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VIA Partners with MIT on U.S. Air Force Contract

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VIA is pleased to announce that they have partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through MIT Innovation Initiative‘s Mission Innovation Program for a contract with the U.S. Air Force (USAF). The contract is part of USAF’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, whose mission, according to their website, is to “support scientific excellence and technological innovation through the investment of Federal research funds in critical American priorities to build a strong national economy.” 

VIA and MIT will work together to use VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) software to bridge data from one of USAF’s classified training programs to advanced commercial AI solutions, without comprising data security. 

“USAF training programs are rich with data, which AI can analyze, to produce unique insights. As you can imagine, this data is highly sensitive, so making it accessible to AI specialists outside of USAF has been a big challenge,” commented Joe Babiec, VIA’s SVP, Strategic Initiatives. 

He continued, “We’re proud to be working alongside MIT to help USAF connect to AI specialists while ensuring the security and privacy of training program data. Combining VIA’s unique technology with MIT’s AI expertise and experience collaborating with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) on confidential initiatives will yield great benefits for USAF.”

“MIT Innovation Initiative is excited to work with VIA on this project with the United States Air Force,” said MIT Innovation Initiative Executive Director, Gene Keselman. “VIA’s innovative new TAC™ software provides secure access to confidential and classified data for analysis. This ability to bring AI to the data can help the USAF tackle many challenging applications.” 

This is the fifth time VIA and its TAC™ software have been selected by USAF in the past 18 months, with the most notable contract signed in July 2020.

About VIA
Headquartered in Boston, VIA provides mission-critical software for secure data exchange and trustworthy AI without compromising speed, simplicity, or resilience. Its military-grade architecture helps defense, public safety agencies, and humanitarian organizations use AI while maintaining control of sensitive, distributed data even in contested or offline environments.

About MIT Innovation Initiative
Founded at MIT (https://web.mit.edu) in 2013, MIT Innovation Initiative is charged with delivering innovation to the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem by identifying problems and creating solutions faster, more effectively, and at scale; and to focus and amplify MIT’s natural strength in innovation in service to the world. The organization is a team of unceasingly inquisitive, data-obsessed problem solvers—academics, business professionals, military, alumni, and community-builders—dedicated to stewarding the innovation process from idea to world-changing impact. Learn more: https://innovation.mit.edu and https://innovation.mit.edu/mission-innovation-program.

Contact:

David Sweeney
Director of Communications
dws1052@mit.edu 

 

VIA Featured as Best Tech Startup in Somerville for Second Consecutive Year by The Tech Tribune

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For the second year in a row, VIA has been selected by The Tech Tribune as one of the Best Tech Startups in Somerville. According to their website, The Tech Tribune “delivers the latest technology news, in-depth technology articles, exclusive interviews with entrepreneurs, and insights on the hottest technology startups all over the world.”

The list includes ten companies in Somerville that provide solutions ranging from energy storage systems to deep learning models to robotics. 

VIA was included on this exclusive list last year and Kate Ravanis, COO and co-founder of VIA, was interviewed for The Tech Tribune’s website. Kate told the story of how VIA got its start, challenges along the way, and gave advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

For the full article from this year’s list, visit the Tech Tribune website.

VIA CEO Colin Gounden Featured as Keynote Speaker at IF Forum in Taiwan

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VIA CEO Colin Gounden gave the keynote presentation at the Evergreen University IF Forum virtual event in Taiwan. The event topic was the transition to clean energy, and more specifically, “The development, boundaries and imagination of privacy technology: Taking the energy transition.” 

After the event, the United Daily News, a local press outlet, published an article containing a large amount of content from Colin’s presentation. The article talks in depth about the transition to clean energy in the U.S. and how data privacy and analytics are playing a critical role in making that happen.

For the full article, visit the United Daily News website and for the recording of the event visit IF Forum’s YouTube channel.

Colin Gounden (circled) being introduced during the event.

VIA Selected as a Top Blockchain Company in America by Daily Finance

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VIA is proud to share that we have been selected by Daily Finance, “one of the fastest growing online finance, crypto and fintech magazines,” as a top blockchain company in the U.S.

Daily Finance gathered a list of the top startups and established leaders in the blockchain space and how well they have performed in one of the following categories: innovation, growth, management, and societal impact.

To read the full list, check out their article.

VIA Highlighted as Innovative Partner to Europe’s Largest Utility

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VIA’s COO, Kate Ravanis, was featured in two recent videos published on the LinkedIn page of Enel, Europe’s largest utility. Enel created the videos to demonstrate its collaboration with leading companies and its adoption of innovative technologies that accelerate the transition to clean energy. 

“We are extremely proud to be selected as one of Enel’s most innovative partners. As a $90Bn a year utility, Enel has a high bar for reliability and a requirement for solutions that scale. We’re excited to be the partner that Enel chose to demonstrate meeting their needs,” commented Ravanis. In the first video, Ravanis talks about the unique partnership VIA has with Enel. Enel posted, “Pushing innovation to the next level: listen to our partners to discover how we are fostering disruptive solutions with our global call, “ReShape” 👉.”

In the second video, Enel commented, “Startups are leading the way towards a successful energy transition. “At VIA, our mission is to accelerate the adoption of clean energy. It’s a double honor for us to be recognized as a leader and also our progress towards achieving our mission,” said Ravanis. Watch this video to discover more about our partners’ sustainable innovations and become part of our global community of solvers.”

VIA is proud to work with energy sector leaders that are focused on the future of clean energy.

About VIA
Headquartered in Boston, VIA provides mission-critical software for secure data exchange and trustworthy AI without compromising speed, simplicity, or resilience. Its military-grade architecture helps defense, public safety agencies, and humanitarian organizations use AI while maintaining control of sensitive, distributed data even in contested or offline environments.

Reversing the Curse: The 80 / 20 Split In AI Projects

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The USAF (a current VIA customer), as referenced in this 2020 congressional report, has prioritized funds to automate analyst workflows to, “directly tackle the challenge of analysts spending 80% of their time searching for data and 20% making sense of the data.” 

Interviews with analysts and our earliest experiences working with customers’ data has confirmed this 80/20 split. We even created a chart in our earliest VIA introductory materials:

To address this common challenge, VIA has been investing heavily in using our own AI and software development skills to reverse this ratio. We may never eliminate data gathering and cleaning tasks, but we can strive to reduce this to 20% of a project and thereby boost the productivity of data scientists. SWEET is the most recent example of how our TAC™ platform accomplishes this. 

We’re keen to hear from you about whether the 80/20 split is still the norm or if you are seeing it decrease (or *gasp* increase). Suggestions on tools or solutions that you would like to see are genuinely welcome.

Transformative Experiences at GDAC™ Virtual Mini-Series Session #2

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VIA had a record attendance of nearly 30 participants at the second installment of its GDAC™ Virtual Mini-Series this week. The session included customers from the US, Asia, and New Zealand and participants located in four different time zones, all eager to share their strategy and asset management experience for substation transformers.

The highlight of the event was the GDAC™ member panel led by Cristiano Marantes, Chief Executive of Ara Ake, an organization that connects technology innovation with energy industry leaders to lower emissions in New Zealand. The panel covered questions related to: 

  1. Insights about post-failure analysis of transformers
  2. Value from GDAC™ member gas benchmarks
  3. Business cases supported by the GDAC™ member portal
  4. Future equipment data to include in the GDAC™ program

Kate Ravanis, COO, remarked that “it was highly reaffirming to hear that the GDAC™ portal, launched earlier this year, was already being used to save time (one “person month” in one case) to prepare asset management plans and rate case materials.” 

This was one of many comments by participants in addition to the engineering and maintenance insights that were shared over the 90-minute session.

VIA is thrilled with the response to the mini-series and will continue hosting member (and potential member) events in the future.

To learn more about the GDAC™ program or to try out the 30-Minute Pilot, visit our website.

AFWERX Announces VIA Among Top Teams Selected to exhibit at EngageSpace (September 29-30) The Premier Event for the Space Industry

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Somerville, Mass., September 14, 2020 – AFWERX, the catalyst for fostering innovation within the U.S. Air Force, announced VIA as one of the 178 top participating teams selected from The AFWERX Space Challenge initiative to exhibit at EngageSpace, a virtual two-day event on September 29-30.

The AFWERX Space Challenge initiative is made up of four challenges targeted at creating integrated space operations leveraging the best in technology while maintaining security, being resilient and increasing agility. Four challenges were run concurrently focused on separate topics – Persistent ISR, DoD Commercial Space Partnerships, Global Space Transport and Delivery and Space Asset Resiliency.

Located in Somerville, VIA is competing in the Persistent ISR Challenge alongside a diverse group of teams that represent entrepreneurial startups, small businesses, large enterprises, academic institutions and research labs.

“The solutions submitted for these space challenges represent the bleeding edge of space innovation,” stated Brennan Townley, AFWERX Challenge Collaboration Lead. “We’re excited to highlight these innovators and connect them with opportunities across the Space ecosystem.”

The Persistent ISR Challenge strives to bring together the existing and future technology solutions to create a comprehensive Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) system that spans the globe.

Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) from Via Science Inc. (VIA) simplifies the fusion and tracking of data from disparate systems. TAC™ offers USAF Commanders a robust and flexible data fusion layer to feed operational dashboards, AI/ML-enabled decision support systems, or predictive analytics tools. Unlike other platforms, TAC™ brings an analyst’s query or algorithm to where data is located, runs analysis there, and only returns to the analyst authorized answers. This avoids the cost and complexity of centralizing data or creating data lakes.

The EngageSpace event will feature highly engaging opportunities to connect, educate and innovate with other like-minded attendees, industry leaders, individual innovators, academia, investors, as well as military and government leaders. The entire event is designed to transform and accelerate the industry, and enable government buyers to pursue the most promising innovative solutions to the most pressing and threatening Space scenarios.

Register for the EngageSpace event by visiting https://engage.space

“Data fusion is inherently complicated because essential data is distributed across physical or virtual storage locations; formats; degrees of quality and completeness; levels of security classification; and ownership (e.g., DOD, commercial vendor, public domain, etc.). We’re honored to be one of the few selected to present TAC™  to the Space and Missile Systems Center and Pacific Air Forces to address this need,” said Joe Babiec, VIA’s Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives.

About VIA
Headquartered in Boston, VIA provides mission-critical software for secure data exchange and trustworthy AI without compromising speed, simplicity, or resilience. Its military-grade architecture helps defense, public safety agencies, and humanitarian organizations use AI while maintaining control of sensitive, distributed data even in contested or offline environments.

ABOUT AFWERX
Established in 2017, AFWERX is a product of the U.S. Air Force, directly envisioned by former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. Her vision of AFWERX — to solve some of the toughest challenges that the Air Force faces through innovation and collaboration amongst our nation’s top subject matter experts. AFWERX serves as a catalyst to unleash new approaches for the warfighter through a growing ecosystem of innovators. AFWERX and the U.S. Air Force are committed to exploring viable solutions and partnerships to further strengthen the Air Force, which could lead to additional prototyping, R&D, and follow-on production contracts.

Fast Company named AFWERX Best Workplaces for Innovators on the 2020 List, honoring the top 100 businesses and organizations that demonstrate a deep commitment to encouraging innovation at all levels. AFWERX, U.S. Air Force’s innovation arm and catalyst for fostering innovation within the Air Force, came in at #16 ranking in the top 20 alongside brands such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Preview the live announcement with Stephanie Mehta, Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company, unveiled during the AFWERX Fusion 2020 Base of the Future Event & Showcase.

Media Contacts:

Tracy Skenandore / Makenzie Coombs
AFWERX@kirvindoak.com

 

Hawaiian Electric Extends Commitment to GDAC™: Substation Transformers

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VIA and Hawaiian Electric are pleased to share that Hawaiian Electric has extended its commitment to the Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™): Substation Transformers. By extending and expanding its commitment to GDAC™, Hawaiian Electric hopes to further improve decision making and regulatory support related to its transformer fleet. In its second year, Hawaiian Electric plans to use GDAC™ to more effectively assess the current and predicted health of its transformers to better plan and prioritize proactive replacements, strengthen spares assessment and contingency planning, and identify opportunities to further enhance its substation transformer preventive maintenance.

Hawaiian Electric recognized that GDAC™, from its founding, has the potential to develop new insights and enhance its current predictive capabilities by using advanced data science and analytics to learn from Hawaiian Electric’s and partner utilities’ historical transformer condition and failure data. Since then, in 2019, Hawaiian Electric helped increase GDAC™ membership by including its Maui County and Hawaiʻi Island operating areas, to expand analysis from more than 300 substation transformers on Oʻahu to 500-plus across Maui, Lānaʻi, Molokaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island.

“Hawaiian Electric has in the past performed various types of predictive analytics to forecast annual failures, determine adequate spares inventory, and estimate expected remaining life for our substation transformers. We joined GDAC™ to enhance our capabilities by learning from other members and learning more about the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Rick Pinkerton, Hawaiian Electric director of asset planning & strategy.

“We’re thrilled that Hawaiian Electric has extended its GDAC™ membership. At the end of last year, Hawaiian Electric was named “Utility of the Year” by Utility Dive for being a trailblazer in the industry and for its commitment to 100% clean energy by 2045 or earlier. Having the support of such an innovative and driven company can only help lead the entire utility industry to a more data-driven future,” said Kristen Merrill, VIA’s Vice President, Client Delivery.

Hawaiian Electric is supporting the recruitment of other members to join GDAC™: Substation Transformers to bolster predictive capabilities, gain more insights about their fleet, and to share practices and expertise.

About VIA
Headquartered in Boston, VIA provides mission-critical software for secure data exchange and trustworthy AI without compromising speed, simplicity, or resilience. Its military-grade architecture helps defense, public safety agencies, and humanitarian organizations use AI while maintaining control of sensitive, distributed data even in contested or offline environments.

About Hawaiian Electric
Hawaiian Electric serves 95 percent of Hawaiʻi’s 1.4 million residents on the islands of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi, and has a goal of 100 percent renewables by 2045.

VIA Interviewed for Carbotnic Podcast

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James McWalter of Carbotnic, a podcast that covers cleantech founders and investors, interviewed VIA’s CEO, Colin Gounden for a podcast titled, “Energy and Data Silos”.

In the podcast, Colin answers questions about how VIA solves problems for utilities, data issues that hamper machine learning, VIA’s 30-Minute Pilot process, how COVID-19 has actually increased efficiencies of VIA’s teamwork, and more on company culture and recruiting.

To listen to the podcast, visit the Carbotnic website or click the play button below!

Introducing SWEET: AI for Data Wrangling

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For the third installment of our blog series, Let’s TAC™ About It, we’d like to introduce you to SWEET, a built-in function on VIA’s TAC™ platform. So, are you ready to TAC™ about it?

SWEET stands for Smart Wrangling Engine for Extraction and Transformation. Check out the video (or the transcription that follows) to learn how we use AI to wrangle data!

Below is a transcription of the “Introduction to SWEET: AI for Data Wrangling” video.

Analysts need to transfer data from a spreadsheet to a database, often known as data wrangling. The analyst usually identifies a rule or multiple rules (such as: column x is data, row 5 is a header and can be discarded, and so on). The analyst then writes code to execute that rule. This works well when rules are easily identifiable. In most cases, however, this is incredibly time consuming.

Data scientists spend more time wrangling and cleaning data than on analysis and AI. The problem with that is analytics insights are of the highest value, but get the least amount of resources. The big leap in AI is being able to process information without humans writing all the rules.

As an example, computer vision is used to identify a dog. Think of all the varieties of dogs and all the possible variations in context that those dogs could be in. There isn’t an army of people large enough to write rules to identify a random dog in a random photo.

And yet, AI can.

VIA’s approach to data wrangling is to use some of the exact same AI algorithms used in image recognition. This works across a much wider variety of contexts and spreadsheet or file formats. Let’s take a look at how SWEET works.

Here’s a spreadsheet. What SWEET is going to do is use a number of different machine learning algorithms to automate the process of getting the information into a database format.

The first model uses machine vision to map out the spreadsheet. Purple represents blank space, green is headings, yellow is actual data. Once that model has run, there’s a second algorithm that takes a look at the content.

The second algorithm skips over the purple. It looks at the green (which is the headers) to know which column to write where in the database. Finally, it would take a look at the yellow area to write the data to the database.

A third machine learning algorithm determines which column is derived from other parts of the sheet. For example, a total column is just the sum of the other columns and may not be necessary to write to the database. The third model separates these derived columns from the raw data.

In this example, the ACCOUNT column turns out to be the total of the other columns added up. It could be difficult for a human to understand immediately, but one of our models does this instantly.

SWEET’s approach works irrespective of the format. The model doesn’t have to be re-trained when it comes across spreadsheets that are new or in different formats.

So, what’s new and different here? AI algorithms have been evolving quickly. Many of the models that we implemented didn’t exist just a few years ago.

The other insight is that we broke the “convert this spreadsheet into a db” problem into multiple steps and have a different AI algorithm for each step.

Combined, SWEET, a built-in function in VIA’s TAC™ ingestion engine, helps make processes that used to take analysts days to do manually and makes them instantaneous.

Update: July 31, 2020

The image below shows the steps SWEET takes to transform raw files into a standard format.

VIA Moves Technology Team from Griffintown to Purpose-Built Center in Downtown Montreal

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VIA, a leader in providing energy analytics while maintaining data privacy and security, is pleased to share that the company is moving its technology center from Griffintown to downtown Montreal. The move follows several months of scouting locations and gathering team needs and “wishlists”.

“In the last twelve months, VIA has grown five-fold and is set to double again this year. With this period of explosive growth, we needed a new location that met the needs of both our current and future team,” said Emma Fechney, VIA’s Head of People and Operations.

She continued, “We are excited to be part of the thriving AI network in Montreal. We aspire to make our space not only better suited to our growth but appealing to the academic and technical community by creating dedicated space for hosting future events and meetups. We made a decision to take an entire floor. This provides us increased room to accommodate both social distancing and growth.”

Key features of the new space includes four mother’s rooms, shower facilities, a non-binary bathroom, private access to our own floor, car parking, and space for bike storage. The new office is located just across the street from McGill University’s campus, has an exceptional view of Mont Royal, and is highly accessible by public transportation. McGill metro station is just a two-minute walk away.

Construction and personalization of the office space is currently underway. VIA is planning to allow optional attendance to the new office space beginning August 15th.

About VIA
Headquartered in Boston, VIA provides mission-critical software for secure data exchange and trustworthy AI without compromising speed, simplicity, or resilience. Its military-grade architecture helps defense, public safety agencies, and humanitarian organizations use AI while maintaining control of sensitive, distributed data even in contested or offline environments.

VIA Hosts First Installment of GDAC™ Virtual Mini-Series

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Last week, VIA was proud to host the first session of its GDAC™ Virtual Mini-Series. The event was invite-only and had over 20 participants including members from founding utilities, Hawaiian Electric and Vector. 

VIA advisor and former ABB executive, Andrew Bright gave a keynote presentation on two topics: physical resiliency trends for power transformers and trends in sensors. 

In addition to Andrew’s keynote, VIA presented “GDAC™ By The Numbers” (click image below) that covered quick stats on data, equipment, portal enhancements, and more for members.

Given the success of this first event, VIA hopes to continue the series and open it up to external participants to allow for a better understanding of GDAC™’s value. If you are interested in learning more about GDAC™, please email gdac@solvewithvia.com.

Kate Ravanis Interviewed for Profile of a Founder Blog

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VIA’s Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Kate Ravanis, was interviewed by The Tech Tribune for its Profile of a Founder blog. The blog features founders of companies selected by The Tech Tribune as the “Best Tech Startups,” from cities in the US. VIA was included as one of eight companies on the 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville list.

In the interview, Kate gives some insight on how VIA got its start, challenges along the way, and what the future holds for the company. She also gives some thoughtful advice for aspiring entrepreneurs:

“We have lots of values at VIA that I live by every day. I think the one that is most important and has made the most impact on my career is “love in = love out”. The idea behind the value is if you love what you do, it will show in all your interactions with colleagues, clients, and work. There are so many challenges that you will encounter on your journey, and it is often hard to see how you will get beyond them. I have found just focusing on the things that I truly believe in and the reasons that got me started in the first place have translated to stronger partnerships, customer relationships, and ultimately a team of colleagues who will stick by you until you come out successful on the other side.”

For the full interview, check out The Tech Tribune’s blog.

The Tech Tribune Includes VIA in 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville

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VIA is pleased to share that we have been included in The Tech Tribune’s 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville list. The list includes eight startups in Somerville with solutions that range from 3D printing to 360 degree smart video conferencing cameras to software for the rental real estate market.

According to the Tech Tribune, there were four factors in deciding the top startups including (1) revenue potential, (2) leadership team, (3) brand / product traction, and (4) competitive landscape. 

For the full list of startups, check out their website.