Technology

A clinical trial of an AI system at the Affiliated People’s Hospital of Ningbo University in Ningbo, China, has detected more than 20 cases of pancreatic cancer, 14 of which were in early stages, since the trial started in November 2024. Early detection is essential for the treatment of pancreatic cancer, which has a five-year…

DuPont took home three 2025 R&D 100 Awards in the Mechanical/Materials category, one of the strongest showings for a commercial entity at the gala. At the awards ceremony, R&D World caught up with Khyati Vyas (technical lead, Tychem Garments), Allie Fletcher (end-use marketing lead, DuPont Personal Protection) and Caleb Funk (R&D laureate, DuPont Water Solutions)…

Food allergies affect 250 million people worldwide, with one person admitted to the ER for food allergies every ten seconds. More than 60% of severe reactions occur outside of the home. Now, patients can have access to laboratory-grade food testing wherever they are with Allergen Alert’s new portable food testing device.  The device contains a…

Researchers from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have developed a computational model that could expedite the use of nanomaterials in biomedical applications. Their machine learning framework is capable of predicting how proteins interact with ligand-stabilized gold nanoclusters, materials widely used in bioimaging, biosensing and targeted drug delivery. Gold nanoclusters are used…

The FDA approved Flow, an at-home brain-simulation device from Flow Neuroscience, for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) on Thursday. Flow is among the first at-home non-drug therapies for the treatment of depression outside of therapies, including app-based CBT and light therapy. Depression affects more than 20 million Americans, around a third of whom…

The 3 mm Multi-Nuclear Inverse (MNI) CryoProbe is a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) detector “combining the highest sensitivity and versatility,” according to the R&D 100 2025 team at Bruker who developed it.  The Ultra-Sensitive 3 mm MNI CryoProbe Scientists working in discovery and development were having difficulties characterizing lead compounds and their related substances considering…

[Image from Adobe Stock] Why you should read this report: Lab automation looks hot, but the usual indicators are quiet: patents are flat, vendors report uneven demand, and standard market metrics barely move. This report shows what those signals miss—where recent AI-drug-discovery capital actually landed, why “Lab Automation Engineer” roles increasingly require Python and APIs…

Maryland is getting its first undersea internet cable, and it’s a monster. Amazon Web Services announced plans for “Fastnet,” a dedicated fiber optic system linking the state’s Eastern Shore to Ireland with enough raw power to stream 12.5 million HD films simultaneously. The project, set to be operational in 2028, represents AWS’s bet that customer…

Asked whether AI will lessen the need for researchers, Google’s head of Research Yossi Matias gave a clear answer. “The only scenario where you would need fewer researchers is if we assume we’ve answered almost all the major questions. I don’t think anyone believes that,” he said at Google’s flagship research conference in Mountain View.…

Last updated: October 3, 2025 The heaviest R&D job losses this year cluster in hardware and semiconductors, with sizeable single events at Dell, Microsoft and Intel’s Oregon sites, while biopharma cuts are smaller per event but frequent as firms triage pipelines. Federal labs have also reduced staff amid budget uncertainty, including the CDC, NIH and…

Apple hasn’t announced dates, but multiple outlets that track Cupertino’s annual cadence point to an iPhone 17 family reveal in the second week of September, with pre-orders that Friday and retail availability the Friday after. Based on Apple’s pattern and current reporting, the most plausible schedule is a keynote on Tuesday, September 9, 2025, pre-orders…

R&D World has announced the winners of the 2025 R&D 100 Professional Awards. The honorees were selected by a panel of 54 prestigious industry experts from around the globe. The list of 2025 winners follows, along with highlights from their nomination letters. These winners will be formally awarded at the R&D 100 Awards Banquet at…

Winners unveiled for 2025 R&D 100 Special Recognition categories Medalists are listed below by category. Each entry shows the primary submitting organization followed by any co-developing organizations. The Medalists in the 2025 R&D 100 Awards Special Recognition categories have been announced by R&D World. This year’s esteemed judging panel included 54 well-respected industry professionals from…

A total of 158 Finalists for the 2025 R&D 100 Awards have been announced by R&D World. Now in its 63rd year, this renowned global science and innovation competition drew entries from 13 countries/regions. This year’s esteemed judging panel featured 54 respected industry professionals from across the globe. The Finalists are listed below by category,…

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has deployed what it bills as the Multi‑Agent Design Assistant (MADA) to speed inertial confinement fusion (ICF) target design. The system couples large language models with LLNL’s 3D multiphysics code, MARBL. The goal? Automating the generation of simulation decks. Researchers run the agent framework on the El Capitan supercomputer, among…

This week in R&D: the first quantum computer in space is now orbiting the Earth; a potential new treatment for Alzheimer’s, thanks to cancer drugs; a startup is breaking ground on their first fusion power plant, they say they are on track to deliver fusion energy by 2030; Google DeepMind announced their AI Earth mapping…

At the University of Colorado Boulder campus, undergraduate students are using digital twin technology and robotics to advance the future of lunar studies. They published their study in the journal Advances in Space Research.  While “Armstrong”, the robot created by the undergrads, wouldn’t survive a trip to the moon’s surface, it can be used for…

In this week’s R&D roundup, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory lands a deal to construct a cutting-edge telescope for space surveillance, while researchers crack the 1918 flu virus genome. In tech, Intel mulls bowing out of the bleeding-edge chip battle as it continues to struggle to adapt in a quickly-evolving hardware landscape while NVIDIA sees a…

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…

A research team at Binghamton University, led by Professor Seokheun Choi, has developed a battery that dissolves safely in low pH environments. They published their findings in the journal Small.  About the battery The battery is powered by a 15-strain probiotic blend, which is harmless to humans and the environment. It is constructed with biodegradable…

A Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) team has built a myoelectric prosthetic hand that keeps weight down by driving the thumb’s two degrees of freedom: flex/extend and adduct/abduct. One small actuator enables that functionality while a linkage-wire hybrid system gives the fingers both firm pinch strength and shape-adaptive grip. This single-actuator control for…

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…

Science inches forward on peer review and second thoughts; the news cycle stampedes on novelty and clicks. When those two tempos collide, a worst-case microplastic estimate becomes a story about consuming a “credit card” worth of microplastics each week. Or a speculative insect review morphs into an “apocalypse,” or a complex climate report becomes a…

Caltech researchers and collaborators have completed the first lab tests of quantum sensors designed for tomorrow’s high-energy particle colliders, the university announced April 24. The sensors could uncover data on high-energy particles that are smashed together in particle accelerators to produce novel particles unpredicted by the standard model of physics. The work, under the leadership…

[Updated on April 10, 2025 with additional details] The 2025 National Science Foundation (NSF) layoffs—stemming from budget freezes and aggressive federal downsizing—could reduce National Science Foundation staff by up to half, threatening the agency’s ability to fund critical research nationwide. Amid projections of a multibillion-dollar shortfall under the CHIPS and Science Act and a new…