DEEP

Mohamed Slim Alouini is one of the world’s leading voices on near-space infrastructure. As the UNESCO Chair in Education to Connect the Unconnected and a pioneer in wireless communications at KAUST, Alouini argues that the next leap in global connectivity won’t come from satellites or towers — but from the  stratosphere . In this episode, we break down how  High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS)  ...

Few people can say they’ve lived in space but Sandy Magnus has. In this episode of Deep, Ben Kaplan talks with the former NASA astronaut who spent four and a half months aboard the International Space Station, logged three shuttle missions, and later became Chief Engineer for Advanced Capabilities at the U.S. Department of Defense. Magnus shares what it’s like to move to space rather than just vis...

Quantum technologies are no longer just physics experiments. they’re beginning to scale into real-world infrastructure. In this episode of  Deep , Ben Kaplan sits down with  Prineha Narang, Professor of Physical Sciences and Electrical & Computer Engineering, and the Howard Reiss Chair at UCLA , to explore how quantum computing, sensing, and networks are moving from lab demos into data centers...

AI’s recent breakthroughs may feel sudden — but as John Hennessy points out, they’re the result of decades of work. In this episode of  Deep , Ben Kaplan talks with the former Stanford president, RISC chip pioneer, and current Alphabet chairman about the long arc of innovation: why the last 10 years have delivered AI’s biggest payoffs, how universities fuel trillion-dollar industries, and why cutt...

We’re promised a future of robot helpers, autonomous drones, and intelligent machines — so where are they? In this episode of  Deep , Ben Kaplan sits down with Vijay Kumar, Dean of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a world leader in robotics, to ask why we’re still waiting. They dig into the real obstacles holding back industrial robots, why your toddler might be more dexterous tha...

What do tiny worms, RNA strands, and a 9600-baud modem have in common? They helped Gary Ruvkun win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In this episode of DEEP , Ben Kaplan sits down with the Harvard geneticist whose discovery of microRNAs shattered scientific orthodoxy and jumpstarted a biotech revolution. Ruvkun unpacks how these microscopic molecules function like hotfixes for your D...

What if you could simplify a complex camera lens system down to a single flat surface—and mass produce it with the same machines that make computer chips? Federico Capasso, Harvard professor, optics pioneer, and co-founder of Metalenz, joins Ben Kaplan to talk about how metasurfaces and nano-optics could transform everything from smartphones to AR glasses to medical imaging. Capasso, known for inv...

In this thought-provoking episode of DEEP , host Ben Kaplan of DEEP Venture Partners speaks with Professor Christos Masouros, one of the world's leading experts on 6G communications. They explore how 6G will fundamentally shift wireless technology from pure communication to a powerful hybrid of communication and sensing , transforming every cell tower and base station into a mini radar system....

In this episode of DEEP, hosts Ben Kaplan and Daniel Hoffer of DEEP Venture Partners sit down with Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai Technologies, to explore his remarkable journey from MIT professor of applied mathematics to leader of a global tech company worth over $10 billion. Tom discusses how Akamai evolved from pioneering the world's first Content Delivery Network (CDN)—revolutionizing the sp...

Welcome to DEEP, the show exploring the breakthrough technologies reshaping our world. In this premiere episode, Ben Kaplan of Deep Venture Partners sits down with Michael Black, among the world's leading experts on computer vision and AI, to uncover the cutting-edge advancements in 3D modeling, human behavior analysis, and robotics. From the challenges of autonomous driving to the surprising role...