TechVibe Radio

Podcasts from TechVibe Radio, now on 100.1 FM | AM 1020 KDKA every Sunday at 6 a.m. The Pittsburgh Technology Council's Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting interview Pittsburgh's most dynamic technology companies and entrepreneurs.

One Mic Stand: PeopleOne Health Wants to Set a New Standard in Healthcare 04/22/2024

TVR 4/21/24: Ethical Intruder's David Kane Talks Cyburgh and Cybersecurity Hiring 04/21/2024

TVR 4/14/24: AJ Kuftic of Expedient Talks VMware Changes 04/14/2024

One Mic Stand: John Santore Details Kratos' Approach to Cyber Compliance 04/10/2024

One Mic Stand: SKA Robotics Embeds with Hellbender 04/09/2024

One Mic Stand: SKA Robotics Embeds with Hellbender SKA Robotics and are excited to announce that SKA Robotics has opened a new office inside Hellbender’s Harmarville, Penn., headquarters as part of a larger strategic partnership. The close collaboration means that customers can now go from idea to working prototype to production-volume manufacturing, all under one roof, with teams that routinely and deeply partner to solve the most complex robotics challenges. The companies aren’t new to each other; Hellbender holds a seat on SKA Robotics’ advisory board, which is filled by their CEO, Brian Beyer. “Brian is a great human being and an asset to the robotics community. The opportunity to embed and partner more deeply with Hellbender is wonderful,” said SKA Robotics CEO Spencer Krause. “We strive to work with the best. Hellbender is unmatched in computer vision and has a great culture. Their commitment to high-quality robotic manufacturing in the U.S. is closely aligned with our company values.” “Finding strong expertise in mechatronics and field robotics, and the know-how to architect, design, and build robots for harsh and unpredictable environments is a challenge,” said Brian Beyer, Hellbender’s CEO. “Having SKA virtually in our back pocket will enable us to more readily serve our customers’ need for robotic contract engineering that falls outside of Hellbender’s strategic focus.” Customers of both firms will now have access to a wider range of expertise, accelerating innovation and decreasing time to market, all without having to search out yet another team, work to build trust, and learn to collaborate effectively. SKA brings expertise in field robotics from the idea-to-light-manufacturing phases, while Hellbender offers world-class computer vision expertise, an impressive electronics IP portfolio, and high-volume manufacturing capabilities. Colocation fosters even greater cross-pollination between two elite engineering teams. In other news, SKA also announced today it has changed its name from SKA Custom Robots & Machines to SKA Robotics. This new name firmly codifies the company’s focus on robotics rooted in deep expertise and a long history of providing engineering services to the robotics market. “We’re drawing a line in the sand,” says Krause. “We’re a robotics company first and an engineering services firm second.” About SKA Robotics SKA Robotics is a company based in Pittsburgh with a history of solving difficult robotics engineering problems. The SKA team has worked on robotic construction and mining vehicles, industrial maintenance robots, utility inspection robots, and more. Learn more at . About Hellbender Hellbender is a robotics benefit corporation based in Pittsburgh that creates computer vision solutions for industrial and commercial applications. Hellbender offers products and computer vision as a service (CVaaS) systems for applications in inventory management, street mapping, electric utilities, food service, pharmacies, mobile robotics, and athletics, among others. Learn more at. /episode/index/show/pghtech/id/30748903

One Mic Stand: Zscaler’s Chris Louie Talks About the Boom in Cyber Fraud, Ransomware, AI and Hacking Cars! 04/08/2024

TVR 4/7/24: Cooper Munroe, CEO and Founder of the Motherhood 04/07/2024

On RAMP: Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute Pathways Fellowship 04/03/2024

On RAMP: The Pittsburgh Robotics Network 04/03/2024

On RAMP: The ARM Institute Robotics Manufacturing Hub and Innovation Accelerators 04/03/2024

TVR 3/31/24: Innovation Works and EY Release Latest Tech Investment Stats 03/31/2024

One Mic Stand: Comcast's Ann Masland and Angi Mullenax Talk About Career Growth and Empowerment 03/29/2024

One Mic Stand: Keith Faulkner of GDC IT Solutions 03/29/2024

One Mic Stand: Crystal McFadden of Vet Jobs 03/27/2024

TVR 3/24/24: Itero Group Makes AI Operational 03/24/2024

One Mic Stand: Comcast's Aaron Mimran Talks Tech Trends 03/22/2024

One Mic Stand: The Itero Group Makes Artificial Intelligence Operational 03/18/2024

One Mic Stand: Joe Lininger Talks About Mescius' New Name 03/18/2024

TVR 3/17/24: Pitt's Super Analytics Challenge Addresses Society's Toughest Issues 03/17/2024

One Mic Stand: Dan "The SWAG Man" Galbraith 03/14/2024

TVR 3/10/24: T-Mobile's Jay Noschese Talks 5G 03/10/2024

One Mic Stand: Paul Konieczny of Method Automation 03/08/2024

One Mic Stand: Storm Season Won't Keep Comcast Down! 03/06/2024

TVR 3/3/24: Logix Guru and Highmark 03/03/2024

TVR 2/25/24: STEM Coding Lab Brings Learning to the Students 02/25/2024

One Mic Stand: Colliers International Pittsburgh Real Estate Update 2024 02/23/2024

One Mic Stand: Totum's Kevin Riley is Passionate About Helping Clients 02/23/2024

TechVibe Storyteller: 2024 Super Analytics Challenge 02/22/2024

TechVibe Storyteller: 2024 Super Analytics Challenge Started in the heart of the COVID pandemic, the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business Super Analytics Challenge was a novel way to connect graduate school students and the corporate community to solve society's biggest issues with data analytics. Over the last three years, the challenge has addressed homelessness, food insecurity and access to mental health. This year, the Challenge expanded to include more schools with 10 teams of five students looking to address the workforce shortage in southwestern Pennsylvania’s advanced manufacturing industry. “The big step we took this year was to invite other universities to partner with us, including Carnegie Mellon University, West Virginia University, Penn State University and Duquesne University. So we've doubled the number of students involved in the challenge. And that's really exciting,” said Christopher Barlow, Director of Career Management and Corporate Engagement at Katz. “Because we're commingling students together, we have students not competing from CMU or WVU. Rather, these graduate students have to learn to operate as a team with really varied backgrounds.” Barlow explained why the Challenge took on the workforce development for manufacturing: “Workforce is both a micro- and macro-level issue. So at a micro level, it's about giving people opportunities, right, giving people purpose in life. That's what a career is. It's about giving people an opportunity to have a meaningful place in our society. At a macro level, we also know that workforce and jobs brings prosperity, it brings wealth to families, it supports education, it supports our tax base. So you know, having good career opportunities for people and our communities lifts all boats. And unfortunately, right now, we have a critical shortage of enough skilled or reskilled people to meet the need.” The student teams harnessed their skills and experiences in tandem with expert partners (corporate, government and NGOs) to apply data analytics to generate implementable ideas on how to address the workforce issue over a three-week time frame. Students participated in professional development opportunities on topics such as team building, storytelling, analytics tools and the consulting process. “To be honest, I'm not much of a actual data analytics guy. And so I wanted to kind of push myself a little bit and I'm happy I signed up,” said Challenge Participant Thomas Leech. “I've just really enjoyed working with other universities. The engagement from all of the local partners and just them being willing to teach us is eye opening. You can get stuck in your silos and you're kind of afraid to ask questions. Whereas this challenge, there were no stupid questions!” Challenge Participant Carlos Salazar was equally thrilled with his experience at the Challenge: “Sometimes when you educate yourself for life, you're thinking about skills, and you're thinking about maybe knowledge and hard knowledge. But there's another dimension. And that is a cultural dimension. For me, it has been a really amazing way to learn a whole different way on how we can harmonize. And we can overcome differences in order to work together and to have a great product. And, a great outcome at the end.” The judging panels had some tough choices to make this year. Judges all agreed that each team came up with some pretty amazing and implementable solutions. “I sat through five of the 10 teams. And every one of them, these students are just unbelievable. They're bringing their talents, experience, world-class analytics, and some really innovative solutions to the table,” said Challenge Judge Albrecht Powell of Accenture. “And I love the fact that this year, we brought all the universities together. These ideas are just amazing. It's like I'm trying to figure out where I want to go take my own money, and sponsor some of these.” Challenge Judge Bob Schukai of MasterCard had similar thoughts: “Getting to be a judge is amazing, because I honestly don't know what to expect. And I say this every every year because it's similar to this program UK Apps for Good that I support. These kids across the UK are coming up with ideas to solve local challenges. You have to just park any preconceived notions of how you would solve the problem. Because what we're going to see in the room in the rooms today collectively, is probably going to be something that none of us had ever thought of before.” A winner had to emerge and this year Team 10 took home the honors. Their plan leverages remote training applications. And they hope to work with manufacturers to bring needed training right to schools where students will be able to train on actual simulators. And once certified, they could be hired. “First of all, big credit to my team! This was not a single solution, single source idea here. But I mentioned in my presentation, I had some friends that have done a project similar to this in remote training applications,” said James Cole. “I decided to fold it into advanced manufacturing. The technology is out there to be able to train people from wherever. And if we can deploy that to as many companies as possible to do as much good as possible, that’s the game right?” The dust has settled in this year’s Super Analytics Challenge and minds are already spinning to build on the success and make a bigger impact next year. “We have phenomenal industry partners and community partners. So we're all coming together to address very complex societal issues, of course, this year is workforce development,” said Rebecca Badawy, Associate Dean at Katz. “And so what I think is wonderful about this challenge is that I think we're trying to address things that people don't historically associated with business schools. We're trying to address the societal problems, which, you know, we're often sort of looked at as business professionals or educators as folks that are just trying to drive profit. But this is showing that no, we're using our knowledge to try and address really important problems.” Job Fair: Win-Win for Companies and Students New for 2024, the Katz Graduate School hosted the Graduate Technology & Analytics Job Fair in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Technology Council, for all regional graduate students. “What better way to stimulate workforce connections than to hold a jobs fair specifically focused on solving innovative problems in technology, data, and analytics,” says Christopher Barlow, Director of Career Management and Corporate Engagement at Katz. Using business as a force for social good is a guiding principle at Pitt Business. Barlow continues, “This year’s Challenge was a win-win for both students and the community. The students learned how to use data and analytics to solve a pressing business problem, and both businesses and job seekers benefit from this research and possible solutions.” /episode/index/show/pghtech/id/30070418

One Mic Stand: John O'Connell of SoftLedger 02/19/2024

One Mic Stand: Mike McClaine Talks About Wavestone's Acquisition of Aspirant 02/18/2024

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