Edd Gent

5 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum. Austin’s career path, from Lockheed Martin to the financial technology company Best Egg, shows how curious engineers can apply their skills in new roles. Jason Spear Engineers are great at solving problems that arise when creating new products. But deciding what new products to build is often just as big a challenge. That decision-making process is a task software engineer Johnny Ray Austin has found

5 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum. For Joppe Bos, the combination of interesting puzzles and real-world benefits makes cryptography an appealing career. Users of Google’s Chrome browser can rest easy knowing that their surfing is secure, thanks in part to cryptographer Joppe Bos. He’s coauthor of a quantum-secure encryption algorithm that was adopted as a standard by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in August and

By now, you’ve likely seen the short videos produced using AI video-generation tools, which make it possible to create photorealistic clips of several seconds from a simple text prompt. An Indian startup is now pushing the technology to its limits: It plans to release, by the end of 2025, a feature-length movie created almost entirely with generative AI tools. Intelliflicks Studios, based in Chandigarh, is the brainchild of author Khushwant Singh and Gurdeep Pall, president

Farming in India is tough work—and it’s only getting tougher. Water shortages, a rapidly changing climate, disorganized supply chains, and difficulty accessing credit make every growing season a calculated gamble. But farmers like Harish B. are finding that new AI-powered tools can take some of the unpredictability out of the endeavor. (Instead of a surname, Indian given names are often combined with initials that can represent the name of the person’s father or village.) The

2 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar strives to bring the benefits of technology to everyone. Vivek Ranade The teachings of Mahatma Gandhi were arguably India’s greatest contribution to the 20th century. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar has borrowed some of that wisdom to devise a frugal new form of innovation he calls “Gandhian engineering.” Coming from humble beginnings, Mashelkar is driven to ensure that the benefits of science

4 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum. Erika Cruz, an electrical engineer at Whirlpool, oversees the development of electromechanical components for the company’s washers and dryers. Estevan Velasquez Few devices are as crucial to people’s everyday lives as their household appliances. Electrical engineer Erika Cruz says it’s her mission to make sure they operate smoothly. Cruz helps design washing machines and dryers for Whirlpool, the multinational appliance manufacturer. Erika Cruz

4 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum. Among the first projects Irene Degl’Innocenti worked on at CERN was ALPS (A Logarithmic Position System), a beam-position monitoring system for the Super Proton Synchrotron. Marina Cavazza/CERN The Large Hadron Collider has transformed our understanding of physics since it began operating in 2008, enabling researchers to investigate the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Some 100 meters below the border between France and

4 min read Edd Gent is a Contributing Editor who contributes regularly to IEEE Spectrum. Aakhilesh Singhania is on the job in a race-car pit at the 2024 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Calif., which features hybrid-powered race cars. Edward Sackley When it comes to motorsports, the need for speed isn’t only on the racetrack. Engineers who support race teams also need to work at a breakneck pace to fix problems, and that’s somethingAakhilesh

5 min read Hylio’s CEO, Arthur Erickson, demonstrates how a farmer would operate one of the company’s spray drones. Arthur Erickson discovered drones during his first year at college studying aerospace engineering. He immediately thought the sky was the limit for how the machines could be used, but it took years of hard work and some nimble decisions to turn that enthusiasm into a successful startup. Today, Erickson is the CEO of Houston-based Hylio, a

5 min read Susana Contrera and her colleagues work out the network infrastructure for Meta’s AI-research data centers. Making breakthroughs in artificial intelligence these days requires huge amounts of computing power. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that by the end of this year, the company will have installed 350,000 Nvidia GPUs—the specialized computer chips used to train AI models—to power its AI research. As a data-center network engineer with Meta’s network infrastructure team,