Sugar from plants may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you start thinking about the latest and most promising drugs. But without a special kind of sugar, a new class of revolutionary medicines called biologics targeting everything from diabetes and cancer to immune disorders, such as arthritis, would be extremely hard to make.

Unlike Aspirin or Tylenol, biologics – they are also sometimes called biopharmaceuticals – are the product of live organisms. They are made by genetically modified bacteria or special cell cultures grown in tanks called bioreactors. “The bacteria and cell cultures are really the drug factories,” says Lotta Ljungqvist, head of R&D for bioprocess at GE Healthcare Life Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden. “Protein production is a natural capability of these organisms that can be used to make very powerful drugs. But the drugs have to be extremely pure to avoid unwanted side effects.”

Above: GE’s facility in Uppsala is one of the world’s biggest production facilities for manufacturing of chromatography media. Top Image: Pharma companies use cell cultures for production of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines. In this picture, cells from an African green monkey have attached to small beads. Image credits: GE Healthcare Life Sciences

Scientists tweak the DNA of the bacteria and cells to make molecules like insulin, monoclonal antibodies and even vaccines. Once inside a patient, proteins such as monoclonal antibodies can, for example, attach themselves to cancer cells and mark them like a target. This allows the body’s immune system to see the marked cells and kill them. “We can use biologics to attack new diseases and they don’t have as many side effects as some of the old medicines may have,” Ljungqvist says. “But the cell and microorganism factories produce all kinds of things. We need very sophisticated tools to pick the right proteins from the soup to make sure that the drugs work the way they should.”

The Uppsala factory, which GE acquired with Amersham in 2004, has been developing chromatography resins for decades and several Nobel laureates are connected to the technology.

Pharmaceutical companies grow the “production organisms” – often a strain of E. coli bacteria or special ovary cells from Chinese hamsters – in bioreactors kept at cozy 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit). They also feed them a steady diet of nutrients. “Just like humans, they need to eat, drink, breath and get rid of waste,” Ljungqvist says.

Scientists alter the DNA of bacteria like E.coli to produce proteins for biologics. Image credit: Getty

When the cultures have been growing in the bioreactor tank for a defined time – this can last from one day to several weeks – workers will load the resulting soup which contains a mix of product and contaminants onto a special cylinder, or column, filled with the chromatography resin. Some of these cylinders weigh as much as 11 tons and can purify hundreds of kilos of protein at a time. The resins then stick to the right proteins by exploiting differences in electric charge, size and affinity to water and oil. The rest pass through. Ljungqvist says that GE engineers have perfected some 300 protein-fishing particle combinations to date.

A porous resin particle used to purify vaccines. See proteins pictured in yellow, green and blue captured inside. Image Credit: GE Healthcare Life Sciences

Nigel Darby, head of GE’s bioprocess business, says that biopharmaceuticals is a “healthy segment” estimated to grow with approximately 8 percent per year until 2020. Regulators have approved some 200 biologics, including blockbusters such as Herceptin, Remicade, Humira and Avastin. “Seven of the top 10 drugs now come from the group, where a decade ago there was just one bestseller,” Darby says.

A bioreactor tank used in the production of biopharmaceuticals. Image credit GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

When the production phase is over, the resulting soup with product and contaminants is removed from the bioreactor and loaded onto a special cylinder, or column (see above in upper left corner) for purification. Some columns weigh as much as 11 tons. Image credit GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

Darby says that GE’s business is growing with the market. For example, most of the worlds synthetic insulin is purified on GE resins.

The company is now planning to use software and GE’s Predix cloud platform to gather and analyze data from the biomanufacturing processes to optimize production and increase productivity. The technology continues to evolve to make manufacturing ever more efficient, particularly when making small batches of personalized medicines. “That’s the future of medicine,” Darby says. “You can make medicine that targets just one individual or a very small patient group. It’s very different from medicines for the masses. This is a huge opportunity for a business like ours, but it requires significant changes in the approach to manufacturing.”

Lotta Ljungvist Image Credit: GE Healthcare Life Sciences

When Ernest O. Lawrence invented the cyclotron in 1932, the American physicist used his innovative particle accelerator to probe the structure of the atom. The cyclotron earned Lawrence the Nobel Prize and scientists today still use its offspring to get to the bottom of matter and even the universe itself. But the machines are also helping doctors crack the riddles of cancer and diagnose disease.

“They help radiologists see the metabolic processes inside cells,” says Erik Stromqvist, general manager for cyclotrons at GE Healthcare’s plant in Uppsala, Sweden. “This is extremely important because you can tell whether the cancer is alive and whether it’s responding to treatment.”

Stromqvist’s business is one of the world’s largest producers of cyclotrons for the medical industry. The machines, which are as large as two telephone booths and weigh as much as 20 tons, work the same way as Lawrence’s machine.

Top image: A scaled-down version of a GE cyclotron. The copper electromagnets in the center accelerate hydrogen to 20 percent of the speed of light. Above: This GE cyclotron uses cooper coils to heat up hydrogen atoms to 5,000 degrees Celsius, almost as hot as the surface of the Sun. Image credit GE Healthcare.

They use giant electromagnets made from tightly wound copper coils and lots of power – some 65 kilowatts – to heat up hydrogen to 5,000 degrees Celsius – almost as hot as the surface of the sun – extract negatively charged hydrogen ions and accelerate them towards the speed of light.

The ions are extracted in the center of the machine and the magnet sends them flying along a spiral trajectory. Along the way, they keep accelerating until they reach nearly 20 percent of the speed of light at the outer perimeter of the coil. There they slam into an oxygen atom; knock out one of the neutrons the same way a boxer can lose a tooth after a right hook, and turn the oxygen into a radioactive isotope called fluorine-18.

Technicians then use another special GE device called FASTlab to bound the isotope, which has a half-life of less than two hours, to carrier molecules such as glucose to form fluorine-18 labelled glucose. Doctors then inject this tracer into patients and observe where it travels and whether there’s cancer inside the body.

GE’s FASTlab system binds the fluorine-18 isotope, which has a half-life of less than two hours, to carrier molecules such as glucose to form fluorine-18 labelled glucose. Image credit: GE Healthcare

They can do this because active cancer needs a lot of energy to grow and consume glucose, which is a form of sugar. “The isotope is like the world’s smallest cellphone,” Stromqvist says. “The glucose carries it to energy-hungry regions like tumors and the isotopes light them up like radio beacons.”

After the procedure, all of the isotope will quickly decay and will be no longer present in the body because of its short half-life.

This type of imaging is called positron emission tomography, or PET, because the fluorine-18 isotope produces tiny particles called positrons as it decays.

The positron “cell phones” generate their signal because of another bit of space science called electron-positron annihilation. The positron is the electron’s antiparticle and when it collides with an electron in the body, the pair annihilates and creates a pair of photons. Doctors use PET scanners to track these photons and see where the glucose or other carrier molecule traveled in the body.

Unlike “anatomic imaging” using X-rays, for example, to display the actual organs, PET helps doctors visualize what’s happening inside cells, guiding them when they are diagnosing cancer, neurological disease and other serious ailments, and even to determine whether a treatment is working. This is important for the advance of precision, or personalized medicine. “PET can help us figure out whether a cancer is treatable and whether it’s replicating,” Stromqvist says. “A tumor that’s not growing will not light up because it’s not eating as much glucose anymore.”

Why aren’t PET scanners everywhere? There are still many challenges that Stromqvist’s business is working to overcome. Since the isotopes are mildly radioactive, cyclotrons must be housed in special structures and behind 2-meter-thick walls. “Combine this with the fact that the isotope tracer has a half life of less than two hours and you have a fairly limited [geographical] area that you can serve,” Stromqvist says.

However, GE recently released a new cyclotron model the size of a large washing machine called GENtrace. This compact cyclotron – it weighs “just” 6 tons – has all the shielding built inside and allows hospitals and healthcare systems to install them pretty much anywhere. “This self-shielding cyclotron is the future of PET scanning,” Stromqvist says. “You don’t need to build a bunker around it anymore. It will simplify things.”

The GE plant in Uppsala ships between 20 and 30 per year. With the new machine ready, workers there are about to get busy.

How collaborative robotics is accelerating the next industrial revolution.

When you hear about innovative technological advances that are reshaping industries, chances are you aren’t thinking about a factory floor. Not much has changed there since the first industrial robots were deployed in the 1960s — until now.

Collaborative robots, a new category of automation, are changing the way manufacturers optimize operations and drive innovation in new ways.  As they increasingly work together with humans these sophisticated robots will help redefine the nature of work — boosting productivity, improving workplace safety and creating a more intelligent working environment with the help of Big Data analytics.

Foundational Shifts Create New Opportunity

Increasingly, traditional low-wage markets are losing their competitive edge, as wages rise and consumers place higher emphasis on working conditions and the environmental impact of production.  At the same time, manufacturers face labor shortages as the workforce ages and younger generations shun low-skill manufacturing jobs. In fact, Deloitte recently forecast that in five years, there will be 2 million unfilled factory jobs.

Compounding the complexity is the way in which consumer expectations are changing. Today, buyers  want personalized items, and not just when it comes to luxury purchases. From smart devices to the cases that protect them, consumers expect customization and personalization — requiring manufacturers to shift from high-volume, low-mix processes to low-volume, high-mix models.

To meet these challenges — and recognizing that a strong national economy is a vibrant manufacturing sector — countries around the world are jockeying for the lead position. China recently kicked off Made in China 2025, a national program to upgrade its manufacturing sector and spur innovation with an investment of about $1.3 billion. The German Industrie 4.0 initiative resulted in nearly $1.5 trillion invested in manufacturing innovation. The U.S. Congress has authorized a $1 billion investment to accelerate advanced manufacturing technologies.

Collaborative robots can play a key role in the new model for manufacturing, where man and machine work side-by-side. Boston Consulting Group  has projected that annual sales of collaborative robots could top 700,000 by 2025, up from In 225,000 in 2014.

Here’s how robots are transforming industry:

1. Robots do the tasks, humans do the thinking: Robots are designed for execution and repetition. No matter how sophisticated robots get, there will always be tasks that require cognition and complex thinking that are better suited to humans. Robots will fill the low-skill job void and allow humans to drive innovation.

2. Labor will have a lower impact on price: Historically, labor costs and regulations have played a major role in price setting. However, collaborative robots deemphasize labor concerns, allowing businesses to be located near customers, natural resources or critical infrastructure that can lower costs and help boost business revenue.

3. Man and machine will safely co-exist: Contrary to a Hollywood depiction of robots usurping people, collaborative robots can actually sense humans and stop moving when someone gets too close, eliminating prior safety concerns. Efficiency without danger allows companies to focus on big picture initiatives like inventing new products, improving quality and perfecting design-to-delivery cycles.

When placed side-by-side in the work stream, robots and humans will finally be able to work together on problem-solving, process improvement and much more. That’s where the next Industrial Revolution will take place, and manufacturers need to need to move now or risk being left behind.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of Rethink Robotics)

Jim Lawton is the Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Rethink Robotics.

Last June at the Paris Airshow, Boeing test pilots Randy Neville and Van Chaney performed a near-vertical takeoff with the Vietnam Airlines’ brand new extended version of the Dreamliner passenger jet powered by a pair of GEnx engines. It turns out that sales of engines are climbing nearly as fast.

GE said it shipped GEnx No. 1,000 this Tuesday, just five years after the first production engine left its factory. Lined up end to end, they could cover the length of 56 football fields. “The GEnx was the fastest selling engine in GE’s history, and now it’s the fastest production ramp up of a GE wide-body engine program,” says Tom Levin, general manager of the GEnx and CF6 engine product lines at GE Aviation.

Top and below: The 1,000th GEnx engine at GE’s jet engine test facility in Peebles, OH.

There are two flavors of the GEnx engine. The GEnx-1B, which is powering many planes in the Dreamliner fleet, and the GEnx-2B, which was developed for Boeing’s 747-8 aircraft. To date, more than 40 airlines and aircraft operators have ordered the engines for their planes, with more orders rolling in. The total book order value is more than $35 billion (list price).

The GEnx is up to 15 percent more efficient than comparable GE engines. It’s also quieter and generates fewer carbon dioxide emissions. In 2011, a GEnx-1B-powered Dreamliner flew halfway around the world on a tank of gas and finished the job on the next tank. The journey set a weight-class distance record for the 10,337-nautical mile first leg and a record for quickest around-the-world flight, an astonishing 42 hours and 27 minutes. “The GEnx engine has proven itself with outstanding performance and reliability,” Levin says.

From the outside, the engine displays soft curves and pretty, scalloped chevrons for noise reduction. But open it up and you are in a Tinkertoy fantasy land where some 75,000 parts must come precisely together to make the final product.

The supplier network for the parts is nearly as complex as the engine design. They enter assembly at 21 GE sites around the U.S. Six program partners are also involved in providing hardware for the GEnx, including IHI Corporation of Japan, GKN Aerospace of England, MTU of Germany, Techspace Aero (Safran) of Belgium, Snecma (Safran) of France and Hanwha Techwin Inc. of Korea. It all comes together at GE Aviation’s plant in Durham, NC and final testing and assembly at Peebles, Ohio. Take a look.

There are places in the world that make us feel small and force us to marvel at the skills and ambitions of their architects and engineers. They include cathedrals in Europe, NASA’s Cape Canaveral rocket launch pad or the Panama Canal. GE’s gas turbine plant in Greenville, S.C., may not be on everyone’s list. But it comes close.

The plant’s several manufacturing halls – equivalent in size to nearly 21 football fields – strike most first-time visitors as the playroom of a giant toddler. Massive yellow gantry cranes lift multi-ton rotors and stators gleaming like alien silver sunflowers. They flip them around their axis, and stack them on shafts the diameter and length of tree trunks.

This image shows a series compressor rotors on the left and three turbine rotors on the right.

The place smells of high-grade steel and pulses with an industrial symphony of electrical motors cutting in and out. Computer-guided milling machines larger than delivery trucks use jagged cutting heads drenched in white cooling liquid to shape huge turbine wheels.

The plant, which opened in 1968, even has its own railroad spur and also America’s largest train turntable to move the finished turbines around.

There’s also a natural gas plant that supplies a unique test stand designed to push turbines to the limit and withstand hot wind jetting out of them at 1,100 mph – 10 times faster than a Category 3 hurricane.

The place also has a 70,000-square-foot lab replete with 3D printers and powerful lasers. Engineers use them to develop and test parts for next-generation machines like the air-cooled Harriet 9HA turbine – the world’s largest and most efficient gas turbine. Although the facility is strictly off limits to outsiders, GE Reports recently got a tour. Take a look.

A gas turbine on the half-shell with three turbine rotors near the front and compressor rotors in the back.

Two gas turbine shafts suspended in the air with stacked compressor and turbine rotors.

Building gas turbines involves a touch of rocket science and even their production resembles a space factory. Here three GE gas turbines as getting ready for shipping.

Finished gas turbines are getting ready for shipping.

A gas turbine of the half-shell. This image shows silver compressor blades in the front and turbines blades in the back.

The compressor section and inlet casing.

A worker is inspecting the top shell of a gas turbine.

A series of compressor blades. They are highly polished and their blue color is a light reflection.

The inside of the compressor with stationary compressor vanes.

A gas turbine casing.

These “dovetail joints” hold blades in place.

A gas turbine stator.

Compressor blades.

A detail of cooling holes in turbine blades.

These fuel lines feed one of the test turbine combustors at the testing facility.

A torque converter at the testing facility.

Exhaust vents at the testing facility. The holes are the size of wine barrels and they must withstand multiples of hurricane-force winds.

GE’s latest 9HA air cooled turbine is powering through testing. Engineers and using thousands of sensors to gather data and feet to industrial software for analysis.

Every two seconds, a jet engine with GE technology inside departs from an airport somewhere in the world. But earlier this month, the machines touched down on a runway more used to seeing models and brands take off. It ran straight down Louis Vuitton’s fashion show in Paris.

Louis Vuitton’s creative director, the French designer  Nicolas Ghesquière, used fabrics bearing images of jet engines made by GE and its joint-venture partners for his women’s ready-to-wear collection titled “Strange Days.” Engines like the best-selling GEnx, which is powering many planes in the Dreamliner fleet, the CF34, and the GP7200 – built by the Engine Alliance for the A380 double decker – landed on pants, jumpsuits and leather jackets. Ghesquière also wove the shapes of their sinuous composite fan blades and metal exhaust nozzles into handbags and accessories.

What’s behind the idea? Many GE jet engines are connected to the Industrial Internet, and Ghesquière said he was seeking to express an experience illuminating the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. “We’re living in this digital world, but at the same time we have a real life,” he said.

Like Ghesquière’s fashion, the show was an immersive, sensual experience. The fashion house held it inside a black box filled with futuristic digital beats. The atmosphere was pierced by fast traveling lights as the models made their way down the angular runway. Take a look and see also video.

On the cutting edge of fashion and engineering. Image credit: Louis Vuitton

Above and below: The GEnx-1B engine. Image credit: GE/Adam Senatori

Above: A CF34 engine developed by GE. Image credit: GE Aviation

Each one weighs nearly 400 tons, as much as two really big blue whales. Each one will cover thousands of miles by sea and land from the place of their birth in Belfort, France, to the farming town of Bhikki in Pakistan’s Punjab province. They are still fairly unknown, but once they reach their destination, they will affect millions of lives.

The giants that will be making their way to Asia are a pair of GE’s air-cooled 9HA gas turbines, the largest and most efficient gas turbines on the planet today. They’re capable of delivering greater than 61 percent efficiency – once the power-generation equivalent of running a four-minute mile – when used in a combined cycle configuration with steam turbines. They will become the beating heart of the Bhikki Combined Cycle Power electricity generation plant that’s being built by China’s Harbin Electric International for Punjab government’s Quaid-e-Azam Thermal Power Ltd. utility.

Top: Workers are assembling the first 9HA turbine at the GE plant in Belfort, France. Above: The first 9HA gas turbine started powering through tests last year in Greenville, S.C. Images credit: GE Power & Water

The new power plant will be a key weapon in Pakistan’s arsenal to roll back crippling electricity shortages that have plagued the country for years. “After a while you just have to find ways to work around the load-shedding,” says Muniza Junaid, a biosciences research associate who works at a leading Pakistani university. “It’s ironic. On the one hand, I work in one of the most advanced laboratories in the country, but on the other I can’t even heat up my dinner or run my washing machine when I want to.”

“Load-shedding” is the term locals commonly use to refer to electricity shortages. For many Pakistanis it’s a critical piece of information that determines how they plan their days, just like the weather forecast in the U.S. or Europe. Load-shedding gets ubiquitous in the sweltering summer heat, when power shortages often exceed 12 hours a day. “I don’t think you can understand what that’s like unless you’ve experienced it for yourself,” Muniza says.

The first 9HA turbine arrived in Greenville, S.C., for testing in 2014. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Here’s what it looks like in numbers: Pakistan’s peak demand and supply gap hovers around 5 gigawatts, enough power to serve some 30 million local homes. The World Bank reported in its 2013 Enterprise Survey that more than 45 percent of local businesses identified electricity shortages as the main obstacle to doing business. The estimated value lost due to power outages tops 22 percent of annual sales.

No wonder fixing the power shortage is one of the top government priorities and a key to boosting the economy and improving the quality of life. The Bhikki plant will be the first power installation to use the turbines in the Middle East, and one of Pakistan’s most efficient. “Everything about this project is going to be larger than life – the world’s largest gas turbine, powering one of the region’s most efficient power plants, generating electricity for millions of households, as well as industry,” says Sardar Haider Khan, the local lead for GE Power & Water’s power generation products business.

A 9HA.01 gas turbine with its rotor on “half-shell” in Belfort, France. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The 9HA is the result of a $2 billion investment by Power & Water. It uses technology originally developed for supersonic jet engines. GE refers to this practice of sharing knowledge among different businesses the GE Store.

The turbine can reach full load in a mere 10 minutes – just a little longer than a plane getting ready to take off – and also offers the flexibility to run on a range of gas and liquid fuels. This is critical for fuel-importing countries such as Pakistan.

The two units at Bhikki will be operated on imported “re-gasified” liquefied natural gas (RLNG), but will be able to use substitute fuels if price or availability of RLNG starts to fluctuate.

Together, they will add more than 1.1 GW to the national grid by 2017 – the equivalent power needed to supply more than six million Pakistani homes. And that is a feat worthy of giants.

Ever since people started building things, many of us have burned with an even greater desire to take them apart.

But few can top photographer Todd McLellan and Ryan D’Agostino, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. They get to the bottom of big and complicated things on a monthly basis.

Like a skilled pathologist, McLellan has spent hundreds of hours dismantling, describing, neatly organizing and photographing the guts of a chainsaw, the “Iron Mike” pitching machine and, most recently, a GE electrocardiograph, among a number of other things. D’Agostino publishes the results in his magazine in a regular monthly feature called Things Come Apart. “Understanding how things work is empowering,” D’Agostino says. “That’s what the magazine has been about since it launched in 1902. It never gets old.”

D’Agostino, who took over the magazine last year, and his editorial team first took apart a refrigerator. “But we soon noticed that Todd had been already doing the same thing for a while,” he says.

In 2013, McLellan published a whole book featuring 50 stylized teardowns ranging from iPad to grand piano. “He was making a bit of a career with it,” D’Agostino says.

In mid-2014, D’Agostino reached out to McLellan and they’ve been at it ever since.

Top image: GE’s Mac 2000, Courtesy of Todd McLellan Above: GE’s MAC 2000 EKG machine. Image credit: GE Healthcare

McLellan’s latest project was GE’s MAC 2000 EKG machine. It took him 5 hours and 21 minutes to dismantle it and you can see a video of the process here. “EKG is something people encounter in their lives, they’ve seen it in the doctor’s office, they are gratified it’s there, but most of them have no idea what’s going on inside,” D’Agostino says.

The heart is a muscle and like all muscles it generates electricity. The EKG machine monitors the heart’s electrical activity and help doctors determine whether it is beating strong or whether things are out of order. “One thing that surprised me was the instrumentation amplifier, which boosts the signals from millivolts to volts,” D’Agostino says.

Next on Popular Mechanics’ list is the payphone. Does D’Agostino ever worry about putting things back again? “Reassembling these items isn’t feasible,” he says. “They would never be the same. But we do recycle the parts!”

Here’s the actual spread from the magazine. Images courtesy of Popular Mechanics and Todd McLellan.

In October, McLellan took apart the “Iron Mike” pitching machine. Images courtesy of Popular Mechanic and Todd McLellan

The aviation industry must work together to achieve sustainable growth, sharing the burden as well as the benefits.

With the Millennium Development Goals having now given way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the narrative for development shifting further towards a range of sustainability issues, it is worth taking stock on how the aviation industry is contributing to achieving them. SDG 8: ‘decent work and economic growth’ and SDG 9: ‘industry, innovation and infrastructure’ are natural bedfellows of our global industry which connects the world, supports 58 million jobs and $2.4 trillion in GDP, transports half of all tourists and a third of world trade by value. But it is our role in meeting the challenge of SDG 13: ‘climate action’ that is playing an increasingly central part of aviation’s future strategy.

The social and economic benefits of air transport are clear. It connects the world like no other mode of transport, supporting businesses and families across the globe. However, these benefits come with an environmental cost. Liquid fuels are the only source of power capable of generating enough thrust to lift an aircraft off the ground. Nonetheless, the industry knows it has a responsibility to address the issue of CO2 emissions and it is a responsibility that we are meeting head-on.

So what can a vast global industry like aviation do to mitigate its impact on the environment and ensure that we play our part in SDG 13? The most important thing is to work together. In a hugely competitive industry like ours, it is vital that we have shared goals, allowing all sectors of the industry, be they airlines, airports, manufacturers or air navigation service providers, to take on their share of the burden, but also benefit from the opportunities.

At the centre of this collaborative effort on climate are our three global goals, which were agreed in 2008 and which represent one of the first global sets of climate aspirations of any industry in the world. The goals are:

• To achieve a 1.5 percent average annual fuel efficiency improvement from 2009 to 2020 (a goal which is already being more than met);
• Stabilize net CO2 emissions at 2020 levels, with carbon-neutral growth thereafter;
• Reduce aviation’s net CO2 emissions by 50 percent, using 2005 as the benchmark.

These goals will be achieved through a four pillar strategy, based around: new technology (including the development and commercialization of sustainable alternative fuels), more efficient operations, improved infrastructure and, finally, a global market-based measure (MBM) for aviation emissions.

The first three of the pillars have been continually reinforced over the years, with new, more fuel efficient aircraft and engines flying on more efficient routes, supported by better infrastructure. These pillars will carry on being developed, with sustainable alternative fuels coming more to the fore, an increased uptake of alternative energy at airports, and navigation systems that allow aircraft to fly the optimal route and avoid fuel waste. For a flavor of the many individual climate actions taking place within aviation, the http://www.enviro.aero website has examples of what all sectors of the industry are doing all over the globe.

Now, all eyes are on political developments at the UN specialized aviation agency, ICAO, where an historic deal on the global MBM is due to be agreed next year. Industry members have been fully engaged and supportive of this process, but we now need governments to play their part and finalize a fit-for-purpose, workable MBM at the ICAO Assembly a year from now.

If we can keep working towards these goals through the four pillar strategy, with the support of governments and other institutions, aviation will be fully able to both make its contribution to achieving SDG 13. But we will achieve it whilst continuing to play our vital role in global sustainable development.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This piece first appeared in the WEF Agenda blog.

Michael Gill is Executive Director of the Air Transport Action Group.

GE signed four deals with Indonesia for a variety of critical energy and transport projects, the company said today. GE said the estimated combined value of the transactions exceeded $1 billion.

Three of the agreements will significantly boost power-generation capacity in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The fourth accord provides maintenance for locomotives.

One of the energy projects includes a fleet of truck-mounted “mobile power plants” capable of generating 500 megawatts of fast power, the equivalent needed to supply about 4 million Indonesian homes. GE also signed an agreement to provide maintenance for 50 diesel-electric locomotives in Indonesia’s rail fleet.

Top and above: GE’s aeroderivative turbines are based on the company’s jet engine technology like the CF6 engine, which powers many Boeing 747 planes, including Air Force One. But GE Aviation had gotten its start because of GE Power & Water turbine insights. Such knowledge transfer is the idea behind the “GE Store.” Image credit: GE Aviation

GE said the deals involving the power generation and transportation businesses were a key example of the “GE Store,” using its deep portfolio to help a country solve infrastructure needs spanning multiple industries.

The transactions come on the eve Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. The visit is part of an effort to foster closer commercial ties between the two countries.

The Indonesian president is making his first U.S. visit since assuming office a year ago. He also plans to meet with Silicon Valley business executives.

Widodo is seeking to accelerate economic growth in the world’s fourth most populous nation by investing in infrastructure and boosting trade. The President’s goals include increasing power generation capacity by 35 gigawatts (GW) by 2019.

With more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia requires smaller and more localized power generation. Every 1 percent rise in economic output in Indonesia increases energy demand by 1.8 percent— a factor that Widodo and his predecessors in Jakarta have struggled to overcome in recent years. As a result, locals businesses have had to grapple with a growing number of blackouts.

The 35-GW increase that Widodo is seeking represents a massive 70 percent increase to Indonesia’s existing 50-GW power capacity.

GE technology already generates more than 20 percent of Indonesia’s electricity, with more than 8GW of the country’s electricity produced by GE’s gas turbines. The three energy deals that GE signed today will eventually boost capacity by an estimated 3GW.

One of the transactions includes PT PLN Batam, a unit of state-owned power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PT PLN). The company expects to purchase 20 of GE’s TM2500 mobile gas turbine generator sets — known as GE’s mobile power plant.

GE “power plant on wheels” fits inside a large transport plane. It can start producing electricity within days. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The turbines, which are truck-mounted and mobile, are especially helpful in areas where there are large spikes in power demand caused by a population boom, a rapidly growing economy or a seasonal influx of tourists.

The heart of the TM2500 includes GE’s aeroderivative gas turbine. It’s essentially a ground-based version of GE’s popular CF6 jet engine – the same engine powering President Obama’s Air Force One – and another example of technology transfer through the GE store.

A CF6 jet engine inside a service center. Image credit: GE Aviation

The TM2500s have been a leading technology for fast and emergency power applications in the past 15 years, with more than 200 units delivered globally.

The units, which have 50 percent less emissions than comparable diesel equipment, add flexibility to Indonesia’s power needs. They take just 11 days from arriving on a truck to being operational, and can achieve full power in as little as 10 minutes.

Each TM2500 generator set can produce more than 25 megawatts of power output in the hot and humid Indonesian climate. With most Indonesian homes using only modest amounts of electricity, the 20 new units can provide the equivalent power needed to supply about 4 million Indonesian dwellings.

GE is already installing four TM2500 sets on the island of Sulawesi, in Gorontalo province, which will quickly generate 100 megawatts (MW), equivalent power needed to supply approximately 800,000 Indonesian homes.

To meet rising electricity demand of 9 percent annually over the next four years, Indonesia is taking on about 210 power plant projects — an $88 billion investment. Jakarta forecasts that the increased power capacity will raise annual economic growth more than 6.5 percent. GE also signed two joint cooperation agreements to evaluate developing and investing in power projects using combined cycle technology. The first agreement is with PT PLN subsidiary PT Indonesia Power for a minimum power target of 500MW. The second deal is with independent power producer PT Cikarang Listrindo for a minimum target of 1,000MW.

“We are pleased to play a role in developing Indonesia’s infrastructure by providing technology and capabilities to our customers who will bring much-needed power and transportation services to the Indonesian people,” says GE Vice Chairman John Rice. “The current government’s vision and more recent plans to accelerate spending on infrastructure have given us the confidence to make this commitment.”

Industrial companies need to adopt a digital mindset that embraces what the Industrial Internet can offer in new growth opportunities.

If you have a mobile phone, tablet, computer or all three, companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are all household names. With the explosion of the consumer Internet during the past 15 years, these companies collectively have amassed more than $200 billion in value innovating and establishing new business models on this singular platform. These companies through the use of data and analytics have defined the consumer Internet.

If you thought the growth of the consumer Internet was big, just wait until you see what the Industrial Internet will bring. For GE alone, we estimate that the Industrial Internet will create at least $15 billion in new value by 2020 to what is today a $150 billion company.

A vast array of industrial machines — jet engines, power generators, pipelines, locomotives — increasingly are becoming connected through the Internet. With the amount of data generated by machine sensors rising exponentially, coupled with ever-more powerful Big Data analytics, the Industrial Internet has reached a critical tipping point. It requires industrial companies to adopt a digital mindset that embraces what the Industrial Internet can offer in new growth opportunities. Many are calling it the emergence of the data economy.

The data economy in fact already is here. Hundreds of billions of dollars in value has been created in the consumer Internet. But we’re just beginning to see the value it can bring to the Industrial Internet. Estimates peg the number of connected things to reach 50 billion by 2020. The consumer Internet was built by connecting several billion people. Can you imagine how big the Industrial Internet could get? For any industrial company looking to expand, my mantra is to generate, segment and analyze the data toward a desired business outcome.

Going back to the examples of Amazon, Google and Apple, how did they transform the consumer Internet? By focusing on consumers and constructing digital profiles of us. Let’s take what Amazon did through the example of a single online shopper.

On Amazon, you might have a female named Linda. Linda is between the ages of 25-34, with an income of close to $70,000. Through her online shopping, Amazon learns a few things about her. It learns, for example, that she has a child between five and 10 months through some infant items she purchases. When she orders and ships a package from an online purchase, we know her parents live 600 miles away and are celebrating their 40^th anniversary. Finally, we know from her account that she spends about $500 -$1,000 on average per month. But the analysis does not stop there.

Once Amazon has formed a profile of Linda, it can do analytics that helps them find other individuals that fit a similar profile to Linda’s. Soon after, Amazon is able to form a psychographic profile of a much larger group of people just like Linda. From this profile, you can amass so much data about the group that you can now begin to predict what Linda or another individual like her will buy. And once you can predict what someone will want to buy and want, you can tailor not only your marketing but also transform and expand your business and service models based on the data and analytics you are able to gather and analyze.

In Amazon’s case, you saw them go from selling books to creating digital devices like the Kindle, Echo, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). They were successful because they had the data and analytics to create a model of one. Achieving a model of one allows Amazon to predict what you may want or need before you even know it. And it’s one of the chief reasons they have been so successful over time.

I’m spending the time to walk through Amazon because it’s very analogous to how GE and other industrial companies will realize new growth opportunities through the Industrial Internet. By creating digital profiles of our assets, that will allow us to extract new value and to transform and expand our business models in the same manner that Amazon has done.

Through our Digital Twin initiative, we’re building up profiles of every machine we make, which will allow us to get to that model of one.

Here are some examples of how the digital profile can transform industries, reducing costs and boosting productivity and reliability:

• On our GE90 Engine, we have used flight data from digital twins of our engines to save tens of millions of dollars in unnecessary service overhauls per customer.
• Through digital twin models of our Evolution Locomotive, we are minimizing fuel consumption and emissions – generated per trip. This saves 32K gallons / locomotive and 174K tons in emissions per year.
• With our 6FA Turbine Combined Cycle Plant, we have used digital models of these plants is helping us achieve a >1 percent increase in efficiency that will be scalable across all plants like this. At this scale, a 1 percent increase represents billions of dollars in savings.

To succeed and capitalize on the growth opportunities the Industrial Internet is creating, industrial companies must not only be deep in software and analytics but have the physical knowledge to match. It’s not enough to have great software. In the complex, high-tech infrastructure worlds, you must have the deep domain expertise and knowledge of the machines and business operating environments to match.

Colin Parris is Vice President for Software Research, GE Global Research

How a $9 Burrito Makes the Business Case for Sustainability

Today, many business leaders know the world has changed. They are wrestling with the new mandate to incorporate sustainability and social good into their businesses and brands.

But most companies struggle to figure out how to do this while continuing to meet their quarterly sales and earnings targets. They may have tried “green marketing” and met limited success. Or they may have skeptical shareholders convinced that this is a passing fad, or one that is just for hippies and tree huggers.

Over the eight years I’ve spent compiling evidence that brands can both maximize profit and be a force for social good, the question I’ve been asked most often is: “What’s the business case for sustainability?”

The answer is: a $9 burrito.

Chipotle — which sources its meat from farmers who commit to employ more responsible practices and uses its marketing dollars to advocate for ethical, sustainable farming — is doing $1 billion in revenue each quarter. And it is not an anomaly. It is one of at least nine companies globally — including Nike, Tesla, GE, and others — with more than $1 billion in annual revenue directly attributable to a product, service, or line of business with sustainability or social good at its core.

Together, these “Green Giants” prove that businesses predicated on sustainability and social good aren’t just a viable alternative to business as usual. They are more profitable and more sustainable financially. But how have they converted sustainability or social responsibility into billion-dollar revenue streams, and how can you follow their example? What has enabled these companies to become successful businesses by any standard — not just the standard of sustainable business?

My book, “Green Giants,” isolates six key factors or traits that Green Giants share and that have directly contributed to their uncommon success.

These are:

1. The Iconoclastic Leader. In each case, the sustainability journey can be traced back to one individual who started it all. These remarkable leaders embody “4 Cs” — they are marked by an inner sense of conviction, the courage to stand up and change things, commitment to see change through despite obstacles and a constructive contrarian streak. Surprisingly, for leaders noted for their sustainable business leadership, sustainability is not a job title prerequisite — seven of the nine are CEOs. To drive business transformation on this scale, it seems, you have to be the boss.

2. Disruptive Innovation. Each revenue stream is not founded on a slightly greener or more socially conscious version of an existing product, but on an innovation that disrupted a category. Consider Tesla’s Roadster or Toyota’s Prius, the first automotive alternatives to the internal combustion engine in 80 years. Or Chipotle, which overturned the economics of the fast food category to prove that cheaper does not always mean better. The Green Giants are making things better, not just greener, and inventing the products and services of the 21st century in the process.

3. A Higher Purpose. The Green Giants are guided by a purpose beyond profit. It may seem like a paradox, but businesses with a purpose beyond profit tend to outperform the competition on — you guessed it — profit. Why? Because a purpose serves as a succinct statement of your corporate strategy; it answers the question, “Why does this business exist?” Increasingly, employees, customers, consumers and stakeholders are drawn to companies with an answer to that question, one that aligns with their own personal purpose.

4. Built In, Not Bolted On. Much of the business establishment regards sustainability as an expense to be shouldered, an initiative to be undertaken or a department to be built — a sideshow to the main event of making money. But for Green Giants, sustainability means business, and they integrate sustainability into the core structures of their business. These include the company’s governance structure, its incentive structure, its cost structure and its organizational structure. For example, Unilever CEO Paul Polman has his compensation tied to his delivery of the Sustainable Living Plan, while GE has Ecomagination champions embedded all across its business. Green Giants reframe sustainability from a vertical function to a business horizontal and in the process, they enable it to become a revenue driver, not a drag.

5. Mainstream Appeal. If your product targets only what I call a Super Green niche, it’s hard to reach $1 billion in revenue because there simply aren’t enough people who take green values seriously enough to get you there. Green Giants understand that while for most people, sustainability is increasingly desirable, it comes in as runner-up in the relevance stakes to whatever primary functional or emotional benefit they seek — be it flavor, functionality, cachet, health or value. So Green Giants build their marketing around human wants, needs and desires first, showing that sustainability delivers the benefits people want, rather than focusing on the sustainability itself. That’s how to achieve appeal with mainstream customers or consumers.

6. A New Behavioral Contract. Transparency, responsibility, collaboration: today’s business buzzwords are alive and well at the Green Giants. But it’s more than talk. Reputation today is built through actions, not advertising. If the recent VW emissions scandal is a salutary example of what not to do, actions like Nike disclosing every factory in its supply chain on a public website; Unilever’s proactive efforts to reduce the emissions generated from consumers’ showers (without pressure from stakeholders); or GE’s commitment to collaboration at scale in its Ecomagination challenges are the antidote to businesses behaving badly. Green Giants are forging a new behavioral contract with the rest of us – and behaving their way to billions in the process.

The UN estimates that the market for “green trade” will grow to $2.2 trillion by 2020. That’s trillion with a t in just a few short years. And Green Giants are the leaders in an inexorable business movement, seizing the market’s next great business opportunity.

But it’s their iconoclastic thinking, radical innovation, tenacious commitment, standout creativity and explosive growth that are driving this momentum — instead of the earnest themes of integrity, responsibility, and altruism more commonly associated with sustainability. Ignore their example at your peril.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Freya Williams is CEO, North America for Futerra.

Technological advances from the Industrial Internet to renewables are transforming the energy industry. Here are the key trends to watch over the next decade.

Hyper-connectivity is transforming many industries — few more so than the energy sector. The expansion of the industrial Internet and power of Big Data analytics is enabling power companies to predict maintenance failures and approach zero downtime, while smartgrids and apps are empowering consumers to become producers.

“We are now in the era of `personal energy infrastructure management,’” where connected consumers are gaining increasing control over energy consumption and production, says Jim Carroll, a futurist and energy expert.

The quickly shifting energy landscape means utilities and other industry players must be careful not to be “MP3’d” like the music industry, says Carroll in an interview, in which he also discusses the prospect of achieving energy access for all and the potential for renewals to replace fossil fuels as the dominant energy source:

How much progress will we make in improving energy access to everyone on the planet in 10 years, with the help of microgrids and off-grid solar and other solutions?

One of my favorite phrases comes from Bill Gates: “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in 10.”

I think we live in a period of time when there are several key trends impacting out future use of energy. An intelligent, connected and self-aware grid. An accelerated pace of innovation with non-traditional energy sources — there are now window panes for building construction that generate solar power. Major investments and innovation with energy storage battery technology. I don’t think any of us can really anticipate how quickly all of this is coming together.

Will renewables top fossil fuels as the dominant energy source?

History has taught us that significant progress is more incremental than dramatic. The key point is that globally, we are at an inflection point when it comes to energy. Right now, we’re 90 percent carbon, 10 percent renewables, give or a take a few points. At some point — 10, 20, 50, 100 years? — we’re likely to be at 50-50.

A lot will happen with scientific, business model and industrial change between now and then. We’ve had this predominant business model based on carbon that goes back 100 years, but will that last forever? We’d be delusional if we thought so. What is known is that the carbon energy industry has made tremendous and somewhat unforeseen strides with increasing output — shale, horizontal drilling, smarter drilling and production technologies. Yet the same thing is happening with renewables — and it’s probably happening faster. In the long term, I believe we will see a gradual and inexorable shift to renewables.

How much will we be able to reduce the carbon footprint of the power industry, as technological innovation brings down the cost of renewables?

The technology — as well as consumer/industrial demand for new alternatives — will continue at a faster rate but will run up against increasing regulatory and business model challenges. That’s why I have challenged utility CEOs to ask the question, “Could they be MP3’d?” Could the energy generation and distribution industry find itself in the same position as music companies did n the past — stuck defending an older and entrenched business model, rather than embracing new ideas, concepts and methodologies.

How will the relationship between consumers and producers of electricity change, given smartgrid technologies, mobile app connectivity and the increasing availability of small-scale renewable power sources?

I always stress that we are now in the era of “personal energy infrastructure management.” What does that mean? I have the ability to manage my heating and air conditioning spend through an iPhone app. In the not too distant future, I believe my local neighborhood will have some type of swarm intelligence — linked to local and upcoming weather patterns— that will adjust its consumption patterns in real time based on a series of interconnected home thermostats. My sons are 22 and 20 years old, and we’ve had an Internet-connected thermostat in our home and for over a decade. They live in a world in which they are in control of remote devices, include those that manage their energy use.

How much will energy efficiency improve, with the help of the Industrial Internet and Internet of Things and Big Data analytics?

Some people might view the IoT as being the subject of too much hype at this point. Maybe that is true, but it is probably such a significant development that we can barely comprehend its impact. Think about it this way: every device that is a part of our daily lives is about to become connected. That fundamentally changes the use and purpose of the device in major ways. Add on top of that location intelligence — knowing where the device is, and its status. Link together millions of those devices and generate some real-time and historical data — the possibilities boggle the mind.

We are increasingly in a situation in which the future belongs to those who are fast. That might be a challenge for the energy and utility sector, but it’s a reality.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Jim Carroll is one of the world’s leading international futurists, trends and innovation experts, with a client list that ranges from Dupont to Johnson & Johnson; the Swiss Innovation Forum to the National Australia Bank; the Walt Disney Organization to NASA. His focus is on helping to transform growth- oriented organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes. You can catch his video, “Could the Energy Industry Be MP3’d?” at http://energy.jimcarroll.com

People have been making things from iron and steel for more than 3,000 years. Machines built from their alloys have landed on the Moon and reached the very bottom of the ocean. But engineers like GE Aviation’s Sanjay Correa now believe that “we’re running out of headroom in metals.”

He and his team at GE say that a new class of materials called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) is set to revolutionize everything from power generation to aviation, and allow engineers build much more powerful and efficient jet engines before the end of the decade. “This is a huge play for us,” Correa says.

Correa has an inside view. He leads GE Aviation’s CMC program and the company just announced that it would spend $200 million to build two new CMC factories in Huntsville, Ala.

The Rocket City factories -a nickname tied to Huntsville’s role in launching Americans to space – will be supplying raw material to the first American CMC plant, which GE opened last year in Asheville, NC. The company also already operates two CMC “lean labs” in Newark, Del., and Cincinnati, Ohio, that are looking for new applications for the materials and new ways to make them. “Opening the new plants in Alabama is a key step in building up the supply chain we need to make CMC parts in large volumes,” Correa says.

Above: GE brought this jet engine turbine blade made from CMCs to the 2015 Paris Air Show. Top: The ADVENT adaptive cycle engine holds some of the most advanced GE technology, including CMCs. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE scientists have been working on CMCs for two decades. These “super ceramics” are as tough as metals, but they are also two-thirds lighter and can operate at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit – 500 degrees higher than the most advanced alloys. This combination allows engineers to design lighter components for engines that don’t need as much cooling air, generate more power and burn less fuel.

Correa and his team believe that CMCs could allow designers to increase jet engine thrust by 25 percent and decrease fuel consumption by 10 percent by 2020.

While these numbers are pregnant with promise, CMCs have been extremely difficult to mass-produce. Until fairly recently, their use was limited to the space industry and fighter jet exhaust systems.

GE’s first applications were less lofty, but also more practical. Starting in 2000, GE’s Oil & Gas business tested CMCs inside a 2-megawatt gas turbine in Florence, Italy. By the middle of the decade, turbines with CMC shrouds – special parts directing the flow of air into the hottest parts of the machines – were running for thousands of hours without a hitch.

GE’s aviation business picked up the technology in 2007 and started looking for jet engine applications at its lean laboratory in Delaware. (This is an example of the vaunted “GE Store” – the transfer or technology and knowledge between GE businesses.)

Above: GE is testing CMC parts inside engines for passenger planes as well as fighter jets. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE Aviation first used the material for CMC shrouds in the hot section of its F136 fighter jet engine, but their application quickly spread. Static CMC parts are already flying inside the next-generation passenger LEAP engines developed by CFM International, a joint company between GE and France’s Snecma (Safran). CFM has received more than 9,500 orders and commitments for the engines valued at more than $120 billion (list price).

In 2015, GE started testing CMC components in a GEnx engine – the type used by many Boeing Dreamliners – to mature the technology for its latest large engine: the GE9X. When finished, the GE9X engine will be the largest jet engine ever built with 11 feet in fan diameter and capable of producing 60:1 air compression – arguably the highest ever in the history of aviation. “We expect a 10-fold increase in demand for CMCs when these and other engines take off by the end of 2020,” Correa says.

Correa’s team is far from finished, though. Earlier this year, they tested the first spinning parts inside the latest-generation ADVENT adaptive cycle engine, a demonstrator engine for the U.S. Department of Defense.

GE researchers have now started replacing rotating metal components with CMCs. This is big deal since shedding their weight by two thirds will produce a knock-one effect by lowering the centrifugal force inside the engine. For example, it will allow designers to reduce the size of the engine’s main shaft and cut engine weight further.

The ADVENT’s low pressure turbine with blades from CMCs. Some of them are covered with a special yellow environmental coating. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE makes CMCs from tiny silicon carbine fibers embedded in a silicon carbide matrix. The fibers are 5-times thinner than human hair and coated with a “very highly proprietary coating,” Correa says. The result is “tough like a metal [but] not brittle like a ceramic,” he says.

GE first started producing the fibers in Japan in 2012, after it formed a joint venture company, NGS Advanced Fibers Co., with Nippon Carbon and Safran. NGS owns one half of the company and the GE and Safran split the rest. One of the new Huntsville plants will be first such facility in the U.S. It will supply GE businesses and also the U.S. Department of Defense. The second facility will take the fiber and make a highly-proprietary CMC tape for use by the GE CMC plant in Asheville.

The other two components of GE’s CMC ecosystem – the lean labs in Ohio and Delaware – are already looking for new applications for the materials and new fabrication methods, respectively.

Before long, you maybe flying to China in a plane powered by ceramics.

Hollywood producer Brian Grazer says that a curious mind is the secret to a bigger life. It’s also the secret to a thriving business.

Grazer and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) have teamed up with GE and National Geographic Channel to make a six-part documentary TV series focusing on scientific breakthroughs and innovation.

Grazer and Howard are the executive producers of the series, also called Breakthrough, which launches this Sunday with an episode focused on fighting pandemics. The episode will air at 9 pm ET on the National Geographic Channel and will also stream on GE Reports.

Like the rest of the series, the pandemics episode will draw on research at GE’s labs. “We’ve been living in this world,” Beth Comstock, GE’s vice chair for business innovations, told Variety. “That’s why we exist. But we’re able to bring the perspective of ‘is this a breakthrough or not?’ — whether it’s ours or someone else’s.”

Above: Albert Einstein visited GE labs in Schenectady, NY, in 1921, six years after he published his theory of general relativity. The man in the light suit in the middle is Charles Steinmetz, the GE scientist who helped electrify America. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science Top: GE scientist Fiona Ginty is working on new tools to fight cancer.

GE scientists have had their share of breakthroughs. Over the years, the company has employed several Nobel Prize winners, as well as scientists who narrowly missed the award, like Nick Holonyak who invented the visible LED. Albert Einstein, Lord Kelvin, Guglielmo Marconi, I.P. Pavlov, Niels Borh and other science superstars have visited its research headquarters in upstate New York.

Each of the Breakthrough episodes was directed by a different marquee name. Peter Berg was behind the Pandemics episode, Angela Bassett did an installment on clean water, Paul Giamatti focused on human engineering, Ron Howard on aging, Brett Ratner on improving the brain, and Akiva Goldsman on the need for clean energy.

Group picture during visit of Lord Kelvin to the General Electric Schenectady Works. Lord and Lady Kelvin are in the center of the picture. Charles Steinmetz is fourth from the left. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

Breakthrough will follow scientific explorers from leading universities and institutions during their daily quest for disruptive innovations that could change the way we live.

The episodes will also feature GE scientists like Peter Tu, who is working on computer vision, John Schenck, who helped GE build its first MRI machine and used it to image the brain, and Fiona Ginty, who works on the leading edge of cancer research. “When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented,” Ginty says. “As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there’s left to do.”

John Schenck helped GE build its first MRI machine and used it to image the brain. Image credit: GE Reports

GE Reports will profile the GE scientists and their projects over the next six weeks, starting with their work on wiping out malaria. “It’s science in real time,” National Geographic Channel CEO Courteney Monroe told Variety. “We’re covering scientific breakthroughs that are happening right now. Certainly, science is not waiting for us.”

It wasn’t just luck that the Ebola epidemic didn’t spread once it reached Lagos. Here’s what other countries can learn from Nigeria’s effective response.

A horror never before seen unfolded in late spring and summer 2014: the first urban Ebola epidemic in human history.

As Ebola spread through the densely populated urban center of Monrovia, Liberia, cases overwhelmed the country’s fragile health infrastructure. Hospitals and Ebola treatment units overflowed with sick and suffering patients; television crews filmed people dying in the streets.

The situation threatened to get worse rapidly — and much, much bigger. On July 20, 2014, a sick traveler from Liberia got off a plane in Lagos, Nigeria — a densely populated city with 21 million residents, nearly 20 times larger than Monrovia. As Africa’s largest city and an international travel hub with departures via every conceivable mode of transportation to cities throughout Africa and the world, spread of Ebola in Lagos could have turned a regional epidemic into a global catastrophe.

The ill traveler sought treatment at a private hospital in Lagos. At the airport and in the hospital, he came into direct contact with 72 people before he was diagnosed with Ebola. He infected 13 of them with the virus, one of whom fled quarantine to travel by air to Port Harcourt, the country’s oil capital, further spreading the infection to doctors and others in that city. It looked as though a nightmare scenario — the exponential spread of Ebola in multiple urban centers — was about to become a reality.

Not Just Luck

With all the elements for a global epidemic in place, why didn’t it happen? It wasn’t just luck.

Unlike the three other nations in West Africa where the Ebola epidemic raged, Nigeria had a functioning emergency operations center (EOC) and incident management system. CDC and international partners helped establish this public health infrastructure in an all-out effort to eradicate polio. When Ebola landed in Nigeria, the government had the critical systems already in place to detect the virus and interrupt transmission before it could spread out of control.

Nigeria also had another advantage: a team of disease detectives trained through CDC’s Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), in which a CDC resident advisor mentors epidemiology trainees in a two-year program modeled after CDC’s elite Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). Nigeria’s FETP is one of 55 such programs with more than 3,100 graduates in 72 countries. More than 80 percent of graduates of these programs stay in their home countries, generally working in leadership positions.

Nigeria’s FETP trainees spread out across Lagos in the hours and days after the initial patient’s positive Ebola diagnosis, looking for anyone who might have come in contact with the traveler. CDC staff in Nigeria and from Atlanta became part of the incident management system providing a coordinated, urgent response. The teams identified 894 people at risk for Ebola and completed nearly 19,000 home visits to monitor residents for symptoms. At the airports, more than 147,000 travelers were screened for fevers that might indicate Ebola infection.

Eventually, the effort identified 19 additional people with Ebola across three generations of transmission in the two cities, and were able to end the outbreak before it could spread further among Nigeria’s population of about 180 million people — or beyond.

How to Stop the Next Outbreak

Outbreaks are an inevitable threat of nature. They cannot always be predicted. But frequently they can be contained and controlled — if detected in time, and if there is an appropriate, rapid response.

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, an outbreak in one country is just a plane ride away from almost any other country. Every nation’s health security depends on the health security of other nations — which is why CDC supports the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). GHSA is a collaborative effort by more than 50 countries working to ensure that every country has the minimum infrastructure necessary to prevent, detect, and respond to disease outbreaks. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are among the participating nations.

GHSA includes:

• A nationwide laboratory network equipped with modern diagnostic tools and that follows strict biosafety protocols.
• Real-time disease surveillance.
• A timely electronic system for reporting disease outbreaks.
• A dedicated workforce of medical and public health professionals, including disease detectives.
• Emergency operations centers capable of coordinating an effective response within two hours.

Having these capabilities in place helps countries deal more effectively with day-to-day health issues and allows them to be ready to rapidly scale up in emergencies.

CDC is committed to protecting the health, safety, and security of Americans — but we’ll only be safe if we can stop international health threats at their sources. By investing in the world’s health we’re protecting our own — and giving us all a better chance at stopping the next epidemic, or pandemic, before it reaches our borders.

(Top image: CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden exits an Ebola treatment unit in West Africa in 2014. Courtesy of CDC.)

Dr. Tom Frieden is Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Early one October morning 30 years ago, GE scientist John Schenck was lying on a makeshift platform inside a GE lab in upstate New York. The itself lab was put together with special non-magnetic nails because surrounding his body was a large magnet, 30,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. Standing at his side were a handful of colleagues and a nurse. They were there to peer inside Schenck’s head and take the first magnetic resonance scan (MRI) of the brain.

The 1970s were a revolutionary time for medical imaging. Researchers at GE and elsewhere improved on the X-ray machine and developed the computed tomography (CT) scanner that could produce images of the inside of the body. Other groups were trying to adapt nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging, a technology that already used powerful magnets to study the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. But their magnets were not strong enough to image the human body.

At the time, GE imaging pioneer Rowland “Red” Redington (he built the first GE CT scanner) also wanted to explore magnetic resonance and hired Schenck, a bright young medical doctor with a PhD in physics, to help him lead the way. Schenck spent days inside Redington’s lab researching giant magnets and nights and weekends tending to emergency room patients. “This was an exciting time,” Schenck remembers.

Heady Times: John Schenck (standing) and Bill Edelstein at the front opening of the first whole-body 1.5 tesla magnet in 1983.

Schenck’s unique background allowed him to quickly grasp the promise of MRI. Unlike CT and X-ray machines that generate radiation which travels into the body, the strong magnetic field produced by MRI machines tickles water molecules inside body parts and makes them emit a radio signal that travels out of the body. Since every body part contains water, MRIs can recognize the source of the signal, digitize it, and apply algorithms to build an image of the internal organs.

It took Schenck and the team two years to obtain a magnet strong enough to penetrate the human body and achieve useful high-resolution images. The magnet, rated at 1.5 tesla, arrived in Schenck’s lab in the spring of 1982. Since there was very little research about the effects of such strong magnetic field on humans, Schenck turned it on, asked a nurse to monitor his vitals, and went inside it for ten minutes.

The field did Schenck no harm and the team spent that summer building the first MRI prototype using high-strength magnetic field. By October 1982 they were ready to image Schenck’s brain.

Many scientist at the time thought that at 1.5 tesla, signals from deep tissue would be absorbed by the body before they could be detected. “We worried that there would only be a big black hole in the center” of the image, Schenck says. But the first MRI imaging test was a success. “We got to see my whole brain,” Schenck says. “It was kind of exciting.”

The 1.5 tesla magnet has since become the industry standard for MRI. Today, there are some 22,000 1.5 tesla MRI machines working around the world and generating 9,000 medical images every hour, or 80 million scans per year.

Schenck, now 76, still works at his GE lab and works on improving the machine. He’s been scanning his brain every year and looking for changes. Building on new research, he believes that MRI scan could soon help doctors detect and treat depression and other mental disorders. “When we started, we didn’t know whether there would be a future,” he says. “Now there is an MRI machine in every hospital.”

When GE launched Ecomagination in 2005, it redefined what it meant to be “green” for a business. Ecomagination was more than just another idea – it was a groundbreaking strategy the company used to build more efficient machines that produce cleaner energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean water and cut its use, and make money while doing it.

Now ten years old, Ecomagination has generated more than $200 billion in revenues since inception. Today, GE is expanding the program with eight partnerships seeking to solve looming environmental and sustainability challenges in ways that make economic sense.

Top image: GEnx jet engines use lightweight composite fan blades and fan case and other advanced technologies that allowed engineers to reduce fuel consumption as well as cut CO2 and NOx emissions and noise. Image credit: GE Reports/Adam Senatori Above: The EcoROTR is still only a prototype, but GE’s wind turbine are a key part of GE’s Ecomagination portfolio. Image credit: GE Reports

GE’s partners include Masdar, Walmart, Total, MWH, Goldman Sachs, BHP Billiton, Intel and Statoil (see infographic at the bottom of the page). GE is already working with Statoil, for example, to lower the need for water needed by hydraulic fracturing and cut CO2 emissions caused by flaring natural gas escaping from oil wells.

“Our goal is to create a network effect,” says Deb Frodl, Ecomagination’s global executive director. “We want to inspire more companies to work together and tackle the world’s greatest resource problems. This is about co-development of solutions that can be scaled globally. Global water and energy challenges require immediate action and the business community isn’t going to wait.”

GE’s Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive is the first diesel-electric rail engine in North America  that meet’s the EPA’s Tier 4 emission standard. It will decrease NOx and particulate matter emissions by 70 percent, compared to Tier 3 technology. Image credit: GE/Vincent Laforet

GE’s new Tier 4 locomotive will decrease emissions by more than 70 percent from Tier 3 technology

The need for such advances is more urgent now than it was a decade ago. According to GE’s analysis, the global economy will grow 33 percent, from $73.8 trillion today to $98.1 trillion in the coming decade. Rising populations and economic growth are already taxing energy and water resources, not to mention the environment.

GE estimates that energy demand will rise 20 percent over the next ten years, and the International Energy Agency sees global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy production rising 20 percent, to 37.6 million tons annually, over the same period.

GE’s cloud-based Predix software platform is also part of the Ecomagination portfolio. I can help make everything from power plants to airlines more efficient. GE Digital is now opening it to customers. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Ecomagination has always had a vision for the future, Frodl says. GE committed to invest $15 billion in cleaner-technology research and development between 2005 and 2014, and the company has published a list of goals it believes industry can collectively hit by 2020 (see infographic below).

Similarly, the new partnerships and will set “concrete metrics and goals” for each arrangement. Says Frodl: “These partnerships are a collaboration where we will develop new technology solutions which we will then deploy in our businesses, learn [from them] and eventually commercialize.”

When Joe Salvo bought his house in Schenectady, NY, in 1986 he purchased a piece of history. GE built it in 1905, not long after Thomas Edison and his compatriots opened the company’s labs and moved manufacturing plants to the city. It was intended to be the model electric home of the future: light bulbs in every room, sewing machines, a toaster, an electric stove and an electric water heater.

Now that the future is here, Salvo is hardly ever home. As GE’s director of the Industrial Internet Consortium (ICC) – a not-for-profit group seeking to bridge the physical and digital industrial worlds – he’s too busy building the “new” future and telling the world about it. “I actually come from the future,” he jokes over the phone from Shanghai, where he was recently speaking. “I’m paid by GE to work in the future and create the things that are going to be transformational.”

He’s only half kidding. In his office at GE Global Research in the Schenectady suburb of Niskayuna, Salvo has a 2015 version of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1905 electric toaster: a dedicated 100-GB-per-second line (compared to regular broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second) that he can expand to a bandwidth of many terabytes per second in preparation of the data flood that will soon arrive.

Salvo is one of the key people in laying the foundations of the Industrial Internet, a topic that attracted hundreds of customers and industry leaders to Dubai for GE’s Minds + Machine conference, which starts on Monday.

Top: GE’s Minds + Machines conference opens on Monday in Dubai. Above: Thousands of sensors placed on this 9HA GE gas turbine produce nearly 5 terabytes of data, about half the content of the print collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Image credit: GE Power & Water

For all of its blessings, the regular Internet — the one that allows you to read the paper and watch Game of Thrones online — still has problems, foremost among them, security.

The Industrial Internet, a network that connects machines with each other and the cloud for analysis and then dispatches relevant results to human operators, is a different beast. “This is the network where we are going to put the machines that our lives depend on,” Salvo says.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to make smarter decisions. But that’s getting harder without good data. The Industrial Internet will carry all manner of performance data about heat, noise, and vibrations from sensors attached to all kinds of machines including jet engines, locomotives and oil rigs. It can also connect help optimize entire hospitals, factories and power plants.

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” says GE’s Joe Salvo. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

Salvo says that thanks to Moore’s law, which states that computing power will double every two years, and Metcalfe’s law – the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users – “we now have both the computing power and memory that is required to make really intelligent machines and then connect them to a network.”

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” Salvo says. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

This is vintage Salvo. He helped establish the IIC last year. Along with GE, Salvo signed up four other companies as co-founders – Intel, Cisco, AT&T and IBM – and convinced each company to pay an annual fee of $250,000 to kick-start the funding the group needed. The IIC now includes more than 215 members from 24 countries. They include universities and research institutions as well as telecoms and industrial businesses.

In 1905, GE built in Schenectady the electric house of the future. Joe Salvo, who bought the house in 1986, is now building GE’s new digital industrial future. Image credits: Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady

Salvo says the IIC’s job is to make sure the Industrial Internet will be built on an open architecture where everything is interoperable. This will be important in a future where there will be as many as 50 billion devices connected by 2020 to the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things.

One such piece of architecture is GE’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet called Predix. GE has been using the platform internally and in September opened it to outside developers.

Salvo says that GE’s founder would have understood his vision. “Edison based our company on the concept that you build a network and you add all kinds of interesting devices to it that will change the way we live — things like voice recordings, movies, washing machines, stoves and electric motors,” Salvo says. “GE has taken advantage of that network thinking for over 100 years, and the Industrial Internet is the logical extension of that.”

Biologist Fiona Ginty has spent the last decade at GE Global Research trying to crack cancer’s code. She’s also one of the stars of the new six-part documentary series developed by GE and National Geographic Channel called Breakthrough, which is focusing on scientific progress and innovation and premieres on Sunday night.

“When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented,” Ginty says. “As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there’s left to do.” Ginty’s research could one day help doctors treat the right patients with the right kinds of drugs and assist pharma companies with developing new cancer medicines.

Each of the Breakthrough episodes was directed by a different marquee name. Peter Berg was behind the Pandemics episode, Angela Bassett did an installment on clean water, Paul Giamatti focused on human engineering, Ron Howard on aging, Brett Ratneron improving the brain, and Akiva Goldsman on the need for clean energy.

The first episode of the series, which was produced by Hollywood’s Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, is focusing on pandemics, specifically Ebola. It premieres tonight at 9pm ET on National Geographic Channel, but you can also stream it here after it airs. Enjoy!