Engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs sat side-by-side last week as the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab hosted its first Meshmerise event in the United States at Dassault Systèmes Boston campus.
Meshmerise, a sort of portmanteau combining the words mesh, mesmerize, and rise, aims to bring together movers and shakers in the tech industry to fuel impactful innovation. The late September gathering was the latest installment of the Meshmerise series of events.
The evening began with a thoughtful introduction of the lab and its mission, including a welcome by Suchit Jain, vice president of strategy and business development at SOLIDWORKS.
Then, one by one, five start-up founders took the stage in a quick-fire pitch session intended to pique interest among attendees for potential collaboration and even investment. Among the presenters were Cormac Hondros-McCarthy of LobsterLift, Jose Wong of Dynocardia, Raj Malhotra of Smartweave, Jared Meyers of Augment Health and Athena Kasvikis of Behave Bras. They each provided a brief overview of their companies, whose technologies range from blood pressure monitoring devices to innovative undergarments, and how Dassault Systèmes’ software has enabled them to achieve success in developing their products.
Following the pitch session came a panel discussion featuring Joyce Sidopolous, co-founder and COO of Mass Robotics, and Matt Carney, PhD, a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab. The two discussed the future of robotics and the kind of role that robots will play in workplaces.
While there’s still some apprehension about robots potentially taking jobs away from humans, both Sidopolous and Carney noted the net positives that can come from using them for precision, safety and efficiency.
In a field like healthcare, they suggested, using robots for jobs like fetching pills would enable humans to deploy technology in a way that’s helpful and useful. Sidopolous noted that while robots could accomplish task-oriented duties, they lack empathy, so a human touch would still be needed. Carney suggested that for something like physical therapy — where providers typically only see patients for an hour or so a week — robots could be used to fill in the gaps, so to speak, for the rest of the time. By monitoring a patient’s progress, a robot could provide on-the-fly adjustments to provider-dictated exercises, indicating a meshing of tech and human touch.
The panel was followed by a question and answer session with the panelists and then attendees had the opportunity to speak with the start-up founders and tour the 3DEXPERIENCE lab.
The Boston campus lab is one of four 3DEXPERIENCE labs around the world: the others are in France, Germany and India. It’s focused largely on innovation opportunities that are local to the area, and is associated with the Center for Bits and Atoms at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Start-ups and innovators at the lab enjoy access to both a physical space as well as an online digital platform that aims to proliferate collaboration. Opportunities include bootcamps and hackathons, mentoring programs, exchange projects and more.
Check out the full recording of the event on the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab YouTube page and check out the launch of the lab’s Munich campus.
Shoshana is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. With experience in journalism, marketing, and PR, her work has been published around the world and across the internet.