Let’s introduce to our audience David Brebner! Who are you? If you had to describe yourself in 1 sentence, what would you say?

Since I was five years old I have been fascinated by using computers to extend human capabilities. My company makes a platform that supports this goal and then we use this platform to implement solutions for companies around the world. (You could say I support human augmentation / cyborgification).

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What are the most 

1- Fascinating research

2- Impactful research

3- Fun and whimsical research

That you are leading these days?

Some fascinating research - We have been extending work which creates 3D scenes from photographs. The underlying representations we have created are a very sparse way of describing volumetric data. This uncovered a surprising new area of research. We are experimenting with the ability to compress time series 3D data. For example some kinds of x-ray crystallography or fMRI results can be reduced by six orders of magnitude. This might not sound fascinating - but it literally makes some problems you might want to apply to that data a million times easier.

Impactful research - No joke - concussive impacts are a huge issue in sports and in a surprisingly wide range of professions. We are working with a leading neuro-ophthalmologist to implement objective measurement of involuntary and sensitive biomarkers for brain health. We are using high speed imaging and AI to make these measurements. This can revolutionize a really challenging ‘black box’ for medical staff. It is very hard to manage what you cannot measure and these brain injuries are life altering if they are not managed.

Fun and whimsical research - We produced rhythm music games that our partners bundled with their tablets and touch screen computers shipping many millions of units. We were asked to move this into VR which we showcased at the Augmented Reality World expo a few years ago. The most amazing and unexpected result was we had to make all of our song levels twice as tough to beat. The average user’s reaction time went from 180ms moving their fingers a tiny amount on a tablet  -  to being over twice as fast, under 80ms despite having to move their whole arms and body playing a virtual drum kit. Absolutely incredible to see empirical evidence that people really do anticipate and move their bodies to the beat of music.

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Nowadays we hear about digital twins everywhere. Last year at PUZZLE X you demonstrated how to create digital twins of different objects with just a phone camera. What is new in the world of this technology?

Humans fundamentally experience the world through narrative (words/numbers/drawings/stories) or experientially (in three dimensions). Our software is called Umajin (you-imagine) and we make it easy to express traditional software with words, numbers and buttons. We also make it easy to include all kinds of 3D data. Being able to quickly put this in the context of your physical environment is very impactful. Some examples are showing IoT sensor data in context of where it’s captured, showing the location of assets you are tracking for logistics or process improvement, or visualizing changes to a factory by incorporating scale 3D CAD models so you can check things fit properly. 

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Nanoscanners for 3D inspection of embryos. What on Earth is it and what is the use for it?   

Microscopes were originally developed for us to look through to see a flat image of very small things, usually on the scale of microns. We are developing computational imaging which uses computers, cameras and careful control of light to be able to scan things in 3D which are nanoscale, so features that are smaller than a micron. Examples for industry might be looking for scratches in glass, checking the crystalline structure of heat tempered metal, or validating at below 50nm per pixel if a silicon chip-let has all the correct interconnects and expected surface properties before integration testing. With biological imaging there are many opportunities to provide the huge benefits of a modern lab but without the overhead. It’s just not financially viable to run a traditional IVF process with cows but we are generating data sets which would allow automated objective grading for the right bovine embryo to embed without having to remove it from the incubator. 

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AI…AI…AI…is AI doing anything useful in your field as a materials scientist?

Umajin has been using machine vision and AI techniques for over 25 years. We use it in many ways and in different areas of our stack. When it comes to our work on metrology and material measurement one of the areas which is really cool is the ability to deploy neural networks as giant, flexible lookup tables. We put in a huge amount of data and examples which encapsulate the mathematical convolution we want to be able to do in real time. Then rather than having to compute an approximation to a set of complex partial differential equations like Navier Stokes fluid motion, we just get our model to approximate an answer. This uses the latent space between all of the pre calculated or empirical measurements we fed into it originally. It’s really some kind of magic how you can create results in the case of empirical measurements for systems no one can even mathematically model yet.

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If you could design an experiment without any limitations of time or money… what would it be? 

Giving kids more creative software tools. It never ceases to amaze me what humans can do when we are free to play and are not constrained by preconceptions, assumptions, fears and responsibilities.

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If you could have a superhero power. What would it be?

It should probably be something mental, but flying/levitating seems like it would be absolutely amazing and de-stressing.

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Mystery dinner party…Dead or Alive, who would be 3 guests you would invite to your dinner party?

Carl Sagan
Grace Hopper
Doug Engelbart

If you could leave a question for the next guest, what would that be? 

What is some recent research in another field which really surprised you? 

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Question from our previous guest: You’re an orchestra director, stranded in a remote place in the world (anywhere from the North Pole or the most remote part of Congo jungle). What would you play and what would you use as instruments?

Classical, Beethoven symphony #5.  For sure you would need strings and brass in there.