Research & Development World

Big Blue is making a bold claim. “We feel at IBM, we’ve cracked the code to quantum error correction, and it’s our plan to build the first large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer, which we call IBM Quantum Starling, in 2029,” Jay Gambetta, vice president of IBM Quantum, announced at a recent press conference. From trial and…

By Alan Marcus, Chief Growth Officer, LabVantage The way data flows through a lab environment impacts everything that organizations value, from safety and quality to compliance and the speed of innovation. That flow has improved with each wave of digital transformation, moving labs from paper-based systems to digitally driven LIMS to agentic AI implementations that…

In this week of research and development (R&D) updates, we see early signs of demand for clean energy plummeting after emerging as one of the fastest growing sectors among industries, with jobs in wind and solar power benefiting from that upswing. The shift comes as new legislation threatens to reshape America’s energy landscape with far-reaching…

Researchers from the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have created a new nanopore sensor for single-biomolecule detection. Their findings were published in the journal PNAS.  Nanopore sensors detect and analyze individual molecules by measuring ionic changes as the molecules pass through openings in the device. Nanopore sensors can be made…

Google’s recent sustainability report reveals that the company has more than doubled its electricity use in the past four years. In 2024, Google’s data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity, up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020. In 2024, data centers accounted for 95.8% of the entire company’s electricity use.  While Google reported that…

Researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a method to convert plastic waste into hydrogen, which can be used for clean energy. They published their findings in Engineering.  Using a photocatalyst to oxidize plastic  The researchers engineered a porous tungsten oxide (WO3) photoanode that interacts with polystyrene (PS) plastic. PS…

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a new family of flexible, eco-friendly plastics that could be used in wearable electronics, sensors, and cooling devices. The materials are a new type of ferroelectric polymer made without fluorine, a component of environmentally persistent materials known as “forever chemicals.” The team published their findings in the…

Japanese semiconductor firm Renesas Electronics has unveiled the RA8P1, positioning it as a breakthrough microcontroller that integrates gigahertz-class processing, dedicated AI acceleration hardware and magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) on a single 22-nanometer chip. The chip includes graphics capabilities, multiple connectivity interfaces and advanced security features typically associated with higher-end processors. In a press briefing, Renesas billed…

The U.S. Department of Defense has directed more than $700 million toward a suite of high-priority research and development initiatives on June 16, 2025. The announcement, posted on the DoD website, signals a push into frontier AI, quantum sensing and advanced battlespace simulation. Headlining the investments were a landmark prototype agreement with OpenAI and significant…