AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles hosted its eighth annual showcase of innovations this week, with the event designed to solve real-world challenges amid changing ocean and climate conditions.
Braid Theory’s IGNITE22 Global Tech Showcase on Tuesday, June 16, brought together more than 450 innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and government leaders shaping the blue and green economies. It featured entrepreneur exhibits, expert panels, investor conversations, and live technology demonstrations on land and in water.
Those attending got a close look at the companies and technologies working across the blue economy.
A highlight this year was a dedicated pavilion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Enterprise Program, featuring ocean intelligence teams from across the country. The pavilion spotlighted emerging tools, data and technologies designed to help communities, ports, businesses and governments better understand changing ocean and climate conditions.
The 35-acre ocean innovation campus in San Pedro has been years in the making, housed in 110-year-old port warehouses and operating through collaborations with universities, researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, investors and public agencies in search of solutions to emerging environmental challenges and centering around the answers that may dwell in the world’s oceans.
The idea, floated initially in the early 2000s, was to bring together universities and researchers to form the world’s largest ocean research technology hub, operating from a campus dubbed City Dock One, 2451 Signal St., Berth 58.
The concept got its first boost with an investment from the Annenberg Foundation.
Earlier this month, AltaSea announced a new STEM network program that will feature a partnership and coordinated science, technology, engineering and mathematics education-and-workforce ecosystem.
Partners joining AltaSea on that endeavor will be the Battleship Iowa, the Los Angeles Maritime Institute, Friends of Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and Los Angeles Harbor College. The entities will combine to provide a learning experience that links science, history, innovation and workforce pathways.
For information on that program, contact AltaSea’s Robin Aube at raube@altasea.org; for education programming and scheduling, contact Alan Hill at ahill@altasea.org.