Software

The unicorn biotechnology startup Xaira Therapeutics, co-founded by 2024 Nobel Prize winner David Baker, has released what it claims is the largest public genome-wide Perturb-seq dataset to date. Freely available, the data is available as a 520 GB download and comes with an associated pre-print. Comprising eight million cells, the X-Atlas/Orion dataset dwarfs previous public…

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…

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%…

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…

Less than five hours. One large-language-model co-pilot. Zero hand-drawn sprites. That’s all it took for SPACE SHOOTER DX, a mash-up of Space Invaders and Galaga complete with parallax starfields, multi-type UFOs, Stranger-Things-inspired synth loops and a laser that goes pew instead of meh. Roughly three-fifths of the 2.3k lines of TypeScript Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s idea.…

A 21‑year‑old who was tossed from Columbia University last month just banked a $5.3 million seed round for “Cluely,” an AI sidekick that feeds real‑time code and answers during job interviews, undetected by Zoom or Google Meet. The startup already tops $3 million in annual recurring revenue and charges $60 a seat, forcing companies like Google and Amazon…

“If you are not having a conversation with your research data, you’re still operating in analog mode.” That’s the stark assessment from Mikael Hagstroem, CEO of LabVantage. While many labs possess vast amounts of data, more isn’t always better if scientists struggle to access and contextualize it effectively. For Hagstroem, the ability to converse with…

If navigating your organization’s lab software landscape feels like untangling chaos, you’re not alone. While data and software maturity levels can vary significantly, it’s not unheard of for many research-focused organizations to have walled gardens throughout their organization, sometimes with distinct labs operating as technological islands. Sometimes, there are miniature islands within a single lab …

A deep learning system known as Aardvark Weather offers accurate weather forecasts that are orders of magnitude quicker to generate than existing systems. Described in a Nature article (currently posted as a preprint), the system can generate predictions on four NVIDIA A100 GPUs that would otherwise take roughly 1,000 node-hours on a traditional supercomputer system…

Proscia, a company developing digital and AI-based pathology software, has raised $50 million in a Series C funding round to expand the adoption of its Concentriq platform. The new investment brings the company’s total funding to $130 million as demand grows for more efficient diagnostic tools in oncology and other disease areas. The funding round…

Warehouses are going high-tech. Picture Corvus One autonomous drones hovering along 30-foot warehouse racks or Amazon’s “Proteus” robots ferrying pallets. These self-flying inventory systems operate without GPS or human guidance, using computer vision to navigate corridors, scan, map, and count inventory in real-time. In a similar vein, Honeywell has introduced a pair of new technologies…

Imagine a research world where laboratory scientists don’t just analyze their data; they talk directly to it, and it talks back. That’s a reality that the Somerset, New Jersey–based laboratory information management system (LIMS) provider LabVantage is working toward. The company’s latest LIMS platform, version 8.9, layers semantic search onto complex data sets, allowing scientists…

The R&D World Index saw a slight gain of 0.22% last week, closing at 4,163.38 points. Corporate actions focused heavily on new manufacturing investments, with Apple doubling its Advanced Manufacturing Fund and Eli Lilly announcing plans for four new U.S. drug manufacturing plants. Technology companies continued their push in advanced computing, with Amazon and Google…

The R&D World Index saw a slight gain last week amidst a landscape of innovation and cost-cutting within global industries. Pharma giants Eli Lilly and Merck announced a partnership with Purdue University to launch the Young Institute Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Consortium, aimed at bolstering domestic pharmaceutical production. However, automotive supplier Continental AG revealed further job cuts…

Apple has committed to spend over $500 billion in the U.S. by 2029, equalling the total that OpenAI and partners announced last month as part of the Stargate Project. From an R&D perspective, one core takeaway is how much of this cash will fuel cutting-edge work. For instance, Apple is specifically aiming to invest in…

In an iconic scene from The Matrix (1999), Neo sits wired to a training chair, eyes closed, as decades of martial arts expertise—jujitsu, kempo, taekwondo, even drunken boxing—flood his brain in seconds. At the end of it all, he stoically declares: “I know kung fu,” before he spars with his guide Morpheus. A quarter-century later,…

Brain signals in, mechanical responses out—traditionally, that’s been the limit of many brain computer interfaces (BCIs). But in a sense, this BCI doesn’t just listen; it talks back. In a study published in Nature Electronics, a research team in China reported a two-way setup that not only efficiently decodes a user’s intentions  but also sends tailored…

Enfabrica Corporation has opened a new research and development facility in Hyderabad, India, marking its latest step in expanding global operations. The Hyderabad office will focus on building the company’s engineering team and scaling silicon and software product development. Enfabrica’s leadership views this move as a way to strengthen its capacity to design networking products…

The skills that fuel a cybercriminal’s success—systematic planning, relentless curiosity and precise execution—darkly mirror those driving breakthroughs in research and development. Yet in the wrong hands, that similar cunning can becomes a blueprint for infiltration rather than discovery. Just ask Hector Monsegur, the once LulzSec hacker who later became an FBI ally and was released…

Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced the Invitrogen EVOS S1000 Spatial Imaging System, designed to help researchers generate more efficient, high-quality, multiplexed images of tissue samples. The system uses advanced spectral technology to capture images of up to nine targets simultaneously, reducing the need for multiple imaging rounds and preserving tissue integrity. “Understanding tissue structure and function…

EssilorLuxottica has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its over-the-counter Nuance Audio Glasses, alongside achieving CE marking under the EU’s Medical Devices Regulation. The company also developed an ISO Quality Management System certification for hearing aids, enabling the product’s launch in Europe. Nuance Audio Hearing Aid Software is the first…

A year ago, NASA quietly released one of the most captivating astrophysical simulations ever produced: a mind-bending visual journey into the swirling depths of a supermassive black hole. Although published in May 2024, the immersive 360° visualization has inexplicably resurfaced on social media sites ranging from Instagram to Reddit and is now racking hundreds of…

NASA missions with limited mass and power budgets have long demanded innovative communication systems. In response, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) developed Frontier Radio, which first flew in 2012 on the twin Van Allen Probes. This compact, radiation-tolerant radio became a critical component on several near- and deep-space missions, including Parker Solar Probe,…

OpenAI has launched a new offering known as “Deep Research,” which can plan and execute multi-step online research tasks. Potential uses of the product, as OpenAI outlined in an announcement include navigating scientific literature or analyzing UI/UX research data. In an internal evaluation, the agent shows strength in automating routine online research tasks, achieving nearly…

Here’s the scoop: AI is still on fire, despite bubble talk, and OpenAI’s rumored $40B capital raise—driving its valuation up to $340B—could be one of the biggest bets yet. But this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Competition from China’s DeepSeek, fresh AI model launches by Alibaba, and rumored next-gen offerings from Google and others mean…