Daily Archives: November 27, 2019

BOSTON, Nov. 27, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cardiovascular disease(CVD) is currently the leading cause of death globally. The World Health Organisation reported that CVD, which encompasses all conditions linked to the heart and blood vessels, is responsible for 17 million deaths every year. This translates to a staggering 31% of all deaths globally. The WHO expects this figure to rise to over 23 million by 2030. In addition, CVD also represents a major economic burden. According to the American Heart Association, the annual cost of CVD to the economy is estimated to be over $500 billion in the USA. The prevalence and cost of CVD mean that there is an urgent need for solutions to raise standards of care and improve patient outcomes.

Although CVD has been a major health concern for decades, researchers are still struggling to address it or even understand it. Much effort is being put into tackling the disease at every stage of progression. Technology is helping to improve the way CVD can be detected, monitored and treated.

Diagnosing CVD is the first step in patients' road to recovery. It is imperative to detect the disease early in order to administer treatment while it is still treatable. In addition, preventing the disease altogether is becoming more important in healthcare. The main approaches for detecting CVD are currently in vitro diagnostics (IVD) at point-of-care (POC) and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in cardiovascular imaging. AI in imaging is of particular interest beyond imaging in general, because it is the integration of AI into these systems that is truly innovative. The four main types of POC diagnostics technologies are lab-on-a-chip (LOAC), electrochemical test strips, lateral flow assays (LFAs) and molecular diagnostics (MDx).

The protocols for monitoring patients are rapidly evolving. Historically, patients who fall ill are required to travel in order to visit a general practitioner or hospital. This procedure may soon become a thing of the past. The biggest trends in patient monitoring currently revolve around remote patient monitoring (RPM), which enables the patients' health to be examined from a distance. This means that healthcare professionals do not necessarily need to examine their patients in person. Instead, consultations can be conducted over video call and patient readings and information can be accessed through a digital platform. Cardiovascular RPM involves a number of connected medical devices for use in the home. Wearables such as skin patches, accessories and smart clothing are particularly relevant as most innovations are made in this field.

Many forms of CVD are chronic in nature, meaning that they worsen over time. Thus, once the disease has been diagnosed it is important to initiate treatment as soon as possible in order to provide positive patient outcomes. Current trends in the treatment of CVD revolve around cardiac rhythm management and cardiovascular tissue generation. The technologies are in various stages of development - some have been commercially available for decades and others are still in the proof-of-concept phase. The differences in levels of development reflect the depth of researchers' understanding of the diseases in question. For instance, pacemakers have been in use for over fifty years as cardiac rhythm was one of the first areas of cardiovascular health to be investigated. On the other hand, cardiac tissue engineering and bioprinting technologies are still in their infancy due to a lack of understanding of the complexities of re-creating human tissue.

In their latest report "Cardiovascular Disease 2020-2030: Trends, Technologies & Outlook" IDTechEx Research reports that the CVD technology market will exceed $40 billion by 2030. As developers' understanding of this disease grows, so will the range of devices at their disposal to address it. They have only scratched the surface of how technology can improve CVD patients' lives and, as they dig deeper, they will continue to unlock the potential of this growing market.

To find out more about Life Sciences research available from IDTechEx visit http://www.IDTechEx.com/LifeScior to connect with others on this topic, IDTechEx Events is hosting: Healthcare Sensor Innovations 2020 Conference on 17 - 18 March 2020 in San Jose, USA. Please visit http://www.HealthcareSensorInnovations.com/USA

IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Consultancy and Event products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information on IDTechEx Research and Consultancy contact research@IDTechEx.comor visit http://www.IDTechEx.com.

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IDTechEx Research Reports: The Cardiovascular Disease Technology Market Will Exceed $40 Billion by 2030 - PRNewswire

American Express is celebrating 10 years of Small Business Saturday by giving small business owners the information and tools they need to succeed in a changing world. And its bringing those insights to life through The Big Future of Shopping Small, an interactive retail space in New York City that introduces shoppers and small business owners to the future of retail, showcasing how technology and innovation are making shopping easier, more personalized, and sustainably conscious.

Between the presence of big retailers and a crowded online world, small businesses must rethink how theyll stand out in the future, the entrance to the experience declares. To explore this, weve reimagined Main Street to showcase the ways in which stores will use technology and innovation to change the landscape.

The Big Future of Shopping Small features technology such as augmented reality, which powers a virtual boutique that allows multiple small businesses to share shelf space, and enhances product labels to link to additional text, videos, or online stores to tell a complete brand story; artificial intelligence that uses biometrics to predict consumer preferences; and payment technologies that make frictionless shopping a realityno more waiting in line to check out.

The shopping experience, open to the public this weekend, coincides with a decade of supporting local businesses. Im especially delighted that youre all here to help us celebrate a really important milestone, said Walter Frye, vice president of global brand engagement for American Express, at the Toast to 10 Years of Small Business Saturday event.

But the pop-up shop is just one of the ways American Express is marking the anniversary. Its also partnering with Main Street America to give $10,000 grants to 10 small businesses to help their businesses innovate in this evolving retail landscape. The application will be available starting Nov. 30th.

According to new research, a majority of Americans (77%) are interested in spending money at a small business on Small Business Saturday this year, for the following reasons:

Over the last nine years, Americans have spent more than $100 billion at small businesses on Small Business Saturday, with two-thirds of those dollars estimated to stay in the local communities.

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American Express Unveils The Shopping Technology of the Future as it Celebrates 10 Years of Small Business Sat - Black Enterprise

Audio visual classroom solutions, IVCi, explains how AV technology is continuing to shape the future of higher education.

The AV industry has already drastically changed the way our society teaches and learns. Audio Visual (AV) technology is the latest advancement to shape the future of education. Some people believe that the use of AV technology will lead to the downfall of physical classrooms, while some believe it will only enhance the current way information is delivered. Whatever unfolds, one thing is for sure AV is continuing to shape the future of higher education. Heres how.

Connected devices. In our ever-connected world, we can expect to see students using their own devices to directly access their schools content and resources. Scalability of AV resources will be essential in keeping up with demand. Students expect to be able to easily connect and share their work on screens and with fellow classmates, both in classrooms and study rooms.

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The rise of AR and VR. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are two AV tools that are making their way into higher education. For example, students can now design objects with a 3D modeling tool and see them come to life with a 3D printer. In higher education for healthcare related fields, this can help students understand complex health systems in a realistic way.

New and engaging learning experiences. AV technology opens the door for students to learn in new and engaging ways that would otherwise be impossible. For example, medical, nursing, or healthcare students can witness emergency situations, complex surgeries, and bedside care through video, so they can get hands-on experience from anywhere.

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Distance learning. While online and hybrid classes are already available in many higher education institutes, AV allows the distance learning experience to be more immersive and inclusive. If AV technologies advance enough, there is a possibility that all higher education lectures can be delivered remotely.

How rapidly the higher education system transforms through AV depends greatly on the institutions willingness to adopt it. If more educators get on board with the shift, we could see AV technology completely overhaul higher education with endless learning potential.

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Audio Visual Classroom Solutions, IVCi, Explains How AV Technology is Continuing to Shape the Future of Higher Education - MarTech Series

The Transportation Security Administration is bracing for a record number of people at airport security checkpoints around the country this Thanksgiving. Nearly 27 million passengers are expected to be screened during the holiday period, meaning travelers could face long security lines. But new technology being tested by the TSA could speed up screenings and address passenger complaints over electronics, liquids and taking off their shoes.

In a field outside Providence, University of Rhode Island researchers are working on new ways to detect and stop explosives popular with terrorists. They're partnering with the Department of Homeland Security on a sensor called a "digital dog nose" that will soon be the size of cell phone. Able to be mounted on a drone, it could can detect homemade explosives as well or better than a bomb-sniffing dog.

They've also created a gel called "Schmoo" that can surround an explosive or chemical agent and flash-freeze it so it can be safely removed from a transit hub.

"We think about how to detect and mitigate the threats for today, while we're still realizing that if we get really good about today's threats, there's going to be a different threat tomorrow," said professor Jimmie Oxley, of the university's Center for Excellence for Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response. "What would that look like, and how would we attack it?"

About 2,700 miles away, at a new airport checkpoint in Las Vegas, the TSA's newest technology, in an area of Terminal 3 at McCarran International Airport, is being tested together for first time with real passengers. They call it their "Innovation Checkpoint."

"This is a glimpse into the future of what aviation security is going to look like," Jose Bonilla, the director of TSA's Innovation Task Force, told correspondent Kris Van Cleave. "What we're trying to do is, how do we make that a more seamless process for the traveling public, but not giving up on security capability? What you see here may not be here in a year. We may bring in new pieces of technology."

As passengers approach the innovation checkpoint, they'll see dynamic message boards. Next, new ID readers scan your license to quickly validate your identity and confirm you're flying that day, without needing to show officers your boarding pass

From there, carry-on bags go to a CT scanner. Electronics can stay in, and eventually the goal is liquids will, too.

The new scanners can more easily see through all the clutter in bags.

While it's not quite the scanner from "Total Recall," science fiction is coming alive with new walk-by body scanners. They display a generic male or female form and flag an area of the body where there may be a concern. The technology is also better at spotting non-metallic threats that a metal detector might miss.

"The improvement they really need to make for everybody is, don't take your shoes off!" said passenger Patrick Hinke.

"If they can speed it up a bit more, yeah. The ID thing was a little slow," said Keith Ross.

Deanna Sack said, "It's quicker. It definitely pushes people through a lot faster."

TSA hopes it can turn lessons learned at this Vegas checkpoint into reality around the country by 2022. Some of the technology, like the CT scanners, is already being rolled out at some airports.

TSA may also look to expand its use of facial recognition technology in the next few years.

Continued here:

TSA testing new technology like "Innovation Checkpoint" and "digital dog nose" to speed up screenings - CBS News

Recent advances in deepfake video technology have led to a rapid increase of such videos in the public domain in the past year. Face-swapping apps such as Zao, for example, allow users to swap their faces with a celebrity, creating a deepfake video in seconds.

These advances are the result of deep generative modelling, a new technology which allows us to generate duplicates of real faces and create new, and impressively true-to-life images, of people who do not exist.

This new technology has quite rightly raised concerns about privacy and identity. If our faces can be created by an algorithm, would it be possible to replicate even more details of our personal digital identity or attributes like our voice or even create a true body double?

Indeed, the technology has advanced rapidly from duplicating just faces to entire bodies. Technology companies are concerned and are taking action: Google released 3,000 deepfake videos in the hope of allowing researchers to develop methods of combating malicious content and identifying these more easily.

While questions are rightly being asked about the consequences of deepfake technology, it is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used for good, as well as ill. World leaders are concerned with how to develop and apply technologies that genuinely benefit people and planet, and how to engage the whole of society in their development. Creating algorithms in isolation does not allow for the consideration of broader societal concerns to be incorporated into their practical applications.

For example, the development of deep generative models raises new possibilities in healthcare, where we are rightly concerned about protecting the privacy of patients in treatment and ongoing research. With large amounts of real, digital patient data, a single hospital with adequate computational power could create an entirely imaginary population of virtual patients, removing the need to share the data of real patients.

We would also like to see advances in AI lead to new and more efficient ways of diagnosing and treating illness in individuals and populations. The technology could enable researchers to generate true-to-life data to develop and test new ways of diagnosing or monitoring disease without risking breaches in real patient privacy.

These examples in healthcare highlight that AI is an enabling technology that is neither intrinsically good nor evil. Technology like this depends on the context in which we create and use it.

Universities have a critical role to play here. In the UK, universities are leading the world in research and innovation and are focused on making an impact on real-world challenges. At UCL, we recently launched a dedicated UCL Centre for Artificial Intelligence that will be at the forefront of global research into AI. Our academics are working with a broad range of experts and organizations to create new algorithms to support science, innovation and society.

AI must complement and augment human endeavour, not replace it. We need to combine checks and balances that inhibit or prevent inappropriate use of technology while creating the right infrastructure and connections between different experts to ensure we develop technology that helps society thrive.

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Written by

Geraint Rees, Professor of cognitive neurology, University College London

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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How the technology behind deepfakes can benefit all of society - World Economic Forum

As urban populations continue to grow, some cities are struggling to cope. Many are turning to new technologies for cost-effective solutions to clean up waste.

Cities that address waste problems immediately have the best chance to avoid severe long-term consequences, says Ricardo Cepeda-Mrquez, solid waste director for C40 Cities, a global network of cities committed to tackling climate change.

Waste that goes uncollected can lead to blocked drains, flooding and the spread of waterborne diseases. Organic matter dumped in landfills where it lacks the air to decompose quickly generates methane gas, accelerating climate change.

Generating energy from waste

The plant, which burns waste instead of fossil fuels, is capable of converting 450,000 tons of trash into energy annually, delivering electricity to 30,000 households and heating to 72,000.

Though it still produces CO2 emissions from burning, the city plans to install a system to capture the carbon released by the incineration process, and then store the carbon or find a commercial use for it. By tapping an otherwise unused resource, it will also help the city move away from its dependence on fossil fuels.

"Instead of placing waste outside in a big landfill, we use the waste to produce energy for heating and electricity in the most efficient way currently available," the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen told CNN Business in an email.

"Efficient waste incineration supplies district heating for 99% of the buildings in Copenhagen, so we will eliminate the pollution from coal, oil and petroleum," he adds, helping the capital meet its goal to become the world's first carbon-neutral city by 2025.

But Cepeda-Mrquez warns that this technology has its limits. A city needs solid infrastructure and a strong waste collection system already in place before it can reap the benefits of one of these plants.

"Many global south cities, with badly managed waste management systems, expect that with the ideal incinerator or waste-to-energy facility all of their problems will go away," he says. "But if you have a broken system, there is no technology that is going to fix it."

Smarter systems

Other cities are starting on a street level, using artificial intelligence and automation to sort recyclables, or sensors to reduce the amount thrown away.

For instance, Singapore and Seoul, South Korea, have installed smart, solar-powered trash cans on their streets. Each is equipped with a compactor, enabling it to hold more trash. Once the bin is full, its sensors alert the waste collectors.

Typically, cities send out different trucks to collect different types of waste - one truck collecting plastic for recycling, another collecting food waste, for example. But that requires a lot of trucks, which means added costs and more traffic.

"In many cities in Europe, the streets are very narrow, and there isn't a lot of open space for multiple waste collection trucks to be doing the rounds," says Cepeda-Mrquez.

Norway's capital Oslo has designed a clever model to avoid this. Since 2012, city residents have been required to use different colored bags for different types of waste, and instead of collecting them separately, trucks gather all the bags at once and take them to an optical sorting plant.

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How cities are using technology to solve their trash problems - CNN

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Gator Technology opens operations in Midland - Midland Reporter-Telegram

Through this joint initiative, Katalyst and Bernstein have donated 130 units of BoardShare, a portable technology tool created by Katalyst that allows users to create their own personalized interactive whiteboard, to 11 schools and educational organizations in the Chicago area. Katalyst and Bernstein will also provide training and support for how this technology can be applied in the classroom.

"Education is a powerful equalizer and provides an opportunity for everyone regardless of their background," says Rahul Shah, CEO of Katalyst Technologies and BoardShare. "At Katalyst, we believe that every school and child should have the opportunity and equal access to quality technology tools like BoardShare to enhance students' education experiences that help shape their futures."

"We are excited to be partnering with Katalyst to bring state of the art educational technology to our local Chicago community," said Richard Meyers, Senior Managing Director at Bernstein. "Social responsibility has been deeply woven into our culture at Bernstein, and we're committed to making an impact in the communities where we live and work."

To learn more about Katalyst Technologies, please visit http://www.katalysttech.com.

About Katalyst Technologies:

Katalyst Technologies Inc. is a best-in-class software, technology services, and solutions provider. Our business and technology experts are highly skilled and work seamlessly across multiple industries, geographies, and technologies. Katalyst's core areas of expertise are in ERP, supply chain and logistics, engineering & manufacturing, digital & e-commerce, professional services, and publishing. Katalyst has offices around the globe with locations in the U.S, UK, and India. To learn more about Katalyst's partnership with Bernstein, get in touch with Katalyst Technologies today.

About Bernstein:

Founded more than 50 years ago, Bernstein Private Wealth Management, a unit of AllianceBernstein L.P. (AB), provides investment planning advice and services to individuals, families, endowments, foundations and other financial guardians, so that they can reach their long-term investment objectives. Our global research enables us to customize a portfolio that suits any investment goal, income need, tax situation or tolerance for risk. The firm manages $89 billion in assets as of December 31, 2018. For more information, visit http://www.bernstein.com.

About AllianceBernstein:

AllianceBernstein (AB) is a leading global investment management firm that offers high-quality research and diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets.

SOURCE Katalyst Technologies

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Katalyst Technologies and Bernstein Team Up to Provide Instructional Support for Chicago Schools - PRNewswire

If they were to compete in the Olympics, big, incumbent tech vendors would be weightlifters, not gymnasts more equipped for feats of power and endurance than flexibility and precision.

Getting a gold medal from their clients today, though, requires a little of both.

When we look at the current market trends, we see organisations have reached a point where they have no choice but to simplify their IT landscape, says Maroun Edde, group chief executive officer of Murex, which has been a leading provider of technology to the capital markets for more than 30 years. What is attractive to banks is the idea that they can unify their data, creating a single source of truth for positions, market data, models and calculations, and share it across the enterprise for sales, trading, P&L, risk, accounting and reporting.

Thats the weightlifting bit of the analogy a vendor with scale can help banks bring together their siloed datasets and parallel systems, removing complexity and cost. Murex has the heft to pull it off. Due to its longevity, the firm has deep roots at many clients and in MX.3 it has a cross-asset, cross-function, front-to-back-office platform that could, in theory, perform the unifying role banks seek.

But incumbency and an existing platform is not enough, says Edde. A successful vendor must also be supple enough to support a bank as it evolves and changes its own business to be a gymnast.

Last year, we invested 108 million in research and development to enrich our platform at many levels, including functionality and underlying technology, says Edde. That represents around 20% of our revenue, which is a larger share than many big tech companies invest. And we have done that year-on-year for the last 10 years.

As a comparison, Googles parent company Alphabet spent roughly 15% of its revenues on R&D in 2018.

Investment at Murex included support for incoming market risk capital rules the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book and initial margin calculations. More recently, the company put together a global taskforce to analyse the impact of Libor reform, adapted its multi-curve framework to handle the change and developed transition mechanisms for new benchmarks.

In terms of underlying technology, Murex has focused on adapting its applications for the cloud, including moving to the Linux operating system and adding support for Amazon Relational Database Service. The company is also developing new cloud-native functionality, claims Edde, although its keeping the details under its hat for now.

While Murex has the deep pockets to outgun many vendors on R&D, it still needs to roll new developments out to users. One of the challenges we have is how to make sure we deliver innovation to our clients and make the upgrade process easier, says Edde.

To this end, Murex has embraced a DevOps approach a modern method of combining software development and operations to shorten the development lifecycle, deliver code continuously rather than in infrequent version releases and ensure its quality. The company has reinforced this with a set of tools for automating testing, system configuration and operational environment management.

So far so good, but rival vendors have noted that clients can be attached to their in-house tech, and therefore offer them modules and extensions to supplement that infrastructure, rather than replace it. Approaches such as microservices and application programming interfaces (APIs) make it relatively easy for banks to plug in extra bits of functionality, these vendors argue.

Eddes rebuttal is that a patchwork quilt of services and systems requires more reconciliation of data and calculations, making it harder to achieve the goal of a single, primary record.

By tightly coupling critical functionality across trading, back office and risk, Edde argues its easier to achieve consistency of trade data, market data, models, interest rate curves and other essential elements. Beyond these core functions, there is a legitimate argument for looser coupling, he acknowledges.

Where activities such as trade reporting, margin reconciliation and portfolio compression take the output of the core functionality, or where close co-operation between counterparties is required, Murex is opening up access to MX.3 through APIs to allow clients more choice. The company is also enabling clients to create digital services for their end-users off the back of the platform.

Clients are becoming more interested in monetising their technology assets, says Edde. In an initial step along this road, Murex is evolving its API framework for banks to distribute prices to sales and digital portals. The company is now talking with clients about other ways to exploit the platform.

A more recent challenge is from vendors that aim to give organisations the core technology of a capital markets platform plus a development toolkit with which they can create their own functionality. Edde says that while Murex offers some capabilities in this area, this is a smaller part of the overall equation.

Our strengths are the ability to unify data and to integrate business processes. Following that, we are bringing as much flexibility to the platform as we can, he says.

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Technology vendor of the year: Murex - Risk.net

(This story is part of the Weekend Brief edition of the Evening Brief newsletter. To sign up for CNBC's Evening Brief, click here.)

Venture capital funding for clean energy technology companies has declined after years of lackluster performance drove investors to other sectors. But a new fund is making a big bet that it's possible to back clean tech companies at the earliest and often riskiest stages, all without sacrificing returns.

In October, Clean Energy Ventures announced that it raised $110 million for its first fund, which will target "the current capital gap for seed and early-stage investment in promising advanced energy innovations," a press release said.

The firm's strategy rests on the belief that without reinventing the wheel, and without compromising returns, it can identify and fund scalable, capital-efficient start-ups that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With this influx of capital the fund's three principles, who between them have backed more than 30 early-stage clean tech companies over their combined 40-plus years of investing, are looking to back companies in areas like energy storage, grid connectivity and clean transportation.

"There's a valley of death right now. There's a lot of brilliant technology that's being built but to get to a Series A or Series B it's a long haul," Clean Energy Ventures co-founder Temple Fennell said to CNBC. "Some people consider us a special forces team that's brought in with capital and talent."

In the mid-2000s, the backdrop for clean tech investing seemed almost too good to be true.

Oil and natural gas prices were rising, which accelerated the demand for cheaper renewable energy. The government began issuing tax credits for alternative sources of power. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" captured the nation's attention. Money flowed in as investors looked to profit on the promise of revolutionized industries.

But then the financial crisis hit. It became harder to borrow money. Natural gas prices also dropped, and an oversupply of Chinese-made solar panels flooded the market. Ultimately, more than half of the $25 billion that flowed into the clean tech sector between 2006 and 2011 was lost.

It might seem easy to blame the financial crisis as the primary reason for the failure, but a 2016 research report from the MIT Energy Initiative argued that the majority of companies actually failed for reasons independent of the broader economic backdrop. The venture capital model where investors supply limited funding upfront and expect relatively fast returns was not always conducive to the frequently capital-intensive, longer time frame nature of clean tech companies that were trying to reinvent the landscape.

"Cleantech companies developing new materials, hardware, chemicals, or processes were poorly suited for VC investment because they required significant capital, had long development timelines, were uncompetitive in commodity markets, and were unable to attract corporate acquirers," the authors of "Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean Energy Innovation" wrote in 2016.

After combing through the data, the researchers found that "the biggest money loser for VCs was the segment of cleantech companies commercializing fundamentally new materials and processes." For example, solar companies that tried to replace silicon in solar panels ran into difficulties when trying to scale their model.

That said, other areas that also have capital-intensive models, like medical technology, didn't fare nearly as badly. After comparing the two sectors, the researchers found that there were too few large companies willing to acquire clean tech start-ups. This unwillingness, coupled with the time and capital-restrictive nature of venture capital investing, created a challenging environment for clean tech companies.

More than 90% of clean tech companies funded between 2007 and 2011 failed to return even the initial capital to investors, the MIT Energy Initiative found. So it's no surprise that while the need for greenhouse gas-reducing companies was recognized, for the most part, investors became weary of the space.

Investors were beginning to dip their toes back into clean tech when, in 2017, Clean Energy Ventures decided to begin raising capital for its inaugural fund.

The new fund was spun out of Clean Energy Venture Group, a private investment vehicle through which the founders had been investing in green companies since 2005. Investments included companies like MyEnergywhich was acquired by Nest and then, in turn, by Alphabetand Pika Energy, which was bought by Generac.

Dan Goldman, Temple Fennell and David Miller, the three co-founders of Clean Energy Ventures, had invested together before, but informally. That changed around 2016. They identified a need for funding clean tech companies just starting out which the Street was largely unwilling to consider and, given their deep ties to the clean energy entrepreneurship community, founding a new energy-specific fund seemed a logical next step.

They assembled a team comprised of people skilled both technically and operationally, and who had experience growing a company. Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz was among the people who joined the company's strategic advisory board. Initially targeting a fund size of $75 million, the trio wound up raising $110 million.

From the get-go the fund's strategy has been simple: instead of looking for start-ups that are trying to disrupt entire industries, focus instead on those that can improve existing companies.

"We're constantly looking at where we can disrupt the value chain of existing incumbents," said Fennell.

What that means is that the fund might invest, for example, in material companies whose products will help vehicles become lighter and therefore more carbon efficient, rather than in companies trying to fundamentally change the automotive industry.

Underlying every investment is an actionable plan for how that company can meaningfully contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases.

"One of our criteria is we only invest in companies that we believe will reduce at least 2.5 gigatons of greenhouse gases or carbon equivalent tons between now and 2050," Fennell said.

While the fund ultimately wound up exceeding its capital target, Fennell said that it was difficult to entice institutional investors back into clean tech. A good bit of their capital instead came from family offices, which typically have more flexible timelines and investing criteria.

Clean Energy Ventures focuses on start-ups in the United States and Canada that are capital-efficient and scalable.

The fund plans to invest in around 25 companies over the next 4-5 years. The goal of every company in which Clean Energy Ventures invests will be, first and foremost, to drastically reduce emissions. But there should also be a clear path toward commercialization within 3-5 years. Given the accelerated time frame, Clean Energy Ventures typically looks for companies that can plug into "the existing infrastructure and the existing incumbent channels."

The firm currently has seven companies in its portfolio, including SparkMeter, Leading Edge Crystal Technologies and LineVision.

SparkMeter, which has also received funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, led by Bill Gates, offers smart metering solutions for utility companies typically in remote locations. Leading Edge Crystal Technologies, which was spun out of Applied Materials, is developing cheaper, more efficient, and longer-lasting wafers for solar panels. And LineVision focuses on optimizing power grids' reliability and safety, among other things, by using a network of sensors.

The fund has been known to invest alongside large, publicly traded companies like 3M, Emerson Electric and Applied Materials. Sometimes large companies will even bring startups whose technology they are interested in using to Clean Energy Ventures so that the fund can help them hone and scale their business.

Once the startup has gone through several funding rounds and proven that it has market traction and global scalability, Clean Energy Ventures will typically hand it off to larger partners.

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Clean energy technology was thought to be uninvestable. One fund thinks otherwise - CNBC