Salim Ismail Discusses Singularity University

Amidst a serious economic downturn, a small group of visionaries has launched a new educational venture called Singularity University. Co-founded by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, X Prize chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, and former Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, Singularity University represents a new academic institution that has little in common with a traditional university.

From the time-frames of the designed programs to the scope of the curriculum, Singularity University will go where no other university has ever gone. Featuring three intensive programs, the founders are seeking to eliminate some of the current pre-conceived boundaries surrounding a number of the cutting-edge technology disciplines.

Looking to weave a course of study that slides across 10 varied fields, the university curriculum features such extremely disparate tracks as: future studies and forecasting, biotechnology and bioinformatics, nanotechnology, AI, robotics, and cognitive computing, and finance and entrepreneurship.

Enormous Talent Assembled
Kurzweil believes the school, named after the theories he expressed in his best-selling book The Singularity is Near, will have the unique ability to bring together leaders from these various fields. Once together, these individuals then would have the chance to collectively approach some of the world’s greatest challenges (global hunger, pandemics, and climate change, etc.).

Singularity University will kick off their work this summer with about 30 students. Utilizing the NASA Ames Center, the program will co-exist with another cutting edge entity, the International Space University which is expected to host 120 students at the same complex.

The faculty list is extremely impressive. Among those committed to teach are Will Wright, The Sims and Spore creator; Cal Berkeley professor and 2006 Nobel Prize winner George Smoot; fellow Berkeley staff member Dan Kammen; Stephanie Langhoff, NASA Ames’ chief scientist; and the legendary Vint Cerf.

Interview with Salim Ismail

For a more in-depth look at the new school we turn to one of the founders and current Executive Director of Singularity University. The successful consultant founded such companies as PubSub and Confabb and recently spent a year at Yahoo as a Vice President and Head of Brickhouse where he worked on Yahoo Pipes, Yahoo Live and Fire Eagle.

Can you give our readers some brief background information on you and how it is that you became involved with the concept of Singularity University?

I’ve been fascinated by innovation ever since learning about quantum mechanics during my university degree. I then got into computers and in the last 10 years I’ve been involved in eight early stage companies. In 2007, I joined Yahoo to build out and run their incubator called Brickhouse. While running Brickhouse I set up a relationship between Yahoo and NASA, and that led to them (SU) inviting me to the founding meeting of SU on September 20, 2008. From the beginning, I was inspired by the vision and the team. When they asked me to head it up, I didn’t blink.

Starting a new university from scratch can never be considered a small task but starting a new university that is the antithesis of the traditional university structure would seem to be even more challenging, especially in these economic times. Can you talk a little bit about the “Founders Circle” and the process of raising start-up capital for such a ground breaking concept?

A key to getting SU up and running is that we’ve licensed the IP and pedagogy of the International Space University, which has very successfully run a graduate program for 20 years. Many of our Founders are at the leading edge of these technologies and saw the need for such an institution to better understand and manage where these disciplines are headed. I believe we’ve had excellent success in these tough times for the following reasons:

1. we’re using and copying a proven model (from ISU);
2. we’re trying to help understand a crucial set of rapidly advancing areas;
3. we’re trying to create leaders who can use this knowledge to address some of the grand challenges facing humanity (e.g climate change, energy, information management etc);
4. the challenges we’re facing today only highlight the need for an institution like ours, and many of our backers have the vision to see that.

The talent you have assembled is extraordinary, from the management team to the board of trustees to the teaching faculty. Can you give our readers a sense of how it is that you have been able to bring together so much talent in such a short time?

Like the donors, many of the leading academic thinkers around the world see the need for such an institution which complements the deep academic teaching of existing universities. We’ve had an extraordinarily positive reaction from them, and very gracious commitments of their time to help with the curriculum and in attracting other leaders.

In selecting faculty, have you set forth specific guidelines regarding those who would be from the business/tech working sector versus those who would be classified as academics (university professors, teachers, etc.)?

We don’t have formal specific guidelines, but we are definitely aiming for a diverse mix of lecturers from both business and academia. We have faculty coming from Stanford, MIT and other leading academic institutions as well as leading companies like Google, Microsoft and others, both locally and from around the world.

Your site speaks to a “First-of-Its-Kind Curriculum” that features ten different academic tracks. Can you explain how you folks came to agree upon these ten specific tracks of study including the process used and the rationale for those tracks?

About a month ago, we held a curriculum planning meeting with about sixty people, including many of the faculty that you see listed on the site. At that meeting we collectively agreed on the ten tracks and currently have a draft version of what will be taught per track – this will of course evolve considerably before the summer program starts. The tracks were determined by examining which technologies and disciplines are considered to be advancing at an exponential pace. Track 1 is about how best to manage, predict and measure these domains, tracks 2-6 are considered the core set, tracks 7 and 8 are areas of application for these core technologies, and tracks 9 and 10 are supporting tracks that we considered crucial to give a framework for how best to take it out into the world.

Likewise, the academic objectives are broken into six specific categories (assemble, teach, focus on humanity, network, spin out, and communicate). Can you talk a little bit about the formulation process for these objectives?

I think this is largely self-explanatory. We want to get together leading thinkers, get them up to speed on the state of the art of these rapidly accelerating fields and arm them with a set of tools and the right contacts to address the big challenges facing humanity today. We feel these objectives are appropriate to help deliver the mission of SU. Larry Page, at our founding meeting, gave an inspiring talk and suggested that the students graduating from SU had a unique perspective and should focus on the grand challenges facing humanity. That formed some of the foundation for the objectives.

You will be offering three separate programs at the outset, a 10-week summer Graduate Studies Program, a 10-day Executive Program and a 3-day Executive Program. Can you give our readers a brief overview of the coursework and the respective objectives that will form the basis of each of these separate programs? Can we assume the price of $25,000 quoted at CNet is accurate for the 10-week? Have prices been set for the others?

The $25k is indeed for the Graduate Studies Program, but it’s actually nine weeks. The 3 and 10-day courses will distill content from the 9-week program and is intended for executives and government officials. We haven’t established the fee for those yet. For example, the CEO of a semiconductor company might come to the 3-day program to better understand the latest state of networks and computing, and get an ‘over-the-horizon’ radar view of what will affect his or her industry.

The agenda for the 10-week program was described by the folks at CNet as “not for the faint of heart.” In addition, in that article, Mr. Diamandis is quoted as saying, “If we do our job correctly” students “will meet, (discover their) common visions, and start companies together.” One of the most impressive aspects of this venture is the lofty goals that have been set forth but is it really possible that in just ten weeks time such relationships could be formed?

A very important question… it is relevant here to again note that we have licensed the model of this curriculum from the International Space University which has very successfully run such an interdisciplinary program for 21 years – today, many of the heads of the world’s space agencies are graduates of ISU. We will adapt their model to our curriculum, but it gives us a proven structure from which to start, and will indeed be a very intensive program. For example, ISU has found that in 9 weeks, a 120-person student body can form quite deep relationships and everyone gets to know everyone else. We will start with 30 students in year one and expand to 120 in the second year.