It is halfway through 2023, and Peachtree Corners and Curiosity Lab have been making this year count. In addition to the numerous awards the city and Curiosity Lab have received so far this year for setting the blueprint for smart cities across the U.S., Curiosity Lab’s international recognition and relationships have continued to expand globally. As a result, the team continues to receive invites to send delegations across the globe to build relationships with startups, incubators and potential partners.
The most recent delegation Curiosity Lab participated in was a 2023 trade delegation to Israel. Last year, Curiosity Lab and City of Peachtree Corners were invited to send a delegation here to speak at EcoMotion Week 2022, a highly respected smart mobility conference. The U.S. trade delegation trip and conference were so successful, Curiosity Lab and Peachtree Corners were invited to send a delegation and speak at the EcoMotion Week 2023 conference, for a second time.
Curiosity Lab and Peachtree Corners’ 2023 trade delegation included Curiosity Lab Executive Director Brandon Branham and Economic Development Advisors Guy Tessler and Michael Piha.
The delegation kicked off with a welcome dinner hosted by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides. This event was held in honor of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and served as the perfect evening to discuss the future of technology and innovation in the U.S. with Israeli leaders and the Georgia Commissioner of Economic Development Pat Wilson.
The delegation continued with the kickoff of EcoMotion Week 2023. EcoMotion is one of the most exciting smart mobility events in the world and each year brings together thousands of innovators across startups, industry, investors and the public sector for a week of events. With the goal to positively impact communities and the environment through collaboration, networking and partnerships, Curiosity Lab was the perfect fit to attend and speak again at this year’s event.
This year, Curiosity Lab and Peachtree Corners had a booth at the event, where delegation members spoke with hundreds of conference attendees. Curiosity Lab Executive Director Brandon Branham also spoke on a panel on the conference’s mainstage where Branham shared more about our smart city, startup innovation and the importance of public-private partnerships when establishing smart cities and smart mobility projects for sustainable city development. He was joined by an incredible group of panelists including Dr. Smadar Itskovich at Israel Living Lab, Joost Ortjens Luxembourg Trade and Investment, Kathryn Snorrason at State of Michigan – Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and Afif Afifi at Afifi Group.
“It was an honor to be invited back to EcoMotion Week 2023,” said Branham. “Israel has an unbelievable number of groundbreaking innovators across mobility, smart cities and more, and we are always looking for the next bleeding edge technologies and companies to bring back with us to Peachtree Corners. EcoMotion Week does a fantastic job bringing together leaders in mobility and smart city spaces across the globe, making this a target environment for Curiosity Lab to continue to collaborate and partner with these innovators. This delegation continues to strengthen our ties with Israel, and we are looking forward to continuing to build our relationships with up-and-coming startups.”
Following Branham’s panel, the Peachtree Corners delegation had a handful of meetings during the conference and offsite at various company headquarters. While on-site, Branham met with CityZone, Tel Aviv’s laboratory for startups and corporate companies to test, design and study new smart city technologies. While in Tel Aviv, the Curiosity Lab team was able to tour their facilities and see their testing site in person. We are looking forward to exploring partnership opportunities with CityZone in the future!
Meetings continued with XTEND, a company that develops revolutionary human-guided autonomous drone systems that can enable any operator to perform extremely accurate actions, in any environment with minimal training. Utilizing sophisticated VR, sensor fusion and patented Mark & Fly technology, this technology allows operations to have superior situational awareness and understanding to make tactical decision making. These solutions are a great fit for police forces in managing various potentially hazardous situations. It was a fantastic meeting with this company, as we are always looking to expand drone use cases and testing at Curiosity Lab.
The Curiosity Lab team also had the chance to visit Tel Aviv’s Municipal Innovation Center for a hands-on tour. This center provides an advanced technology experience showcasing a variety of experiential stations for companies to collaborate and test cutting-edge technology. Many of these companies are leading the smart city technology developments in Israel with the goal of improving the everyday lives of residents. While here, Branham was able to tour the center and discuss potential partnership opportunities with Curiosity Lab. We are looking forward to seeing how this relationship will grow!
While in Tel Aviv, Curiosity Lab was excited to meet with companies focused on renewable energy, including Dorel Group. Dorel Group is a global leader in renewable energy and developed the first solar project, the first solar storage project and the first agrivolatic project in Israel. We are excited to be connected and are looking forward to a potential partnership in the near future as Curiosity Lab is excited to continue to bring more sustainable technologies back to Peachtree Corners.
The delegation also met with companies including RoadSense and Flycomm, which are already working to have their technologies deployed in our smart city. RoadSense’s solution collects real-time data from roads and streets and uploads it directly to the cloud where the data is analyzed through AI and machine learning. This allows the city to generate usable data that will allow the city managers to improve our roadways. This will be deployed on Curiosity Lab’s smart city infrastructure next month! Flycomm’s product is also currently being installed across our infrastructure. This platform allows users to maximize network potential, improves resource allocation, ensures coverage and allows for cost-effective planning. This solution will be key as we continue to build and add technologies to our ‘city street of the future’!
To wrap up the week, the team was excited to meet with additional Israeli startups across lidar, autonomous vehicle technologies, IoT platforms for urban planning, defense and safety systems and more including ITC, 4D2C, S3AFE, NOTraffic, Innoviz, Cognata and more. We were also happy to meet with current Curiosity Lab partners as well, including Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) and Cyber2.0, where we were excited to discuss a potential hackathon coming to Curiosity Lab this Fall.
Curiosity Lab’s 2023 delegation trip to Israel was an incredible one packed with successful meetings, establishing official partnerships with various startups and smart city organizations and continuing to strengthen existing relationships across Israel. Thank you to EcoMotion Week 2023 for having us for a second year – we are already looking forward to EcoMotion Week 2024!