 Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are on the ground in San Ramon, California at the GE Software Center, and we are standing right in the middle of a room full of really cool gadgets. I'm sure you wish you were here, but you're not. I am, and we're really excited to be joined by our next guest, So Kim, or So Young Kim, Lead Scientist GE Global Research. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to the center. Yeah, so where are we? What is this room? We're surrounded by really cool screens and drones and all kind of interesting stuff. So what's happening right here? It's a prototyping lab. So we do a lot of proof of concept and prototype, build the next generation concept to visualize how the new advanced technologies can be applicable in the industrial domain. So our lab is a research lab. There's a couple of research lab embedded with the software team here, and we're one of them. And obviously we're focusing on more on the user experience, human system interactions, mobile collaboration side of it. So this is all the outcomes of those work. So people talk about internet of things, industrial internet all the time, but often they forget that people are things too. And human factors and human interaction is a huge science that's been around for a long time. Do you use lights or sounds or wheels or dials or switches? And I don't think a lot of people think it through, and you guys are thinking it through not only for what it was, but really the next generation of internet of things. Yes. Mostly we're focusing on, so we know that these, a lot of technologies are coming into this consumer world. It's so rapid, there's keep changing. And then we see the value in it. That's why the iPhone was so huge here because it changes the way we work, way we manage our personal life. So what we wanna do here is actually bring that the up and coming technology and how we can reshape the work of industrial domain using coming up big data, a lot of advanced analytics and other technologies because everything is gonna change the way we work in everywhere, I think. So this lab is really to understand and given those technologies are coming, how we can present that, because humans are always there, whether he's the one actually pushing the button or whether he's going to be on the back of a chair just getting the data, there is always human in the loop and how we can actually make humans not to be the weak point in the link but the strong point in the link. Right, and this is fundamental research here, right? That drives into all of GE's business units, whether it's aviation or power or rail or medical, everything, you guys are doing real fundamental research. Yes, we do a lot of research across business. So there is aviation work, this one was a power and water. I think the research actually related to this poster boat was with oil and gas. So we cross business and then the benefit of it is, for example, we learn something new by building a virtual MRI control concept and then there was a lot of gesture and voice, multi-motor interaction, then we bring the lessons learned or even the technology that we developed in terms of the integration of technology, not necessarily the technology itself, then we'll apply it to another business with a similar problem set but different context. And you got a great sign up on the wall here, the M5 user experience. I wonder if you could talk about it and multi-user, multi-location, multi-device, multi-modal, multi-dimensional. And I think you said that's kind of a fundamental design criteria that you use in a lot of these technologies. So the first couple of years when we start this lab, we noticed that actually the problem space, how to say the applications are diverse obviously across healthcare down to like aviation. But then we learned that the problem that they're challenging right now is actually similar. They want multiple peoples to use or work on the same problem at the same time. And then they're actually just distributed across multiple locations. And also you can imagine that you have your cell phone and a laptop and then somebody else will be using it in the big wall. So which means multiple devices are connecting to solve the same problem. And then we learned that also working on a laptop mouse and keyboard versus you don't want a mouse and keyboard for this big guy, right? So there is different way of interacting with the different applications that brings up multi-modal. And then obviously we're dealing with not just one-dimensional data, right? It could be multi-dimensional, it could be just two, three and up. And then we wanted to accommodate those different aspects into this research architecture called M5. Talk about the secret sauce of products like Apple in terms of an interface where kids just get it, right? And it's such a different world. They're not afraid to break anything, they just get it. They're not all growing up, they're entering the workforce or getting out of college. How do you incorporate where people just kind of get it versus really kind of having to learn and go through the manual, especially in something like aviation where even the 30-year pilot is still going through his checklist before he takes off. What's kind of the magic of people just getting it? Well, I think the simplicity of it and then the natural way of interacting with it. So for example, the checklist, it was really hard for us to approach it differently. But if you're looking at the up and coming sort of generations of pilots, they're used to it. They prefer, they already experienced it. It's not like, okay, this is what you need to do and learn it. But I think that the simplicity of the consumer electronics, I think that's going to be in the end the, how to say, requirements for industrial domain as well. I think it's gonna come. So what we're doing here is really leverage that early on and actually, because you cannot simply apply what Apple does in what the guys who's operating in a billion dollar gas turbine, right? There is a lot of research needs to be done. There is a lot of safety critical aspect, time critical aspect, but using simple and natural interactions and the way of interacting with the system and then the way the system interacts with you, I think that's the something we really want to study and then actually get ready for it. Okay, and then as you mentioned, what also is really cool is the way that the different systems interact. So we talked a little bit before we came on air about this next gen flight deck. I wonder if you can dig into that a little bit and how that's just a starting point really into an integrated system that has a lot of touch points. Yes, so that project is from our side, it was huge on the way to integrating multiple interaction technologies. So we've been working on integrating touch, gesture, fine air gesture and the voice and also like gaze tracking, head tracking, all those parts. So we're really looking into say, okay, right now the informations are distributed. They're just not in a good way. So they're like just separated everywhere and the pilot is the one has to pull out the information and actually work on it, which requires a lot of interactions, unnecessary interaction with the system. That's the first problem. Second problem is interaction itself is not really accommodated naturally, but if you're looking into the future, we're looking into not even the current operation being more efficient. We're looking into like single pilot operation, like going into like almond pilot operation. So then there is a lot of things that we need to really consider where we're getting into this area. So that's why I think the multimodal interaction, naturally interacting with the system and then the key is actually system, naturally responding back to you as well. So that's the thing that we're trying to bring into the cockpit. Right, but then you said it even goes from beyond the cockpit into flight operations for say an individual air carrier and then back to flight control with the FAA and Lord knows how many other systems that those efficiencies could potentially feed. Yes, I think that's where kind of big data comes in where you can have, you know, flight deck operation, you can optimize flight deck operation and segregation on its own, but you know, there is certain extent you can't, you know, you can scalable that much. But if you're thinking about more efficient airline airspace operation that includes airliners as well as air traffic management and then that kind of connects all together, that needs connectivity, that needs big data that's connected with each entity and then the way they can really smoothly collaborate including the basically system intelligence, if you will. Okay, then there's this other funny concept you talked about before we came on here which is digital twins, what is a digital twin? Is that like the mini-me that gets all the work done or why I don't have to do work or what doesn't my, that's the whole concept? My difficult email? What is a digital twin? So digital twin is a digital twin of a physical system. So I think we talked about pie and water applications. So say you have a power plant, you have a gas turbine, steam turbine as a physical system but they wear and tear as they are being used. So the optimized performance of that power plant is going to be different as they're getting older. Digital twin is that you are gonna create a model, digital model of this physical system and then this model is obviously based on physics, physics-based and also database which means the data that comes out of, from physical system will put into this digital model that it reflects and finds all the time what will be my optimized performance range and then informs to the operators or the business guys to understand like how best I can operate my plant. So that's digital twin and from our side, I think there is a whole bunch of GRC global research team and the software guys team actually working on it. From our side is we've been calling digital worker and then twin of a digital worker. So we will consider power plant operator for this example as a digital worker and we want to create a twin version of him. So digital version of him. So that digital version can actually reflect my state as well as my knowledge. So you can capture my expert knowledge. So it's not only me getting on support from the digital twin of the worker. It will be the twin actually getting lessons learned from me how based on my experience and how I'm working with. And then actually that's helping me as an expert to make the right decisions in very time critical situation but also that model can actually make becoming a novice operator to become expert more faster, more efficiently and things like that. So that's another thing together. A lot of project. There's a lot of stuff going on here. Last time we hear a year goes 500 people I think when we interviewed Bill and I think I heard just like over 1200 people here. So you guys are hiring like crazy and it's not an easy place to get people. So let's shift gears and talk about you a little bit in your journey. So you got your PhD at Georgia Tech. How did you end up here at GE and San Ramon doing the cool stuff you're working on? So I was actually hired as a human factors researcher in upstate New York. And then they, before they established the center. So after probably a month later they announced the center and then I got to sort of move to this area. So that's how I came to this place. All right. And talk about being an aerospace engineer and a woman in such a really technical field and I'm sure there's not a ton of women in aerospace. Maybe I'm wrong, please correct me if I am. How was that experience? Again, what advice would you give for young girls, women, families who want to get into tech but they've heard, oh, it's really hard. There's no women, the treatment is crap. What would you say? Cause you're here, you're successful. We're in a room full of really great stuff you're working on really advanced things. What tip would you give to your niece? I would definitely ask them that what is it that makes you so passionate about something? Aviation was always my passion. So it didn't really matter whether it's going to be full of guys. It didn't really click me until I actually got into it. But I think that's the key thing too. Every, I think everywhere you go, whether you're in the woman dominant area or guy dominant area, I think it's the difficulty is, I would say, I want to say about the same because you have a different types of difficulties. But if you have a passion for something and it's if this is science and technology, then yeah, you go for it. And I think it's going to be so much rewarding maybe even compared to woman dominant world. I think yeah. Good tip, follow your passion. Pretty straightforward. Yes, it's easy. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes with us. We'll let you get back to changing the world. I'm Jeff Frick here with Su Yong. We're at the GE Research Facility in San Ramon, California. You're watching theCUBE. Catch you next time.