credit: OakleyOriginals/Flickr (featured, banner), jimmiehomeschoolmom/Flickr (body)

[Source: NASA]

“Earl Gray, hot…and extra pepperoni on the pizza.”

NASA has enlisted the help of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor at Austin, Texas-based Systems and Materials Research in the form of $125,000 to build a 3D printer that makes pizzas. Contractor has already made a proof-of-concept printer able to print the chocolate chips onto a cookie. To print the pizza, he plans on first printing out the dough and letting it cook while printing out sauce and toppings.

As a first step, Contractor has already created a printer that can print chocolate onto a cookie. [Source: Anjan Contractor via YouTube]

“The way we are working on it is,” Contractor explained to Quartz, “all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”

That’ll definitely come in handy for a trip to Mars, until we can terraform the planet, of course, when fresh vegetables will be aplenty. But astronauts aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from printing food.

A pizza is an ideal food for a 3D printer to tackle. It has a variety of ingredients arranged in layers. Contractor hopes to use the money from NASA to build the food-printing device by the end of the year. The following is a video of his prototype that can print chocolate on a cookie.

[Source: Anjan Contractor via YouTube]

The idea of printing food has been around for a while now. In 2011, a group at Cornell created a printer that prints chocolate, cheese, scallops, celery, even turkey. But rather than use the layer-by-layer fabrication method that has come to define 3D printers, their food is made by layering ingredients squeezed out of tubes. And just last month a scientist in the Netherlands printed an entire burger, although with its $325,000 price tag it’ll be some time before our corner burger shops adopt the technology.

One can envision a day when 3D food printers will enable the long distance transmission of digital recipes, so Mom can “cook” you your spaghetti just the way you like it even if you’re miles – or planets – away. Ray Kurzweil predicts that, in the future, information will become a major commodity to be bought and sold. Recipes, furniture designs, unique toys – the blueprints for anything that can be 3D printed, instead of the finished products themselves – will compete on the open market. But the printers have to be built first. And who better than NASA to push even the culinary envelope? Hopefully their can-do attitude results in a delicious pizza with the workings, and eventually we can all eat like Captain Picard.

After shooting “Brain Games” for National Geographic, Jason Silva is building on his previous line of  “philosophical espresso shots” with a new web series entitled “Shots of Awe.” Silva says these videos are “condensed nuggets of techno-rapture, psychedelic viral videos meant to radically pull people out of their habituated modes of thinking. The goal is to infect people with inspiration and invigorate the imagination!”

“Shots of Awe” will feature a weekly video discussing technology, philosophy, creativity, the human condition, what it means to be alive—all those questions with a capital ‘Q’. And of course, you can expect Silva’s trademark rapid fire, fully caffeinated delivery.

In the below episode, see Silva dissect the fears, hopes, and criticisms of the technological singularity. Is it simply a retelling of the Christian story of god, heaven, and an afterlife hijacked by technophiles and retold in silicon instead of spirit?

Maybe so. But so what? “Those religious myths that we’ve been caught up in for centuries reflect our yearnings to transcend our own limits.”

My favorite thing about Silva is his ability to formulate, encapsulate, and prescribe—over the counter—the wonder this particular epoch in human history can and should engender. A close second, however, are the t-shirts he wears.

Check out his backlog here for cosmic creation on cotton crewnecks; see all the “Shots of Awe” episodes and subscribe to his YouTube channel here; watch his latest video on mortality below; and stay awe-some!

Image Credit: ImaginatyFoundation

That’s right, we’re excited to announce that Singularity Hub is hiring! We’re looking for talented, prolific writers with a strong background in technology and science to join our editorial team. If you love covering sci/tech and are passionate about the future, then Singularity Hub could be your new professional home.

We’re looking for qualified applicants with a science degree and/or a strong technical education and 3+ years experience writing for tech websites or blogs. You should have the ability to produce high quality stories written in an engaging, yet authoritative style and be comfortable covering a diverse set of topics. We also need team players who are familiar with HTML and blogging platforms.

Writers are expected to have strong editorial skills and an openness to feedback. Furthermore, we value writers who are solid critical thinkers and bring with them an arsenal of wit. We’re actively building our community, so writers are expected to be comfortable with social media and interacting with an online audience of millions.

Singularity Hub delivers in-depth and thoughtful daily coverage of the latest developments in science and technology that are shaping the future. As a member of our parent company, Singularity University, writers will have access and exposure to the entrepreneurs, innovators, and thought leaders that are bringing the latest advances and ideas to the world.

We’ve worked hard to establish Singularity Hub in a unique spot within the arena of sci/tech news and media. Please be sure that you are familiar with our style and approach before applying.

If you’re interested, you can submit your resume to our designated page. We’re looking forward to adding awesome writers to our team!

[images: typing hands courtesy Shutterstock]

The time for innovation is now! The 2013 Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University is officially kicking off with the Opening Ceremonies on June 17. The event is being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA starting at 4:30 PM and will bring together all 80 students from around the world as well as faculty and teaching assistants for the first time as they embark on a 10-week intense program of the mind. With keynote speeches from Singularity University co-founders Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis along with VP of Motorola, Regina Dugan, the GSP13 class and attendees with be in for a real treat.

If you’re interested in attending the event and meeting the class in person, tickets are still available for the event (full program available here).

In its fifth year, the Graduate Studies Program is one of the most forward-thinking programs around with its aim to bring together the brightest innovators, pioneers, and thinkers in the world and vault them into the next level of technology entrepreneurship. The course of the next 10 weeks will take students on an incredible journey allowing them to have unique experiences that will change them forever and it all starts at the Opening Ceremonies.

You can learn more about each of the students and the program in general by checking out the profile page for this year’s class.

For a taste of what the event will be like, watch the following from a previous GSP Opening Ceremony:

[Source: University of Michigan]

Kaiba is a young boy who suffers from a condition called tracheaobronchomalacia in which the cartilage in the trachea is soft, causing it to collapse and make it difficult or impossible to breath. The rare condition – affecting only about 1 in 2,200 babies – showed itself one evening when Kaiba was just six weeks old. He stopped breathing while his parents were dining at a restaurant. The terrified parents saw their son turn blue and rushed him to the hospital.

University of Michigan professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, Scott Hollister, and physician Glenn Green 3D printed an implant that kept Kaiba’s airway open, and allowed the boy to breath again.

Their design was guided by a high-resolution CT scan of Kaiba’s trachea and bronchus. With computer-aided design they were able to make a splint that was tailored specifically to Kaiba’s collapsed airways. The splint was made of a polyester called polycaprolactone that, according to the team, has never been used before in this manner. Normally such an invasive procedure would have to go through the normal regulatory FDA avenues. But given the urgency of Kaiba’s situation, the FDA fast-tracked the splint’s approval.

Based on an exact, 3D printed model of a trachea, doctors were able to then print a stint with a perfect fit [Source: University of Michigan]

“For Scott and I, Kaiba’s case is definitely the highlight of our careers so far,” Green wrote in a piece about the operation. “To actually build something that can save a person’s life? It’s a tremendous feeling.”

Green goes on to mention that he and Hollister are already adapting their 3D printing procedure to print other types of tissue including an ear and a nose. Like Green and Hollister, physicians are increasingly teaming up with engineers and computer experts to create their own solutions to meet transplant demand. 3D printers have already been used to create bone models to plan operations, and just a few months ago one group printed an ear and then attached to the patient. Dentists benefit too, making custom-made crowns for patients in a few hours.

Most children with tracheaobronchomalacia outgrow it by age 2 or 3, but Kaiba’s case was severe. His survival attests to the power of using new technology to solve old problems, and the impact 3D printing will have in the future.