Can a shift in food dependence from soil to salt water straddle... both ecological protection and alternative means of sustenance? Currently, seafood provides 3.1 billion people with approximately 20% of their daily intake of animal protein. It is particularly important for the world’s poor, for whom fish constitutes a crucial source of essential micronutrients. As nutritional needs, which are already difficult to meet, continue to increase, the pressure on both terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems will rise. With 90% of global wild fish stocks being either overfished or fished at capacity, seafood extraction potential from wild sources has most likely plateaued. Can we continue to look towards the aquaculture sector to provide the bulk of future seafood expansion? Won’t this come at the cost of significant environmental loss? Would non-feed-dependent species (seaweed, mussels and oysters) therefore not be a potentially more sustainable alternative as they already comprise 31% of global aquaculture production? Our panel asks many such questions and deep dives into even more in-depth answers!  

A sustainable global food system for our future is what the world... needs for its survival. A system that is productive, inclusive of marginalised populations, environmentally sustainable while comprising healthy and nutritious diets. These are complex and systemic challenges that require collective action. Amongst the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 2 says ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’ (SDG2). This is reflective of the deep connections between sustainable agriculture, gender equality, rural poverty, healthy lifestyles, and climate change. Prof Sonal Choudhary, an active member of the Institute for Sustainable Food and interdisciplinary research centres, is currently Chair in Sustainable Management at The School for Business and Society, University of York, where she leads research on Innovations for enhancing resilience and sustainability of Food Systems. She is also a part of India’s Millet Mission. She will be in conversation with Gargi Rawat, who has led several environment and conservation awareness projects for NDTV.

The Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO) made history on August 23 with... the landing of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander on the moon’s surface, making India the fourth country in the world to do so. The Indian space agency is not resting on its laurels! The Aditya-L1, that ISRO recently sent into orbit, is India's first space observatory for solar research, and set to study solar winds and their impact on Earth's climate patterns, aiming to travel 1.5 million km in about four months to study the sun's atmosphere. ISRO has also announced plans for future space explorations and an indigenous space station by 2035 as well as landing an Indian on the moon by 2040! Is India surging ahead on its interstellar cruise? Find out!

In artificial intelligence, neural networks are systems that are like the human... brain in the way they learn and process information. They enable AIs to learn from experience, as a person would. This is called deep learning. However, there is a sinking feeling in the AI community that chatbots could soon overtake the level of information that a human brain holds. With great power comes great responsibility, and people have voiced concerns about the potential dark side of the technology that span the threat of disinformation fuelled by convincingly generated photos, videos, and stories and AI's impact on the job market and the potential for widespread unemployment. As AI continues to evolve and shape our world, we have the experts telling us like it is.

Medicine is taking giant leaps into uncharted territory. The field of molecular... diagnostics is galloping ahead and involves the taking of DNA or RNA, the unique genetic code found in our cells, and examining and analysing the data from specific sequences that can flag the potential occurrence of a disease. Scientists are focusing deeply on understanding various diseases through these new and ingenious diagnostic methods. For instance, in the fight against cancer, early detection is the Holy Grail and the most accepted early detection test for cancer is the HrC Test, a quick, minimally invasive method to evaluate expression levels of rare stem cell markers. In this session, experts in diagnostics focus on the future of the ingenuity that is transforming molecular pathology. 

This session will look at what technology and artificial intelligence in biotech... can unveil for life sciences, healthcare & pharmaceutical companies, bringing into focus the many narratives around AI and machine-learning. Nowhere are AI and its applications more remarkable than in life sciences, where digital transformation enabled by AI and machine learning is affecting every step of the value chain and fast-tracking the future of healthcare. When used by the pharmaceutical & healthcare industry, artificial intelligence can draw insights from big data faster, process workflows, and bring about conversion towards achieving performance goals. In this session, our experts deep-dive and demystify this exciting arena.

The future of healthcare involves addressing incoming viruses, environmental impacts, lifestyle diseases,... addiction, overused antibiotics, and stubborn bacteria. Can big pharma, innovative diagnostic tools, technology platforms, AI-enabled surgery, and patient-centric treatment lead to the paradigm shift the world needs?

Sanitation, education, and medicines that include vaccines and antibiotics, have increased human... life and reduced early and mid-life mortality. Research needs to now focus on mental health as we age, and deal with Alzhmerier’s, dementia and more. How can we track the maze of the mind as our bodies age?

Vaccines have helped fight diseases for 200+ years. Childhood vaccines reduced illness... and death in developed countries, and flu vaccines are common worldwide. However, some diseases still lack effective vaccines and there are large swathes of regions without proper vaccination infrastructure. Can new research address these challenges?

As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, rapid advancements in AI, machine... learning, and innovation are causing a paradigm shift. Can policy-makers, innovators and dreamers together reinvent our stories of change?

India's EdTech landscape involves diverse stakeholders. EdTech Tulna, an evidence-driven evaluation index... developed by IITB researchers and supported by Central Square Foundation, evaluates products based on Content Quality, Pedagogical Alignment, and Technology & Design. Can EdTech evaluation really transform the learning and teaching experience?

On March 4, 2023, more than 100 countries reached a historic treaty... to protect the high seas after more than 15 years of largely abortive talks. How will this legally-binding milestone announced by the United Nations, conserve and ensure the sustainable use of ocean biodiversity, protect our oceans and their flora and fauna from climate change and overfishing?

Gaganyaan is India's upcoming crewed orbital spacecraft mission, set for 2024. In... its maiden crewed mission, ISRO’s largely autonomous 5.3 metric ton-capsule will orbit the Earth at a 400-km altitude for up to seven days with a two or three-person crew on board. How will this mission navigate the myriad challenges of outer space?

For years, creativity has been considered one of the last bastions of... humanity. The reality, however, is changing rapidly. Advances in artificial intelligence, the transformation wrought by ChatGPT and machine learning are undergoing a paradigm shift. Where is the final frontier where machines take over our minds completely?

Journalism, medicine, and the arts are some of the most advanced embodiments... of human endeavour. Can Artificial Intelligence replace them to become doctors, journalists or even artists? Or are some human skills, that include empathy, truly unique, and ultimately impossible to authentically replicate and decode? Watch our extended conversation with Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, and imagine the present and future possibilities of Artificial Intelligence as it relates to human ingenuity and creativity.

The ancient mathematicians decoded patterns that brought us our present-day understanding of... the world and the universe beyond. If the secrets of our history can be uncovered through the study of patterns, mathematics may be the best tool we have to predict our future. In this episode of Be Inspired, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy poetically challenges mathematics’ place in society, its relationship with the arts, and its inherent ability to answer questions about our past and predict our future.

Imagine a world where you can leave home for the airport and... engage in a seamless and  contactless experience until you reach your boarding gate. What lies ahead in the future of travel? Our panel has some interesting answers. 

India and the UAE, which is celebrating the 50th Year of its... formation, share bonds in trade that go back centuries. The relationship has blossomed into a multi-faceted and successful Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Indian expatriates in the UAE have always been a very strong and sizable presence. The UAE Sovereign Wealth Funds, Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority together invested $4.12 billion into India last year. The future holds unbridled potential. Our panel of business leaders look at the road ahead.

Women leaders, both in India and the UAE, are increasingly challenging boundaries,... breaking the once impregnable glass ceiling and taking businesses to greater heights by combining their unique abilities to work tirelessly, think out-of-the-box, blend pragmatism with dreaming big and inspiring those who work for them. Our panel has some of the most influential women leaders who will shape our tomorrow.

As career goals go through a paradigm shift, more and more people... are turning their ideas and imaginations into livelihoods. The creative economy is one of the world’s most rapidly growing sectors, contributing 3% of the global GDP. Creativity is also a renewable, sustainable, limitless resource that we can find anywhere around the world. As we face climate crisis and the pandemic, its potential to drive a human-centric, inclusive development has never been more relevant. In that sense, creativity is the industry of tomorrow. The year 2021 was declared the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development at the 74th United Nations General Assembly. Our speakers shed light on the future of this Sunshine Sector.

A fascinating session that focuses on the UAE’s famed Amal probe around... Mars and how the Arab nation now plans to venture deeper into outer space, travelling through Venus towards the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Addressed by Dr. Naslim Neelamkodan, assistant professor in UAE University, who works on stars and their impact on the interstellar medium and Omran Anwar Sharaf, Project Director of the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), this is a session that will shed light on an exciting trajectory that lies ahead in space research.

What lies ahead in the Great Unknown and how can more research... be fuelled in human kind’s quest in outer space? Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan has been deep-diving into phenomena in the universe, including black holes and dark matter. Two key areas in cosmology, the origin and evolution of the universe, are mapping dark matter and tracing the history of black holes. In this session, let us find out about these seminal findings & how they have been made even more relevant in the light of the new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope that shows a black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is creating stars rather than gobbling them up! Tune in to Episode 16 of Be Inspired, our series that crystal-gazes into a future of innovation.

The world-wide crisis in citizenship is well-documented. As a legal status bestowed... by states on members of a national community, the concept of citizenship can no longer be taken for granted. Ever larger numbers of people traverse national boundaries to live, love and labour in lands different from where they were born. Automation disrupts the economies of labour with which we are familiar. Artificial intelligence challenges recognisable forms of human personhood. Climate change endangers the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Unprecedented prosperity coexists with growing inequality. Religious and ethnic polarisation jeopardises the hard-won gains by movements for social justice in recent decades. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, the COVID19 pandemic struck, changing our world in ways that few other events in recent memory have.

The road ahead for responsible healthcare lies in making patient-centric care at... the heart of the treatment process & including patients, the most affected, in every step of the decision-making. ‘The Global Charter on Meaningful Involvement of People living with NCDs’ rallies all stakeholders such as governments, international institutions, civil society and the private sector to put patients who are 'people' at the centre of caregiving. Our speakers are survivors, fighters, and change-makers of extraordinary grit and courage. Let’s find out from them their dreams for the future of sensitised caregiving.

As we face up to the challenges of an ongoing environmental crisis,... it is becoming increasingly important that we exercise concrete efforts to include sustainability, recyclability and environmentally-conscious goals in what we wear. This can perhaps happen more easily if our fashion & design schools incorporate environmentally-conscious themes in their education & teaching syllabi. Some schools like the NIFT, India, the London College of Fashion & Cambridge University have already set the trend by teaching responsible fashion. What should the future of fashion & design education look like? Our panel deliberates.  

  Sustainable fashion or eco-fashion is a movement to foster change in the... fashion ecosystem towards greater ecological integrity and social justice and goes beyond just textiles and products, but addresses an entire process through which clothing is produced, and how long it lasts before clogging our landfills. The Circular Design Challenge, supported by UNEP, has produced a series of mind-boggling innovations in textile design, source material, and its purpose & aim towards larger goals beyond sartorial fashion. This panel examines some ways forward in how what we wear can transform our lives.  

  As the world marches towards unprecedented heights in science, tech and an... information revolution, 64 per cent of India’s women do not have access to basic menstrual hygiene; nearly 23 million girls drop out annually from school once they start their period; and only 15 per cent of girls in India had access to sanitary pads during the lockdown in 2020. There is no time like NOW to work towards future course correction while finding sustainable solutions for menstrual waste, poised as we are towards an environmental emergency with plastic waste trebling in double-quick speed. This can only happen through game-changing innovation supported by both government and private players. Our panel throws light on one such transformational innovation while finding large-scale solutions to a future that can make our women’s journeys empowered, free and worthwhile.  

With all buildings required to be net-zero carbon by 2050 to meet... the goals of the Paris agreement, the demand for smart buildings is only increasing. One of the basic requirements of a smart city to sustain itself is housing. Without housing, sustenance and further growth of a smart city will be limited. The future smart cities will require a good amount of affordable housing to cater to the large middle and lower income demographic. This is where the Smart City Mission and Affordable Housing converge to mutually benefit each other and further the goal of development.ow can this be enabled wherein sustainable architecture can marry affordable housing?

The universe is full of matter and gravity pulls all matter together.... The Hubble Space Telescope’s phenomenal observations of very distant supernovae showed that, a long time ago, the universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. The universe therefore is in accelerated expansion. But what is causing this? Theorists have determined this to be dark energy, of which more is still unknown than known. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy; dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, adds up to less than 5% of the universe! Einstein was the first person to realise that empty space has incredible properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. What human beings are struggling and indeed racing to understand are the mind-boggling possibilities of dark energy – and for that, what is needed is more data and yet more data, that can be accorded by instruments and theories together. This session delves into that realm of possibilities in space research that both ideas and instruments together can enable.

The much-awarded science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, known widely for his... acclaimed Mars Trilogy, feels that human beings are doing more to change the planet than any other force, ‘from bedrock up to the top of the troposphere’ and ‘by no means do we have godlike powers on this planet’. Robinson's work portrays characters struggling to preserve and enhance the world around them in an environment dominated by individualism and entrepreneurialism, backed by political and economic authoritarianism oblivious to the environment. Is the human urge for space exploration a similar attempt fuelled by hubris and selfish ambition to colonise space? Can we become explorers in the real sense and realise our miniscule place in the gigantic order of things that is the universe, which remains at once our life-force as well as our deepest mystery? In this session, Robinson answers these questions and more.

Agriculture is a sector in which the possibilities are boundless. While the... SDGs indicate sustainable agriculture with zero hunger as the 2030 agenda, some innovations are already propagating food-growing independence through advanced automation, heralding the hydroponics revolution, and Cropdata in order to help India’s farmers and find a digital solution to a longstanding problem. Let's look at our goals more closely with those who are at the heart of these innovations.

Two questions are being asked with increasing frequency both in India and... around the world. Is our pattern of economic growth sustainable? And fair? It is clear that a new approach is required for human development and societal progress in order to mitigate the prevalent risks to the environment and social harmony. Dennis J. Snower, Professor of Macroeconomics and Sustainability at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin; Senior Research Fellow of the Blavatnik School of Governance, Oxford University and President of the Global Solutions Initiative, which provides policy advice to the G20, feels economics is reaching its “Copernican” Moment – the moment when it is finally becoming clear that the current ways of thinking about economic behaviour are inadequate. In conversation with former Planning Commission Member Arun Maira, Professor Snower unpacks the idea of the future of “evonomics”. 

From start-ups with foresight to new innovations in the field of VR-fuelled... education and changes planned in current education systems, education is set to undergo a paradigm shift in the post-pandemic world and in the years to come. Can future policies pave a way for change and if indeed they can, will blended learning stay as a gamechanger wherein education can actually impart lifeskills, mental sustenance, and awareness about global issues to large tracts of students with targeted outreach plans rather than centre around prescribed and time-honoured syllabi? The time is ripe for us to take a good look at our education systems and ask what is their real purpose - imparting knowledge, increasing employability or creating well-rounded, kinder and thinking adults? In ancient times, Plato's Academy taught a range of topics such as philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, politics, physics and more, and it was all part of the 'Platonic Philosophy'; interestingly, now some private universities are again focusing on the liberal arts that cover Humanities; Social Sciences; Natural Sciences and Formal Sciences. Can we start re-looking at education's larger goals in the midst of our bid to equip children for the rat race? Join us, along with our diverse panel of experts, to explore these topics in greater detail.

This session lays down future blueprints for two of modern-day’s most pressing... concerns - accessing clean air & water!   Air pollution is humanity’s clear and present danger and automobiles are the worst offenders. Solutions like ‘odd-even’ only have a temporary effect and cause inconvenience to the most vulnerable stakeholder, people who do not have odd or even numbered cars suffer while the rich, likely possessing both, are unaffected. In our focus is Altigreen’s NEEV, an electric 3-wheeler (L5 cargo), currently in series production & available in multiple variants, powered by a 11 kWh battery, and ARAI-tested at an unprecedented 180 km range. It is already in use by leading e-commerce and FMCG companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Delhivery, IFB. The innovator behind Altigteen is Amitabh Saran, who has enabled products that can allow India to become fuel-efficient while causing negligible damage to the environment. The question, as we look into the future, is what are the scope and scalability of such devices? In focus are also water conservation models, as we talk to Professor Pradeep of the IIT, Chennai, who is steeped in developing safe and affordable technologies for drinking water purification. His pesticide-removal technology is estimated to have reached about 10 million people and his arsenic removal technology, approved for national implementation, is delivering arsenic free water to about one million people every day.  

In many ways, the future of diagnostics lies in technology, machine learning,... molecular biology and cutting-edge R&D. According to  the Future Healthcare Journal, AI will be increasingly applied within healthcare , especially for the tasks of diagnosis and treatment recommendations, patient engagement and adherence, and administrative activities of the healthcare workforce. What does this mean for the treatment and prediction of future pandemics and for cutting edge research across medicine? Our diverse panel of experts seeks answers for you.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc with our mental health – the impasse... of isolation, anxiety fear, overwhelming grief at the loss of people close to us, and grieving families unable to get a sense of closure has made all us live on edge clutching at straws and craving mental equilibrium. It does appear that we will be living in relative isolation long after the current waves are over as no one knows when the coronavirus will weaken its sting. This conversation will look at concrete ways for us to get out of a deepening mental morass in the medium and longer term and shed light on how crippling anxiety is affecting the overall health of populations across continents.

The Covid pandemic has been an enforced stress test of the health... of economies, global supply chains, and the resilience of societies. It has highlighted deep structural weaknesses in them. To move from immediate recovery to a building of more resilient economies, multifaceted change for the future is essential. Many systems will have to be rebuilt simultaneously—economic systems, trade systems, and public health and education systems. The top-down leadership approach, with solutions by experts often disconnected from ground truths and people —which seems to be the default option whenever complex, large-scale problems have to be solved - is the wrong way to create resilient societies. Complex global problems require local systems solutions implemented collaboratively by communities, who act locally while keeping the big picture in mind. Therefore a new model of change and leadership is required-- a ‘firefly-up' model in which leaders facilitate better collaboration amongst stakeholders rather than direct them against their will. Adam Kahane has used this approach to help people in many countries around the world. He is a leading architect and facilitator of collaboration processes and an author of several books on the subject. Presently, he is Director of Reos Partners, a global social enterprise that helps businesses, governments, and civil society organisations work together to address complex challenges. Adam Kahane discusses a systems transformation model of governance with Arun Maira, former Member of India’s Planning Commission, a leading practitioner himself of participative systems transformation and author of several books on the subject as they both look into the time ahead.