 Welcome to ASU Ked Talks the podcast. I'm your host Pete Zeroka, and I'm here today with Mark Noffle director of strategic projects at knowledge enterprise development Mark heads the Luminosity Lab a transdisciplinary team of students spearheading moonshot ideas and tackling large-scale problems Thanks so much for joining me mark. Thanks for having me Pete excited to be here So for people who haven't seen your Ked Talk Can you kind of briefly describe what Luminosity Lab is and like what it's oriented around and and how big is it now? You said there's about 40 people. It's getting up there. So, you know initial year was 10 to 15 people And it really has grown over time. I mean that's counting We're now launching one out at the polytechnic campus and some alternative groups And so, you know each of these groups tend to be you know no more than 30 seems to work best But I think people are really familiar with you know concepts like MIT Media Labs or Google X Labs Right, you know the original skunk works through Lockheed Martin It's really these groups of people that come together and are just given freedom to create take risks and Pursue big big ideas, and I think that ASU wanted to have something like this. They didn't really You know the leadership of ASU didn't really specify anything. They wanted to come out of it They wanted the students to be the ones to decide and so each year we go through an exercise And it's always an ongoing exercise where the students really get to decide what they want to pursue And I think the only you know mandate we have is that whatever they pursue should be capable of impacting society And so sometimes those ideas are things that could potentially get spun out and launches companies of their own But a lot of the initial projects were just things we could release open source or for the public good So it's a mix of both and what's nice is we have students who really just first and foremost they care about building things They love it. They're learning a lot and they really want to give back to society and I think that's what makes the culture really cool There's just this great energy around that How did it get started? How did the opportunity arise for you? And then how did you go about kind of gathering? Students from all over the university to put them together and point them towards like one big idea, right? So it's been this is entering the third year this year. So About two and a half years ago. I was finishing up grad school And I had a chance to go work out in Silicon Valley But it was actually President Crowe and Dr. Ponsh who sat down with me Asked me to stay here at ASU and told me they had something very unique For me to do and what they wanted was this, you know skunk works type team of students They wanted some of our best students hence selected from all areas of the institution And they wanted a group to come together and pursue these big Moonshot ideas and so I think they chose me because you know when I was in undergrad I had been you know, a student by president of the Tempe campus Was the student region? I had been very active with the students And I think that they had a chance to see the people I brought around through the years and really liked the energy And I think they wanted me to build this team that felt very fun Very energetic a group that would stay up all night working on these projects And so that initial group of students it wasn't too hard to find because at that point I was recently out of you know The institution so there were a lot of people I knew right off the bat And so it gave me a chance to call a lot of my good friends I had over the years that I knew were just extremely talented in certain areas whether it was robotics or software So I almost felt like Tony Stark, you know calling up the Avengers So I was just calling all my friends and saying hey, I have this unique thing, you know And there was nothing there yet So they just had to have that trust that we'd build something special and I think two years later It's really turning in this wonderful thing. So the inspiration behind the luminosity lab you reference skunk works, right? You reference Google X right, right? So Where did you draw like inspiration from some other existing think tanks or institutes aside from those ones? Yeah, I mean there's there's quite a few I was actually given a book called organizing genius that covers a lot of these with the call great groups Okay, and it was you know skunk works. It was You know Walt Disney and the family, you know Designers who created Snow White it was Steve Jobs and the rebels who invented the computer It was the Manhattan project It was all these small groups of people who came together for a short period of time to accomplish something great And so that was really interesting because you just got an idea of those there's various scopes of These groups they accomplish different things, but what are the core principles that make them successful, right? So that was great to use as inspiration. I think you know with luminosity. We're trying to do you know We're not trying to be MIT Media Lab. We're not trying to be Google X. We're kind of trying to be our own thing but Really just kind of trying to create an environment where our students can come together Learn a lot share their talents and really build and launch for these really big projects Can you tell me about some of these big ideas and projects that have come out of yeah luminosity and which one's like What are some of your your pet projects? What are some of your favorites or you know like well? I'll share a few and I'll leave it pretty vague You know we actually started the the mandate when we started was you know skunk works Mm-hmm, you know talked about the projects too much and so Yeah, like I want to address that because like I have no idea where luminosity is on campus I have no idea is that by design Initially by design it was no one was supposed to know about luminosity and so we didn't talk to many people We just had this small group kind of did our thing And I think as the years have gone by people have start to hear about us And I think by design now we're kind of coming out more public and what we do and so we used to be tucked away in Goldwater Building we took an old classroom, and we just gutted it and turned it into this really cool lab space People are in there tinkering building we got a bunch of 3d printers and So it makes it fun and now we're moving to the first floor of Fulton So we'll have quite a bit of exposure there It'll give students access to a lot of the executives within KEDD and otherwise and we're hoping to you know Bring people in from the institution and have them join our students in ideation and have our students kind of engage in Projects throughout the institution in addition to the work that they get to Conduct so the projects a lot of the time they do come from the students, but there are times where people just come to us You know President Crowe sometimes will read a book and he'll give it to us, and he'll say make this a reality You know tomorrow and so One of the projects we've been working on for a little while now is we call it Axio and there's a video out There floating somewhere But it's supposed to be this AI Companion that would exist with a person from early childhood all the way to late adulthood And it's being designed where there'll be multiple mediums where exist, you know on your phone on the web, etc But over time it learns about you it talks to you it actually pushes content out to you It's not really a system as much as it is this companion concept Like decade of your life there are a couple of objectives it has so for a college student The objective might be trying to help you determine what you want to do is career when you're late adulthood It's hey, how do you now want to get back to society etc etc and it really can leverage this information over, you know the course of your life To deliver really meaningful tailored content to you But at its core it's supposed to facilitate this lifelong learning platform And so yes, it learns everything about you, but it's for the purpose of your personal growth and development So it's not like social media. It's not like Facebook It seems like everyone's getting off that now But if you're a person who wants to advance your life get better improve learn This is really there to help you with that and so, you know a piece of it is it's almost like a kind of Wikipedia For MOOC like content. So those are becoming so popular now But in terms of the actual platform there is an opportunity for the community to come and curate That kind of content and then this AI actually does learn from the community as a whole To help kind of tailor these interactions to you while also kind of building a personal model of of you And so you say learn from the community. I'd be like a community of these systems Whoever no it learned from whoever is using the system. So in an ideal world when we're just launching beta right now Right close beta. So it's it's a little while out, but in a future where people use this at scale Axio as your companion if there's something you ask it about that it doesn't know it can actually go off Might be in China might be Austria might be wherever And it can have user kind of help teach them what that is and it would go through a chain of validation between users And then that would get written into its, you know memory per se And so and we also give the community the chance to actually Create these tailored events that might lead to positive outcomes In an easy way so you don't have to know how to code and so there's a lot of things We're testing out right now. So it's very fun because we're actually doing the development of it So, you know web app mobile app all the predictive analytics, you know, our students are doing a hundred percent of that work But on the research side it is like how do you it's a lot of this human-computer interaction? Domain where it's okay. Can we deliver this event and would it actually lead to an outcome? How can we actually quantify that and prove that etc. And so a lot of it's exploratory And it will continue to be a multi-year project, but it's one where We're able to leverage our in our psychology students our software developers our UX UI designers I mean it touches a lot of points and most of our projects do Touch a wide range of topics. So one of the first projects we ever did was that year one was this autonomous drone system For to facilitate safety escort on campus. So okay back when I did student government I think a lot of people you're familiar with the vans at night that they'll do safety escort and pick you up drop you off And so we wanted to figure out there was some kind of way we could deploy an autonomous system robotic system here on campus to benefit the community and The students scoped out. Hey, we should do a safety escort service. So what they were able to build was a fully customized autonomous drone That would you know, they also built the mobile app for it So if the students at night they call the drone from the app it would come to their location They could choose whether they wanted to diffuse the light or not and it will follow them to their final destination And all while a 360 camera free goes to a dashboard that the police station would monitor And so within six months of the lab existing They actually had built that full kind of system in a kind of minimal viable product way, right? So we had the mobile app we had the drone From that point on it was really, you know, there's a lot of FAA regulations that stop you from flying those Which I think for a lot of our students and engineers was good because it's like you could build something great But that's just one aspect to it And so we you know then had them taking into considerations regulations and how we might be able to get past that So the next step was really the safety consideration. So they actually integrated a deployable parachute into the drone So now it can if the system fails will deploy its own parachute Multiple functional safety and we did apply for the FAA's integration pilot program to be able to fly this Which we didn't get but We do have a lot of the waivers we need to fly just not autonomously yet. So it's this ongoing thing We're exploring now. We're starting to do a lot of work around international development as well But we're trying to explore. Hey, where could we use a drone? Maybe we changed the mission of it But what can we take what we've built now and repurpose it to then serve kind of the underdeveloped world because some of the Regulations of there are more lax and we could do things. I mean big topics there, you know medical supply delivery Etc. So we have the students exploring multiple options there. Did you guys come up with a name for that thing? Yeah, we call it guardian drones guardian drones. Yeah, good. So I'm gonna pitch you Shaper drone, right? Right. I like that. We thought guardian drone. Well, I think drone, you know, it was maybe it's guardian robot The word drone has connotations, right? It was cool to see the students that first year because we have a lot of designers UX design UI designers You know bringing them together a lot of the students had never worked Like that interdisciplinary before we do a lot of that work at ASU but these engineers and designers came together when they were first designing the the shell of the robot and Yeah, a lot of the designers a lot of our, you know, female engineers and designers said look this thing looks way too intimidating And so I think they they use the field of like biomimicry to to model the The drone is actually modeled after a raindrop so you can see this thing and tell me if it looks like it, but Just to make it look a little less intimidating, but it's great to see like students taking those into consideration designing around that I think that one of our female engineers Right off the bat, you know, they had built it with like a spotlight come down right on you and She was the first to say she's like she's like hey, I'm probably the one that's gonna use this No one wants a spotlight. Oh, is this an interrogation robot, right? You know, you don't want all that attention and so, you know, it turned into an optional very diffused light And so I remember that was like the first few months of the lab and I just sat around sitting and thinking yeah This is how it's supposed to work. Yeah, you know designers engineers They're actually taking the right things into consideration. They're actually going to build this thing deploy it maintain it and I think for all those students such a great learning experience So you were active in soon government. Yeah as an undergrad and eventually became student regent for the Arizona Board of Regents Can you tell me a little bit about that trajectory? Were these things you kind of set your site on or sites on or did it just kind of happen organically? No, not really I I was supposed to come to you see originally as mechanical engineer And I switched, you know, one month before To finance and just want to explore that, you know, I come from family of engineers. I kind of wanted to change it up and I knew that the Engineering curriculum would have taken way more of my time And so I really wanted to use this as an opportunity to get engaged on campus And so I joined a lot of organizations when I came here But it's funny. I originally joined the student government because they had a that year they had a intern Department focused on technology and they were the only ones willing to give me a technology internship as a finance major And so I really took the the only opportunity could and so, you know, I had done a lot when I was young I was coding when I was younger So I knew how to do this stuff But because I had that finance under my name that would that seemed to be the best opportunity So when I went there, you know, our initial project that year was, you know, work with The university's technology office to allow professors to post their syllabus Online when students are registering for classes So they actually did approve that built that out that exists today And I thought that was such a cool thing. It was such a little thing Yeah, I know I really appreciate being able to see the syllabus before I registered for register for a class And so I stuck with it the next year as a sophomore And by the end of my sophomore year, there were just a lot of people saying hey, you should run for this You should run for this and so had a bunch of friends convinced me to We had a lot of cool ideas. And so I went ahead and ran and so I actually was That position my junior year of undergrad and it was just this amazing experience We got to you know, it was my chance to meet President Crowe for the first time and just say hey, look How do we work together to advance the institution? And really the mindset was the same then as it is now, you know, now I work here strategic projects It's like what do we do to enhance ASU? I think as a student, you know, I wanted to use that position as an opportunity Just ASU is doing so many good things. So how could we help? Right? And there were so many little things we started then that have become big things always laugh You know with all the things we did like the Inferno section was actually a thing at ASU The football section there wasn't the official name. There was no official student section So there was the zone of zoo and so I was like look we're putting in a student-wide vote. We're gonna lock this in We're gonna build the student section We're gonna call it whatever they choose and so, you know now I see everyone wearing the shirt It's such a big thing We're winning Pac-12, you know section of the week nationally winning section of the week And so it's funny everyone will like bring that up and I'm like of all the things we did that year You know, that's what gets remembered by well, I mean, it's athletic Six of people's heads probably how the how the university feels a lot of the time so And then on a bore was just a remarkable opportunity to be able to sit on the governing board Not just for ASU, but all three of the in-state universities And just to play a role in kind of the strategic plans for all these institutions to be able to intimately understand How they work Those two years were so Helpful to me and I think it allows me now, you know in my current role To just understand the way the university works and how to operate through it So you mentioned you studied finance. Yeah, and you come from a family of engineers, right? I think you said your sister is an engineer. Yeah, she's yeah, she's great engineer So was uh, was that a shock to your and you're originally gonna be a mechanical engineer And then you switched at the last minute was I kind of like a shock to your parents or absolutely? Yeah, so I mean my parents are Lebanese We're born and raised there came here in their college years and so and my sister went here for biomedical engineering Um, and then went off to do her PhD at Northwestern Um, but yeah, my parents, you know, I think I think because when I was younger I was so inclined towards it that's you know, I was had a computer in my room I was always doing that stuff focused kid and Yeah, so I think they were surprised at first But they were they were very supportive of what I wanted to do. I think they knew at the end of the day I was it would probably come full circle So when I ended up getting my masters in engineering my dad, you know, he kind of gave me the nod like Almost like I told you so but I think he realized it was the right path for me, right You had to find it on your own right right and it gave me a chance to get engaged in those things I I feel like I do have a pretty good Breath of knowledge, you know having done finance and analytics and engineering and So I think that it really it really turned out to be the best best decision So as much as they were shocked, you know at the end of the day they support whatever we do They've been kind of the best thing in my life And speaking of your father, you said you told me earlier that your history face you goes a lot further back than your undergrad days Right, uh, your dad used to bring you to Founder's Day here, right? How did that kind of color your perception of the university? Yeah, so my dad my family ended up in Arizona because of Motorola back in the day They were the number one employer here Right, so they came from Texas to here and Motorola once a year would get a table at Founder's Day And my dad would you know get a plus one to that he'd always bring me when I was younger And so this was pretty much right when president crow arrived in the early 2000s And you know, I'd be I was younger I went either middle school high school and I'd go to this with my dad and President crow would get up there and talk and my dad had been going to these And I remember my dad would always like lean over to me. He's like watch this guy talk He is you know incredible. He has a vision. He has a straight and for me I just was like I've never had my dad tell me that about anyone before you know, we we didn't he doesn't watch sports You know it carried a lot of weight actors, you know, I mean coming from Lebanon. This was you know It wasn't really politicians. He was into it was president crow the guy has a strategy He executes he's doing great things for the state. And so Um, I think I just I always knew you know from from then on I was like it'd be great if I had a chance to work With him here and so it's it's really been crazy the fact that I've had the opportunity to be here and to Kind of build out these big initiatives for the institution director strategic projects It's a pretty lofty title for someone your age and how old are you again 26? So okay 26 Like so in a lot of ways you're really fresh out of school Like how is that colored your perception of all these things that you've accomplished and when I say accomplished I mean setting up a skunk works for president crow and being the student regent and the in the class or The student body president etc like how does that kind of? Put everything in perspective for you, right? I definitely think it's been beneficial I get when I took this job. I was just 23 at the time. So when I was asked to build this out I obviously had never had that experience before and it did It made me nervous, but I think that was healthy. I think if you're not nervous about something You're not you know passionate about it And then you know, I kind of realized that you're always just ready enough You know people never probably feel ready for the opportunity they're given But I think being young gave me a chance to bond with that team. I think that's was by design They wanted someone young that could bring these students together stay up all night That first year we we had lab space that was only available after 6 p.m So we get to get a 6 p.m. And sometimes stay up till 2 a.m. Most nights just building stuff working on stuff And it was one of the best years of my life You're now two years into this grand experiment of the luminosity lab Can you tell me a little bit about what's next for the project? You mentioned polytech Not talking about specific development projects coming out from luminosity where we're scaling out the program Because as much as yeah, we hand select students to we're engaged in this work We want that to engage as many students as we possibly can So currently what that looks like is so far. We've operated on tempi and we might have students from other campuses join us But we're going to launch campus specific luminosity labs starting with poly and then later downtown and west and each of those luminosities They'll still be interdisciplinary, but they'll probably play to the strengths of the campus And then while those are being launched we're going to launch luminosity out in dc the new asu dc building Oh fantastic And so we'll have a group of students out there and they're going to focus primarily on sustainability initiatives And then i'm sure they'll take on some public policy projects some international development projects And potentially some analytics projects later But we are going to have a great strategic partner out there who will help oversee it get those students connected To the sustainability world and they'll work on big-scale development projects to Make an impact there And then potentially you know launching luminosity labs through the plus alliance in the uk Focused on health care out at king's college. And so we actually right now we're developing the strategic plan of Where would we launch these labs and association to asu globally and build this brand around it? That luminosity means something in terms of how you operate the culture there Etc And then how do we get that to be self-sustaining? Model and so that's kind of the work we're doing right now. And I think that dc will come up, you know this summer The campuses will will come up here in the next year But I think it's really exciting because now that things are working we can just scale that out And grow in a way where it doesn't grow too big and and kind of maintains But I think once we get there it'll be great to see students potentially Let's say we have in the students in the uk Working with an advisor up there to be connected into that health care system And working with a team out at tempi or currently engaged in a development project around health care Having students be able to work remotely throughout the world on these big development projects Will be great because I think that's the way the world works right now Yeah, more so than ever. I mean when I was in industry very briefly It's you know, you're on calls with people in china or in india all the time you're going to work with remote Remotely with groups throughout the world. So I think the more our students get engaged in that now The better if someone wants to learn more about luminosity, uh, how can they find more information? We actually have a new website that's in development. They'll talk a lot about the projects And we'll start doing some social media. We'll start to have a presence here As we get bigger. So I'd say in the next few months keep your eyes keep your eyes peeled We do have job openings continuously open. So people can apply at all times. We're always looking at those resumes We might be at capacity, but I might see those resumes and then call in six months or at the end of the year And so apply reach out to me for now contact me Whether your faculty or students and we can find a way to to get them engaged Well, it sounds like asu and eventually the world is poised to become a much more creative Innovative and productive place. Uh, thanks so much for being with me today mark. Great. Thanks so much, pete If you're interested in more from mark novel watch his asu ked talk at research dot asu dot edu slash ked talks Subscribe to our podcast through your favorite podcast directory and find us on facebook and twitter at asu research