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By Brian Buntz | May 22, 2025

Will consumer AI hardware be the next R&D battlefield?

AI is proving to be a disruptive force for the hardware sector, which has recently shed tens of thousands of jobs. Intel alone has revealed plans to reduce its workforce by over 20%, equating to some 22,000 workers. But at the same time, many hardware firms are ramping up investments in AI, even as they…

By Brian Buntz | May 22, 2025

When data goes missing: How poor data management can undermining research reproducibility

Detailed view of a PCR testing kit for SARS-CoV-2 with an epidemiologist in protective gear analyzing samples to detect specific viral areas causing COVID-19 pneumonia --ar 16:9 --style raw --v 6.1 Job ID: 7e698e8b-3ac0-4058-9c69-cb803819f39e

Imagine you’re midway through a time-sensitive lab procedure when a Slack ping hits your laptop: “Hey, do you still have those high-res .tiff files from last quarter’s microscopy experiments? A journal editor says he needs them by the end of the day. Sorry, I didn’t let you know sooner.” You don’t recall where they are.…

By Brian Buntz | May 21, 2025

LLNL turns Bay Area fiber into 8,000 virtual seismometers

Using an “interrogator” device to activate 50 miles of dormant fiber-optic cable, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory seismologists created a network of 8,000 virtual sensors, recording March’s 3.9 magnitude Dublin earthquake with unprecedented detail, achieving 1,000 times the observational density of current seismic networks. “The detail of the seismic wave field was unprecedented,” said Lab seismologist…

By Brian Buntz | May 21, 2025

OpenAI spends $6.5 billion on Jony Ive-founded startup io

First came Apple’s 2024 pact to let Siri tap ChatGPT for answers it can’t find on-device. Now OpenAI is spending $6.5 billion in stock to absorb Jony Ive’s skunkworks, io. Ive, known for his work at Apple, where he led design of products such as iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch, and even Apple’s circular…

By Brian Buntz | May 21, 2025

After reportedly pursuing Shanghai R&D site, Nvidia calls U.S. GPU export controls a ‘failure’

H100 image from NVIDIA

Nvidia is actively trying to navigate the current U.S. export controls rather than simply waiting for them to expire. The company is said to be pursuing a Shanghai R&D site, as FT reported, while CEO Jensen Huang has branded Washington’s chip‑export curbs on China a “failure.” Huang argued that the restrictions had not only dampened the…

By Brian Buntz | May 20, 2025

NASA taps 100 million satellite images to train an open geospatial foundation model

Drugmakers aren’t the only ones upgrading their data plumbing. While Moderna works with Benchling to build out an R&D data platform, NASA has trained a 3 billion parameter model on 100 million Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite images to pull new signals from 25 years of Earth-observation data. Introducing SatVision-TOA The resulting model, known…

By Brian Buntz | May 20, 2025

Moderna expands Benchling deal to unify lab data in AI-ready hub amid industry trend

More R&D-heavy organizations in sectors like biopharma are revamping their data plumbing. One such entity is Moderna, which is expanding its collaboration with Benchling to consolidate fragmented laboratory data into a unified, AI-primed platform. This move addresses an  industry gap, as a 2024 Benchling report found that only 14% of large biopharma and a 3%…

By Brian Buntz | May 19, 2025

Why Google DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve incremental math and server wins could signal future R&D payoffs

Google’s data centers have gained 0.7% more operational capacity thanks to AlphaEvolve, an AI agent that iteratively refines code for optimal performance. This same system also advanced a long-standing geometry challenge by finding a new way to pack 11 identical hexagons. Those are not the only advances. AlphaEvolve also discovered superior algorithms for matrix multiplication…

By Brian Buntz | May 19, 2025

First CRISPR-edited spider spins red fluorescent silk

In a reported first, researchers have successfully used CRISPR gene editing in spiders, inserting the gene for a red fluorescent protein into the major ampullate silk gene of Parasteatoda tepidariorum. The edited orb weaver spun crimson fibers and passed the glow to its young, evidence that spider silk can now be genetically tuned for bespoke…

By Brian Buntz | May 19, 2025

Kablooe Design CEO Tom KraMer taps veteran designer Fred Sklenar to steer firm

Twin Cities–based medical-device design firm Kablooe Design will get its first new chief executive in 34 years this summer. Founder Tom KraMer will step aside on August 17, and move into a strategic-account role. His successor, Fred Sklenar, is a 37-year product-development veteran who joined Kablooe after running his own consultancy and teaching design-for-manufacturing courses.…

By Brian Buntz | May 19, 2025

PsiQuantum’s $6B valuation lures Nvidia into quantum hardware

First came “Quantum Day,” Nvidia’s March 20 showcase at GTC put CEO Jensen Huang side-by-side with quantum players he had dismissed on January 7 at CES. Now, according to The Information and Reuters, Huang is in talks to invest in photonic-qubit upstart PsiQuantum, underscoring potentially changed thinking after quipping at CES that “very useful” quantum machines…

By Brian Buntz | May 18, 2025

2025 R&D layoffs tracker tops 92,000

[Last updated on May 18, 2025] Microsoft’s plan to shed about 6,000 jobs—roughly 40% of them engineering roles in Washington state—pushes the 2025 layoff tally for tracked companies past 89,500. The announcement followed reports that Jeff Hulse, a Microsoft vice president, urged his 400‑person team to “become AI prompt engineers” and rely on Copilot for…

By Brian Buntz | May 17, 2025

2028 Olympic air taxis could beat traffic for the lucky few

Los Angeles is thinking outside of the box in planning for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The idea? Use electric air taxis to address its notorious traffic. L.A.’s mayor, Karen Bass, has even mused about an (almost) car-free Games. The company making the craft, Archer Aviation, hopes to enable 10–20 minute flights between vertiports.…

By Brian Buntz | May 17, 2025

Is your factory (or lab) ready to think? An insider’s take on next-gen automation and what really works

More than nine out of ten manufacturers (92%) say smart-manufacturing technology will be their chief competitive edge within three years, according to Deloitte’s 2025 Smart Manufacturing and Operations survey of 600 U.S. executives. Nearly 15 years after “Industrie 4.0” promised a literal factory revolution with software and sensing advances reshaping workflows. While the benefits of…

By Brian Buntz | May 16, 2025

X2.7 solar flare blacks out high-frequency comms, giving satellite and grid designs a live stress test

Not all solar flares are created equal. On one end of the spectrum are A-class solar flares, which are near background levels. And then there is the X-class, where an X1 event is 10,000 times more powerful in X-ray output than an A1 event. Early Wednesday, there was an X2.7 flare, the ‘2.7’ indicating it’s…

By Brian Buntz | May 16, 2025

2025 salary snapshot: Engineers average $123k but pipeline of rookies running thin

Vector illustration gear wheel, hexagons and circuit board, Hi-tech digital technology and engineering, digital telecom technology concept. Abstract futuristic on light blue color background

Hiring headaches are nothing new in STEM, where the pipeline of qualified scientists and engineers is in short supply. Engineering.com’s 2025 Engineering Salary Survey puts hard numbers behind the worries. Nearly 60% of the 591 surveyed engineers have been in the trenches for more than two decades, while newer graduates are relatively rare. In terms…

By Peter Matthews | May 15, 2025

The energy paradox of AI and how capacitors can help

According to The Environmental Impact of Artificial Intelligence, the AI industry is poised to consume an estimated 85–134 TWh of electricity annually by the year 2027.  That’s a lot of power.  That level of electricity equates to about 15 nuclear power plants, 6,000 wind turbines, or 1.5 billion LED bulbs. See Figure 1 for a…

By Brian Buntz | May 15, 2025

TUM researchers report record-setting battery electrolyte, topping prior speed by 30%

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in collaboration with TUMint.Energy Research, have set a new benchmark for solid-state battery electrolytes, introducing a lithium-antimony-scandium compound that shuttles lithium ions at 42 mS/cm. The breakthrough is detailed in a research article published April 28, 2025, in Advanced Energy Materials and a news announcement. In the…

By Brian Buntz | May 15, 2025

8 reasons all is not well in GenAI land

GenAI may represent one of the biggest R&D pushes in recent memory. Gartner forecasts that worldwide spending on generative AI is set to soar to $644 billion in 2025, but the road to broadly useful, and commercially reliable, AI is getting twisty. 1. Meta: Behemoth on ice Meta has slipped the debut of its next-gen large…

By Brian Buntz | May 15, 2025

Efficiency first: Sandia’s new director balances AI drive with deterrent work

Laura McGill, two weeks into her tenure as Sandia National Laboratories director, addressed the organization’s New Mexico staff on May 14. She stated that the lab would double down on its core role as the nation’s nuclear-weapons system integrator while also scaling up digital-engineering and AI projects. She announced a projection of up to $5…

By Brian Buntz | May 14, 2025

GreyB’s AI-driven Slate offers single search across 160 million patents, 264 million papers

GreyB on Wednesday rolled out Slate, an AI search tool that promises to collapse the grunt work of patent and literature hunts into a single query. The firm says early pilots cut document-finding time “from hours to minutes.” Slate’s index reaches across more than 160 million patents filed in 100-plus jurisdictions and roughly 264 million…

By Brian Buntz | May 14, 2025

Webinar offers guide to R&D data clarity with perspectives from a Big Pharma, global CRO, space‑station lab, and immune-system-in-a-dish startup

Low-quality, poorly curated, and siloed scientific data costs advanced economies billions of dollars each year by draining researcher productivity, duplicating experiments, and slowing innovation. A report commissioned by the European Commission estimated that failing to adopt FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data principles costs Europe’s economy at least €10.2 billion annually owing to wasted researcher…

By Tim Studt | May 13, 2025

9 R&D developments this week: Lilly builds major R&D center, Stratolaunch tests hypersonic craft, IBM chief urges AI R&D funding

Eli Lilly facility

The R&D World Index (RDWI) slid this week even as several companies rolled out big new R&D projects. For the week ending May 9, 2025, the index closed at 3,773.11, down 3.85% (–151.24 points). Sixteen of the 25 members fell. Eli Lilly & Co. was the biggest laggard (–10.81%) despite breaking ground on a huge…

By Brian Buntz | May 13, 2025

Leica debuts Visoria upright microscopes aimed at taming long-haul lab work

Leica

Wetzlar, Germany–based Leica Microsystems has introduced a new line of upright microscopes known as Visoria B, Visoria M, and Visoria P built for labs where a “quick look” often turns into an hour at the bench. By electronically capturing every objective change and reducing the force needed to move the stage or adjust focus, the…

By R&D Editors | May 13, 2025

ZEISS and Alpenglow ink light-sheet microscopy platform deal

ZEISS Research Microscopy Solutions and Alpenglow Biosciences have announced a multi-phase partnership to build an inverted light-sheet microscope and accompanying bioinformatics pipeline aimed at clinical pathology. The companies say the joint system will digitize entire tissue samples without a microtome, generate 3D images and feed them into a GPU-accelerated analytics engine. In press materials, ZEISS…

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