Julianne Pepitone

India’s Param Foundation Opens New Science Centers

5 min read Julianne Pepitone is a contributing editor covering consumer tech, cybersecurity, and business. Currently under construction, the new Param Science Experience Centre in Channenahalli, Bengaluru, India, is expected to open in October. Param Science Experience Centre Inavamsi Enaganti has long been a dreamer. He keeps ever-evolving lists of life goals, ticking them off as he achieves them, then adding more. One childhood dream has burned particularly brightly in his mind: Create a science-focused

Read More »

Can AI Automate the Writing of Review Articles?

4 min read Julianne Pepitone is a contributing editor covering consumer tech, cybersecurity, and business. Scientific literature reviews are a critical part of advancing fields of study: They provide a current state of the union through comprehensive analysis of existing research, and they identify gaps in knowledge where future studies might focus. Writing a well-done review article is a many-splendored thing, however. Researchers often comb through reams of scholarly works. They must select studies that

Read More »

The O.G. of Tech Startups Says AI Changes Everything

3 min read Julianne Pepitone is a contributing editor covering consumer tech, cybersecurity, and business. Eric Millette Steve Blank came of age as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley in the 1970s, when it was truly about the silicon, and by the 1990s he had founded or worked at four high-tech startups. He eventually drew on this experience to create a model of developing customers inspired by the scientific method; it calls for working up various

Read More »

Inside the Three-Way Race to Create the Most Widely Used Laser

6 min read Julianne Pepitone is a Contributing Editor covering consumer tech, cybersecurity, and business. IBM researchers [from left] Gerald Burns, Marshall I. Nathan, Gordon Lasher, Frederick H. Dill Jr., and William P. Dumke developed the gallium arsenide laser in October 1962. The semiconductor laser, invented more than 60 years ago, is the foundation of many of today’s technologies including barcode scanners, fiber-optic communications, medical imaging, and remote controls. The tiny, versatile device is now

Read More »

This Engineer’s Solar Panels Are Breaking Efficiency Records

5 min read Trina Solar’s assistant vice president of technology Yifeng Chen received the IEEE Stuart R. Wenham Young Professional Award for his technical contributions to photovoltaic energy conversion. Trina Solar When Yifeng Chen was a teenager in Shantou, China, in the early 2000s, he saw a TV program that amazed him. The show highlighted rooftop solar panels in Germany, explaining that the panels generated electricity to power the buildings and even earned the owners

Read More »

Stuart Parkin Revolutionized Disk Drive Storage

5 min read Stuart Parkin, an IEEE Fellow, received the Draper Prize for Engineering from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering for developing spintronic technologies. Stuart Parkin Ours is a data-centric world. Many modern inventions and occupations rely on data. Artificial intelligence feasts on it. Machine learning identifies patterns within it. Internet of Things devices generate and transmit it. Genomics, bioinformatics, climate science, telecommunications, finance, health care and so many more fields depend on it.

Read More »