President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology acknowledges VIA’s CEO Colin Gounden for his contributions to report on cyber-physical resilience

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In February, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) published a 50-page comprehensive report titled, “Strategy for Cyber-Physical Resilience: Fortifying Our Critical Infrastructure for a Digital World.” As described on their official website, PCAST is the “the sole body of advisors from outside the federal government charged with making science, technology, and innovation policy recommendations to the President and the White House.” 

The report, presented directly to the President of the United States, discusses the staggering increase in risks to our cyber and physical systems as they have become deeply intertwined (e.g., electricity, water, communications, among other critical systems) and provides actionable recommendations to protect them.

As our devoted followers know, VIA’s mission is to make communities cleaner, safer, and more equitable. Our experience working with the United States Department of Defense and Department of Energy along with our expertise in cyber and physical systems, caught the attention of Dr. Georgianna (George) Shea, Chief Technologist of Transformative Cyber Innovation Lab Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). We are grateful Dr. Shea selected VIA for an interview for the PCAST report to gain a deeper understanding of VIA solutions as they relate to the security of our nation. Dr. Shea remarked on her experience working with our team at VIA:

Dr. Georgianna (George) Shea

Dr. Georgianna (George) Shea

“In my role as Chief Technologist at a defense-focused think tank, I constantly seek solutions that address tomorrow’s threats. VIA has been an invaluable partner in this mission. Their deep expertise and collaborative spirit were instrumental in my work with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Transformative Cyber Innovation Lab.

One aspect of VIA’s work that has particularly impressed me is their exploration of web3 technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs. Through our partnership with VIA, we have witnessed the potential of secure data sharing among various stakeholders while maintaining compliance with stringent privacy regulations. This perfectly aligns with our mission to advocate for advanced solutions that bolster national security.

I extend special gratitude to VIA’s CEO, Colin Gounden, for contributing to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report titled ‘Strategy for Cyber-Physical Resilience: Fortifying our Critical Infrastructure for a Digital World.’ Additionally, I commend Haden Snyder for his forward-thinking approach to implementing some of the report’s recommendations through secure technical means.”

In addition to the interview, we’re also appreciative of the opportunity to review and provide feedback during the writing process for this authoritative report.

VIA is acknowledged among numerous other highly reputable organizations including the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, Idaho National Laboratory, and many more. For those of you who are equally as committed to cybersecurity in critical infrastructure as we are, and are interested in discussing this topic further, send a message to us at info@solvewithvia.com. Let’s work together to protect and improve the lives and livelihoods of our fellow citizens.

Download the PCAST report and be sure to check out the last page for a special acknowledgement.

VIA leadership invited to host a kiosk at Second Front Systems’ Offset Symposium in Washington, D.C.

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VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec and Director, Client Delivery, Haden Snyder will be hosting a kiosk at the Second Front Systems’ Offset Symposium Customer Gallery on May 16, 2024 in Washington, D.C. This event brings together leading national security professionals, including renowned speakers, leaders in emerging tech, government, and venture capital.

VIA will be showcasing our AI-enabled electrical vehicle fleet optimization and energy resilience solution, eJARVIS. There is still time to register, visit Second Front’s website to secure your spot and catch Joe and Haden in person: https://ow.ly/rgGj50R5afG

MIT Energy Initiative’s Graham Turk hosts VIA’s CEO Colin Gounden on location at MIT for VIA Visionaries interview

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The month of April is filled with reasons to celebrate our mission here at VIA: making our communities cleaner, safer, and more equitable. During April, we celebrate Earth Day, Drive Electric Earth Month, and one of our favorite VIA Visionaries interviews, which happened to be on location at MIT, with a dear friend of VIA’s, Graham Turk.

This VIA Visionaries interview was particularly special for us, it was the first time we were on location, and at MIT to boot. We’ve also known Graham for some time, dating back to when he was Head of Customer Care at Green Mountain Power, a company well known for providing 100% carbon-free electricity to 266,000 customers across Vermont.

Before recapping the interview, let’s dive into Graham’s impressive background.

Behind the scenes with Graham Turk and Colin Gounden at MIT.

Graham has dedicated his career to promoting clean energy through research, innovation strategies, customer care, and teaching. Currently, he is a Graduate Research Assistant at the MIT Energy Initiative where he studies the impacts of rapid electrification and explores tariff designs to promote the adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps (an Earth Day great!). 

Prior to this, he held several roles at Green Mountain Power, where his innovative leadership led to pioneering programs in battery storage, electric vehicle charging, and flexible demand management. Earlier in his career, as a Fulbright Scholar at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, Graham conducted research on energy markets and built a small-scale prototype of a peer-to-peer energy trading platform. His commitment to sustainable practices and his ability to unravel complex energy challenges make him an exemplary leader in the clean energy space.

Chatting live on camera at MIT for 30 minutes, Colin and Graham covered an array of topics including why he chose to join a utility, how he sees renters participating in the energy economy, and all about his blog, The Power Trip which covers energy market pricing (go check it out!). Early in the interview, Colin asked Graham about the project he was most proud of at Green Mountain Power and his answer reinforced why we consider him a VIA Visionary on this Earth Day:

“We were able to work with the State House in Vermont. They had an old diesel generator in their basement and instead of replacing it with another diesel generator for backup, they put a battery inside of it that we were able to use for similar purposes, like bringing down costs for all customers. So, the Vermont State House at that point was the first state house in the country to have batteries for all of its emergency loads. A fun little trivia question, if anyone ever asks that at Thursday trivia!”

Colin chimed in with another fun fact: 

“It’s a good observation. Government buildings, in some instances, can be the first trials for lots of things. I want to say, The White House had solar panels put on it in the 70s, some of the first solar panels, because they could!”

Watch the full video below to hear Graham talk about other projects he was proud of at Green Mountain Power, including one with Tesla!

We’re thrilled to showcase Graham’s passion for clean energy and fixing utility rates for our communities as part of our “What’s your mission?” Earth Day series. Thank you again, Graham and the gracious folks at MIT, for hosting our first on location VIA Visionaries livestream.

Follow along on VIA’s website and social media (LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Threads) for the latest on how we are living our mission each day and to keep an eye out for our next VIA Visionaries interview. 

VIA team travels to France for the finals of ABB Scaleup Challenge 2024

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We made it to the finals of the ABB Scaleup Challenge 2024! What started out as 150+ high-caliber competitors from 35 countries around the world has dwindled down to three (including us!) in our category: Smart Buildings.

VIA team members, CEO Colin Gounden, Client Delivery Lead, Becky McClements, and Expansion Manager, Ray Neubauer, can’t wait to showcase the value of Skylight in Switzerland to support grid resilience, carbon reduction, and data protection. The final 2.5 day event takes place in Sophia Antipolis, France from April 25-27. The winner will be announced at the end of the day on April 26th, followed by a fun-filled day on April 27th at the 7th Monaco E-Prix race.

Follow along on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Threads to hear the latest from VIA in this journey!

Fast and Curious 7: Verified Computation using ZKPs

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After the success of our Fast and Curious blog series on blockchain and ZKPs, we’ve had many questions from our customers about how we balance privacy and verification. So, watch the special, 2-minute Director’s Cut video below to learn how we accomplish this!

Below is a transcript of the video:

Welcome to a Director’s Cut, extra edition of our series on ZKPs. 

We had terrific interest in our original series from last year. Today, we’re going to address one question that came up from a customer about balancing privacy and verification. 

In our previous videos, we used the example of verifying things like carbon used by a vehicle. We explained how a ZKP could be used to keep the data private, like, time, date, location, and owner of the vehicle, and yet, still prove its carbon usage. 

The question our customer had was: How do I know the calculation was done correctly, especially if I can’t see the data? 

That’s a good question! 

In most cases, verification and privacy are at odds. The traditional way that you verify something is you audit it and look at all the data, but that’s the opposite of privacy. 

So, let’s take an example. 

The U.S. and Europe have different ways to calculate carbon. How do I know that a company applied the right standard or any standard for that matter to compute its carbon for a specific vehicle? Well, in this case, the calculation or the math is public and our latest generation of ZKPs can be used to verify the calculations. 

So, as long as the math is not a trade secret or proprietary algorithm, any third party can independently verify that the calculation is performed as promised without having to share the original data and without having to redo the whole calculation again. 

This is particularly valuable when not only is the data private, but also when there’s a lot of data, like billions of rows of data, or the calculation is pretty complicated. So, you have a lot of computation power that might be needed and you don’t really want to redo the whole data set and the calculation again.

This kind of verified computation is a new feature in the latest generation of ZKPs that we’re using. And, for a lot of things like carbon and energy verification, it’s pretty useful. 

Feel free to reach out to us at VIA to learn more about how we’re applying ZKPs to create a no trade-off solution for verification and privacy for big enterprises.

Can’t get enough of these Fast and Curious videos? Well, we want to hear from you! What topics should we cover next? Drop a note in our inbox to let us know: info@solvewithvia.com.

 

Arnab Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Researcher at EMPA, joined VIA’s CEO Colin Gounden for a chat about Swiss energy systems

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If you tuned into our seventh VIA Visionaries livestream of 2024, you’ll know that our interview with Arnab Chatterjee was packed with things we value here at VIA: Energy efficiency! Smart buildings! User behavior! AI! Switzerland! If you happened to miss it, you’re in luck, we’ve got a solid recap of the interview and the full recording below!

Though this was our first time meeting Arnab in person, we’ve chatted virtually and have met a lot of the intellectually curious and energy-engaged folks at EMPA over the years.  So, naturally, we were excited to get Arnab in front of our team of VIAneers in Somerville and devoted followers tuned in around the world, to hear about his research at EMPA, which is focused on user behavior and energy systems. As you know, this particular topic is of interest to us – we recently made it to the final round of the ABB Scaleup Challenge 2024 in the Smart Buildings category, where we will showcase Skylight’s carbon reduction potential in Switzerland.

Here is a little background on Arnab:

Arnab Chatterjee and Colin Gounden discussing Swiss energy systems.

Arnab Chatterjee and Colin Gounden discussing Swiss energy systems.

Arnab is a postdoctoral researcher at EMPA’s Urban Energy Systems Lab. Through his extensive experience around the globe, including research roles in Italy and his current work in Switzerland, he has cultivated a deep understanding of building performance, energy systems, and user comfort. In particular, Arnab is focused on incorporating user behavior into developing smart buildings, which includes occupant comfort and how they interact with automated building technologies. In addition, Arnab’s current work involves testing new technologies for practical applications, including notable projects like SWEET LANTERN, a Swiss Government funded, 8-year initiative to support the transition to 100% renewable energy.

Chatting on a beautiful morning at VIA HQ for nearly 30 minutes, Arnab answered questions ranging from how buildings contribute to energy and carbon emissions, to the way advances in AI will impact energy, and how user behavior compares in Switzerland versus the U.S. One of our favorite moments was when Colin asked Arnab to talk a little more about user behavior. And, we were intrigued to learn something new:

“Current building standards are a bit too restrictive on the temperature set points, creating issues on two different levels. First, we are adding too much operational energy usage by creating an environment that is too narrow and second, it doesn’t let the metabolic activity or the metabolic rate of the human body vary. This is not good in the long term.

What is the solution? 

Why not try to create an indoor temperature that varies a bit more? So, for example, having 21℃, and moving constantly for heating, why not let it vary from 18℃ to 21℃ [64℉ to 70℉]? So, we can kill two birds with one stone. We can save energy and let the metabolic exertion of the human body happen.”

To hear the full question and response, and Colin’s hilarious reaction “Any time people say the office is too hot or too cold, I’ll tell them, it’s for your metabolic rate!” – watch the video below!

We’re thrilled to have hosted our seventh VIA Visionaries livestream with such a passionate individual. As Colin said in the interview, “we have a value called love in = love out, if you love what you do it shows, and I think it clearly shows that you love buildings.”

Follow along on VIA’s website and social media (LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Threads) to hear more about our role in the LANTERN project and to keep an eye out for our next VIA Visionaries interview. 

VIA Visionaries: Exploring Swiss Energy Systems with Arnab Chatterjee

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If there’s one thing devoted VIA followers know about us: we love all things clean energy and Switzerland 🇨🇭! That’s precisely why we are thrilled to host Arnab Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Researcher at EMPA’s Urban Energy Systems Lab, for the latest installment of our VIA Visionaries interview series.

In Arnab’s current role at EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research in Switzerland, he is involved in research projects that explore user behavior and energy systems using machine learning. One project we are particularly excited to chat with Arnab about is called LANTERN (Living Labs Interfaces for Energy Transition). LANTERN is an 8-year clean energy project, one that VIA is proud to be a partner in. To hear more about this project and Arnab’s experience in developing smarter, more energy-efficient buildings, tune in to our livestream on Friday, April 5th at 10:30am ET, by RSVPing on our LinkedIn event page.

VIA attending Energy Exchange in Pittsburgh, PA

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VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec, and Director, Client Delivery, Haden Snyder will be attending the upcoming Energy Exchange conference, hosted by the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program.

Renowned as the largest agency-driven training event and tradeshow for the federal utility community, the event focuses on innovative strategies, emerging technologies and solutions paramount to advancing towards a clean energy economy. Further details on the event can be found on the Energy Exchange website.

VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec and Senior Government Solutions Specialist, Sam Cruickshank attend AFCEA New Horizons 2024 Event

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VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec and Senior Government Solutions Specialist, Sam Cruickshank attended AFCEA’s annual New Horizons event in Newton, MA – just around the corner from VIA’s HQ. The event brings together industry, academia, government, and military experts, to cover the latest in science and technology for defense and homeland security. Further details about the AFCEA Lexington-Concord chapter, visit their website: https://www.afcealexcon.org/.

AWS invites VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer Joe Babiec to represent VIA at CERAWeek Innovation Agora

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AWS has invited VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec, to host a booth at AWS’ Agora House during CERAWeek 2024. According to the Financial Times, CERAWeek is “arguably the most important event on the energy industry’s calendar.” Innovation Agora is CERAWeek’s open marketplace hosting 200+ pods, 420+ sessions, and 650+ speakers with the goal of sharing ideas and insights on energy innovation, emerging technologies, and solutions.

If you are attending Innovation Agora, reach out to Joe Babiec and meet him at AWS’ Agora House: #370 AB from March 18-21. For more information on the event, check out the Innovation Agora website.

VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec, attends Elemental Excelerator’s Clean Energy Business and Innovation Week in Washington, D.C.

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Elemental Excelerator invited VIA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Babiec, to join its first-ever Clean Energy Business and Innovation Week event. The highly anticipated event, which took place in Washington, D.C. from March 4-6, 2024, brought together 150+ climate tech companies, policymakers, business leaders, and investors to discuss the importance of the clean energy transition.

During the action-packed event, Joe met with Kaylah Fermaint of the U.S. House of Representatives to talk about VIA’s mission and ventured to Axios’ HQ for a series of interviews that covered the accomplishments of the Inflation Reduction Act. Overall, we were impressed by the commitment of fellow attendees (seen together above) in following a similar mission to VIA’s of making our communities cleaner, safer, and more equitable 🌱.

From Zug to Davos: A whirlwind week in Switzerland

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Last month, VIA’s CEO, Colin Gounden and Client Delivery Lead, Becky McClements ventured across the Atlantic to meet our Lead Software Research Architect, Madjid Aoudia in none other than, Switzerland 🇨🇭!

The trio had an action-packed week that is well worth the recap for our devoted VIA followers. So, who is ready to take an adventure with us from Zug to Davos?

Day 1: Zug

If you are new to VIA’s blog or just need a refresher, there are many reasons why we chose Switzerland as our European headquarters: clean energy, data privacy, and blockchain, our wheelhouse! Once our team landed in Switzerland, it was off to our office in Zug by train. Madjid and Becky also took the opportunity to snap a picture of our logo on the outside of the office, too!

Madjid Aoudia

Madjid Aoudia ready for his trip to Zug.

Madjid Aoudia & Becky McClements

Madjid and Becky McClements at VIA’s European headquarters.

Then, we met with one of our energy customers for a full-day workshop at our office, followed by dinner with executives in the utility space.

Day 2: Zurich + Lucerne

We kicked off day two in: Zurich! Our team met with government entities to discuss how we can support their data privacy initiatives. With a new data privacy code of conduct coming into effect in January, two agencies reached out to VIA for our expertise in data privacy. We look forward to continuing the conversation and deepening our support for Swiss data privacy efforts.

Later that day, we made our way to Lucerne, home of the HSLU iHomeLab. As we mentioned in our blog from 2022, “The year in Switzerland,” HSLU has been one of our research partners in energy and data privacy since 2018. We were thrilled to see the research they have been doing in energy efficiency and IoT and to have our Expansion Manager, Ray Neubauer join us!

VIA’s team

VIA’s team alongside the iHomeLab team.

Colin showing off some of the fantastic innovations at iHomeLab

Colin at iHomeLab.

Finally, to cap the night off, we had dinner with executives in the electric vehicle and automotive space. Stay tuned for more on this front!

Day 3: Davos

The highlight of our week was traveling to Davos for the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC)’s 7th Annual Blockchain Central Davos event, hosted in parallel to the World Economic Forum. Colin was invited to speak on the panel, “Blockchain and AI Convergence for Enhanced Trust and Transparency” alongside Tanvi Singh, Managing Director, Global Digital Assets Technology Lead, UBS, John deVadoss, Co-Founder & CEO, NeuralFabric.ai, and David Treat, Board Chair, GBBC; Senior Managing Director and Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group Lead, Accenture.

Paola Valencia, Director of Operations, & Strategic Partnerships, Home of Blockchain.swiss, was the moderator, who did a fantastic job of keeping the conversation flowing and asking terrific questions. If you are short on time, don’t miss our favorite moments at the timestamps from the recording below:

  • 9:23: Watch Colin introduce himself and VIA in Swiss German!
  • 19:08: Paola says she was thrilled to see Colin’s name on the panel because she wanted to hear how VIA has been using AI and blockchain with actual companies and how those use cases impact humanity.
  • 35:40: Colin provides his thoughts on the next big thing in the next six months related to AI and blockchain.

Thank you again to GBBC! The whole event from start to finish was world class and we are grateful for the opportunity (and the high quality pictures below 😉).

GBBCColin

Day 4: Wrap up!

After the eventful day in Davos, not to mention the fact that we ran into people we know from Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. (the Americans were out in full force!), we closed out our trip by meeting with another automaker and more government officials in the evening.

As we reflect on the week, we wanted to acknowledge a few small things that make a big difference. Everywhere we went, there was next-level hospitality, people made time in any way they could to meet with us, and embraced VIA with open arms. All of these points keep us coming back (and the spectacular scenery isn’t too bad either!).

This trip laid the groundwork for what is sure to be some exciting announcements this year 📣.

Davos

View of the mountains during our train ride.

Fast and Curious 6: AI Edition

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The Fast and Curious blog series you know and love is back! This time, we are bringing you all things AI. Watch the 3-minute video below to learn how we break down the enterprise barriers to GenAI adoption (or you can read the full transcript that follows).

Below is a transcript of the video:

Welcome to Season 2 of Fast and Curious – the AI Edition. Everyone, everywhere is talking about Generative AI and Large Language Models. Having said that, large enterprises have not widely adopted Generative AI, and for some very legitimate reasons.

In this series, we’re going to talk about three of the big enterprise barriers to GenAI adoption and wait for it, how we’ve solved for them. So, let’s get started.

Number one on our list of GenAI blockers is: Intellectual Property Restrictions.

The basic problem is that, how can I know whether the text or responses that we’re getting back from an AI system are okay for us to use? That is, how can I be assured that the AI is not using some source material that might have a copyright restriction or an IP restriction because that might make me liable as a result. The flip side of that is, how can I be guaranteed that whatever I send to an AI model won’t be used by the model and sent to someone else at some other company? 

The press about employees inadvertently doing just that has been pretty scathing, so everyone and every company will want to avoid that.

That is the number issue that we have seen that gets talked about. While it’s the biggest issue, it’s not the only one.

Number two on the list of concerns is: consistency.

Experts talk about GenAI as being stochastic models. What they mean by this is that there is some randomness in the results that they generate. Sometimes AI can even generate false answers. The kinder euphemism is to say that the models hallucinate. But, a wrong answer is still a wrong answer. If you are an expert in the field, you may be able to figure out how to tell the difference. The advantage of these systems, available to everyone, is that you don’t have to be an expert, so errors going unnoticed are a real risk.

Last but not least, number three is: cost or availability of the system.

GenAI models use GPUs generally rather than CPUs, and that is expensive and it’s in short supply. Maybe I should say, they are in short supply, so they are very expensive. This is the reason that NVIDIA became a trillion dollar company last year. Even big players like AWS and Microsoft Azure have a scarce supply of GPUs, so you can imagine how in demand they are.

To recap, issue one is IP Protection, issue two is Consistency and fighting hallucinations, and issue three is Cost.

If you are an enterprise CIO, CISO, or Chief Data Officer trying to figure out how to provide GenAI to your employees that all of your users are clambering for and are trying to overcome these barriers, watch out for the next episode of Fast and Curious about these solutions.

Can’t get enough of these Fast and Curious videos? Well, we want to hear from you! What topics should we cover next? Drop a note in our inbox to let us know: info@solvewithvia.com.

VIA energy experts attending Geotab Connect 2024 in Las Vegas

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VIA’s VP, Strategic Alliances, Michael DeNitto, and Energy Solutions Lead, Will Chapman will be attending Geotab Connect 2024 in Las Vegas, taking place February 14-16, 2024. The event focuses on best practices and innovative technologies for fleet management. For more information on the event, visit the Geotab website. If you plan to attend, reach out to Michael or Will to set up a time to meet!

U.S. Department of Energy’s national lab concludes VIA’s software has the potential to become the industry standard to help EV fleet managers meet decarbonization goals

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research lab, Idaho National Laboratory (INL), known for their nationwide leadership in electric vehicle (EV) batteries and extensive multi-decade research on charger reliability, conducted a rigorous evaluation of VIA’s carbon tracking proofs and confirmed it has the ability to become an industry standard in helping EV fleet managers meet decarbonization goals.

In a recently published article by INL, “The proof is in the software,” INL’s team discussed in detail how the evaluation reviewed VIA’s mathematics (zero-knowledge proofs), code, and working software, and concluded:

“The mathematical approach and the software worked, and it has potential to become an industry standard for providing credible, verifiable, and privacy-sensitive carbon data.“

The DOE is interested in cyber secure ways of verifying data used to accelerate the transition to clean energy. INL was appointed by the DOE as the laboratory of choice to evaluate how well VIA’s software works to verify sensitive carbon data during charging events without revealing private data such as EV charging time, date, location, and owner. Speaking of the process, VIA’s CEO Colin Gounden said:

“Working with INL on this evaluation was an exceptional experience for us at VIA. Not only did they have expertise in zero-knowledge proofs, they asked thoughtful questions and were very responsive. Validating that VIA has the potential to become one of the most trusted sources for verifying carbon data while keeping information private and secure, has been invaluable.”

VIA is currently working with large fleets in the U.S. and Switzerland, totaling more than 54,000 vehicles. VIA aims to expand the number of fleets to help EV managers worldwide meet their decarbonization goals.

If you are interested in learning more about the DOE evaluation, carbon verification, or how we can help your team achieve decarbonization goals, contact us!