Edinburgh, 5 June 2019
Last night, EICC relaunched its series of free public talks, which were recently rebranded as EICC Live. The first event in the new series examined Hyperloop - a futuristic mass transportation concept attributed to technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, which has links to the University of Edinburgh. Founded in 2015 and including international academics and students, the HYPED team from the city’s university is dedicated to accelerating research and development into Hyperloop in the UK.
The EICC’s public talk series, which were previously known as Innovation Nation, have been running since 2016 celebrating the best of innovation in Scotland. Previous lectures have featured industries including social enterprise, the arts, robotics, space and sports endurance with over one thousand people attending adventure cyclist Mark Beaumont’s Q&A in 2017.
Marshall Dallas, the EICC’s Chief Executive, said: “It’s our mission at the EICC to create an environment which inspires ideas that change the world and events like the Hyperloop public talk which kicked off our new EICC Live series, as well as the TEDSummit which will take place here in July, play their part in turning our vision into reality.”
Speaking at EICC Live Hyperloop, Gonzalo Gil (pictured above) currently Propulsion Project Manager and soon to be Technical Director, commented:
"Hyperloop is a relatively simple idea that has the potential to change mass transport, rearrange human geography, and set some intriguing technical challenges such as levitation and vacuum environments. HYPED is a student group pushing for it to be implemented in the UK. It's the type of thing we'd expect from a future civilisation, and we've taken on the challenge ourselves.”
The design of prototype ‘Poddy the Second’, which was on display at EICC Live, is a milestone in the development of scalable Hyperloop prototypes. It is one of the first prototypes to feature a plethora of the subsystems that we may one day see in a real Hyperloop.
September will see the second EICC Live of 2019, with Women in Tech on the 3rd of the month.