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\h        Announcer: Please welcome Carol Sugars, pilot of the world's first biofuel powered jet.[ APPLAUSE ]

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\h        Carol Sugars: Thank you. Well, it's an honor and I'm very humbled to be invited to present today.

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\h        It's also somewhat ironic as I think you all will see towards the end of my presentation why it is somewhat

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\h        ironic that I’m here to share my ideas on what I consider to be the inspiration of innovation.

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\h        It's my opinion that it takes inspiration to be innovative,

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\h        and I’m going to share a small project that I was involved in,

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\h        and then explain to you why I think I have the ability to innovate in the way that we do in the project.

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\h        It's October 2007, I’m taking off for Reno, Nevada in an aircraft powered entirely by buy bio fuel.

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\h        There's not an ounce of petroleum-derived fuel in the airplane.

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\h        The fuel was manufactured from, in this case recycled vegetable oil, 100% of it.

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\h        They said it couldn't be done but we proved otherwise.

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\h        This garnered quite some attention, got me in the "Guinness Book of Records."

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\h        The following year in 2008 we decided to capitalize on what we did,

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\h        and we decided to take the aircraft coast to coast.

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\h        We flew from Reno, Nevada, in October of 2008 and landed in Leesburg, Florida, in November.

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\h        This again garnered some attention in the media.

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\h        The goal of the project was not engineering test flight or fuel development.

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\h        The reason we were happy to be in the media was that the whole point

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\h        behind the project was to raise awareness.

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\h        It was to raise awareness of the fact that we can use biofuels in aviation.

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\h        It was also proof of concept. Yes, look, we can do this.

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\h        We used technology that was developed, the aircraft was manufactured in 1968,

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\h        the technology to manufacture the fuel is pre-world war II technology.

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\h        It was not a fuel development program and it was not an engineering test flight program,

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\h        although we did have to do some test flying in order to make the project possible.

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\h        The aircraft that we used was an aero body, try saying that fast,

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\h        l-29 dolphin jet advanced trainer used by the soviet bloc in the pre -- in the cold war days.

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\h        The fuel that we used is another word, try saying this fast, a transesterfied methyl oil trans fatty acid.

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\h        I'm not a chemist. Transesetrfication makes vegetable oils and moves a

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\h        few atoms or molecules around and turns vegetable oil into an essentially usable fuel.

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\h        The limitations and challenges to using a biofuel in a turbo jet were three materials compactability,

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\h        cold flow and energy density, I designed and had built a small test cell with an engine similar to the one

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\h        the same as the one in the aircraft to prove that the fuel was

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\h        safe and usable and we mitigated all of these limitations, just operationally.

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\h        We did not have to redesign or do any modifications to the engine,

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\h        and the energy density we just had to allow for the fact that the fuel is slightly less energy,

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\h        contains less energy per unit weight or unit volume than jet fuel.

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\h        My role in the project, well, I was the test pilot,

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\h        I was the pilot that was approved by the FAA to fly the aircraft,

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\h        and I did all the operational the planning and designed the flight test programs.

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\h        Assembled a small team, we had to have a chase aircraft,

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\h        we had to have a lot of collaboration with various other stakeholders such as the aircraft,

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\h        support aircraft pilots, the airfields that we went to.

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\h        My partner throughout all of this was his overall vision to do a biofuel and aviation project.

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\h        He looked after all of the financing, all of the media, and all of the sponsorship arrangements.

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\h        We decided video everything we made a was a documentary video that was seen on the discovery channel,

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\h        it was very daunting having a cameraman looking at you all the time while

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\h        you're doing a somewhat high profile and interesting flight test program.

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\h        However, when we pressed on with the camera pointing at us all the time,

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\h        significant amount of collaboration obviously. We had to collaborate with the FAA.

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\h        This is a photograph from somebody from the FAA actually smiling.

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\h        We kept him happy, I managed to keep him happy and he let us do the flight.

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\h        We had a chase aircraft, trained chase aircraft pilots in the chase aircraft we put some of the refueling

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\h        equipment for the l-29 and the cameraman, and all of the associated support equipment we needed.

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\h        The fuel had to be prepositioned across the country of the tannery fueling stops,

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\h        obviously you can't call your local jet biofuel fuel truck to fuel up the

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\h        airplane so we had to preposition the built.

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\h        Designed and built a small refueling unit so we could refuel the aircraft en route or on the ground.

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\h        The sponsors began a theme of collaboration, we had sponsors that we organized that went with us along the

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\h        way and in Leesburg the end of the project we landed, didn't really hurt ourselves or break anything,

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\h        and I think it was a pretty successful project overall.

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\h        People have described it as innovative.

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\h        We were the first people to do this, and how did I get the inspiration to be innovative and do this?

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\h        I'm from a small town in England, working class northern town, an industrial revolution town.

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\h        As I was a child growing up, the view on the horizon from my bedroom was like this,

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\h        the two arrows indicate a water tower and a TV antenna,

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\h        which as I was a little older I walked up and actually took a look at.

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\h        What has this got to do with innovation?

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\h        I would look out of my window, see these things on the horizon and to a young

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\h        5-year-old growing up in the '60s, watching the space race on TV, they were rockets.

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\h        They were rockets sitting on launch pads.

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\h        I would sit there dreaming and hoping that one day they would sprout flame and just take off.

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\h        I launched them many times from my bedroom.

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\h        Something else we had obviously growing up to watch this, we had the TV, and we had radiogram,

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\h        and these to me were my mission control and launch control center.

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\h        I was fascinated by these things, glowing screens in the night.

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\h        I was fascinated by what made the TV work, and when the TV broke I couldn't wait for the

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\h        repairman to come and fix it, I could look in the back and see what made it tick.

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\h        It inspired me. I went on, as I grew older, joined the royal air force and ended

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\h        up working in a room full of screens, darkened room, traffic control.

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\h        Later on instead of looking at an orange blip on the screen I became an orange blip on the screen,

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\h        currently an airline pilot, that's my day job.

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\h        I've been involved in investigative and innovative projects.

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\h        The ones I’m most proud of you obviously the biofuel flight.

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\h        I've also worked on some mag life systems and noise cancellation technology.

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\h        My inspiration through all of this has been other people and looking at other projects and other ideas.

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\h        I'm inspired to innovate by the novel approaches and successes of others, and this is what I feel it takes.

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\h        No fear of failure, a basic understanding of science and engineering, application of the

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\h        Relevant principles irrespective of existing paradigms, mental effort, you've got to imagine what can be,

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\h        not what is, it takes physical effort of trial and error,

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\h        openness to criticism and confidence in your ideas.