2026-03-01 03:00:02
When Xiangyi Cheng published her first journal paper as a principal investigator in IEEE Access in 2024, it marked more than a professional milestone. For Cheng, an IEEE member and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles, it was the latest waypoint in a career shaped by curiosity, persistence, and a belief that technology should serve people—not the other way around.
The paper’s title was “Mobile Devices or Head-Mounted Displays: A Comparative Review and Analysis of Augmented Reality in Healthcare.”
Employer
Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles
Title
Assistant professor of mechanical engineering
Member grade
Member
Alma maters
China University of Mining and Technology; Texas A&M University
Cheng’s work spans robotics, intelligent systems, human-machine interaction and artificial intelligence. It has applications in patient-specific surgical planning, an approach whereby treatment is customized to the anatomy and clinical needs of each individual.
Her research also covers wearables for rehabilitation and augmented-reality-enhanced engineering education.
The throughline of her career is sound judgment based on critical thinking. She urges her students to avoid the temptation to accept the answers they’re given by AI without cross-checking them against their own foundational understanding of the subject matter.
“AI can give you ideas,” Cheng says, “but it should never lead your thinking.”
That principle—honed through uncertainty, disciplinary shifts, and hard-earned confidence—has made Cheng an emerging voice in applied intelligent systems and a thoughtful educator preparing students for an AI-saturated world.
Cheng, born in Xi’an, China, grew up in a household shaped by her parents’ disparate careers. Her father was a mining engineer, and her mother taught Chinese and literature at a high school.
“That contrast between logical and literary thinking helped me understand myself early,” Cheng says. “I liked math, and STEM felt natural to me.”
Several teachers reinforced her inclination, she says, particularly a math teacher whose calm, fair approach emphasized reasoning over punishments such as detention for misbehavior or failure to complete assignments.
“It wasn’t about being right,” Cheng says. “It was about thinking clearly.”
She moved to Beijing in 2011 to attend the China University of Mining and Technology , where she studied mechanical engineering. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2015, she was unsure where the field would take her.
Later in 2015, she traveled to the United States to study at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland.
She initially viewed the move as exploratory rather than a long-term commitment.
“I wasn’t thinking about a Ph.D.,” she says. “I wasn’t even sure research was for me.”
That uncertainty shifted in 2017, when Cheng submitted her “IntuBot: Design and Prototyping of a Robotic Intubation Device” paper to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)—which was accepted.
“AI can give you more possibilities, but thinking is still our responsibility.”
Intubation is a procedure in which an endotracheal tube is inserted into a patient’s airway—usually through the mouth—to help them breathe. Because placing the tube correctly is not simple and usually must be done quickly, it requires training. That’s why research into robotic or assisted intubation systems focuses on improving speed, accuracy, and safety.
She presented her findings at ICRA in 2018, giving her early exposure to a global research community.
“That acceptance gave me confidence,” she recalls. “It showed me I could contribute to the field.”
Her advisor at Case Western encouraged her to switch from the mechanical engineering master’s program to the Ph.D. track. When the advisor moved to Texas A&M University, in College Station, in 2019, Cheng decided to transfer. She completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M in 2022.
Although she didn’t earn a degree from Case Western, she credits her experience there with clarifying her professional direction.
Shortly after graduating with her Ph.D., Cheng was hired as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio Northern University, in Ada. She left in 2024 to become an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount.
Cheng’s research focuses on human-centered engineering, particularly in health care. One of her major projects addresses syndactyly, a congenital condition in which a newborn’s fingers are fused at birth. Surgeons rely on their experience to estimate the size and shape of skin grafts to be taken from another part of the body for the corrective surgery.
She is developing technology to scan the patient’s hand, extract anatomical landmarks, and use finite element analysis—a computer-based method for predicting how a physical object will behave under real-world conditions—to determine the optimal graft size and shape.
Xiangyi Cheng designs human-centered intelligent systems with applications in health care and education.Xiangyi Cheng
“Everyone’s hand is different,” Cheng says. “So the surgery should be personalized.”
Another project centers on developing smart gloves to assist with hand rehabilitation, pairing the unaffected hand with the injured one so the person’s natural motion can help guide therapy.
She also is exploring augmented reality in engineering education, using immersive visualization and AI tools to help students grasp three-dimensional concepts that are difficult to convey through traditional learning tools. Such visualization lets students see and interact with a digital world as if they’re inside it instead of viewing it on a flat screen.
Despite working at the forefront of AI-enabled systems, Cheng cautions her students to be judicious in their use of the technology so that they don’t rely on it too heavily.
“AI is not always right and perfect,” she says. “You still need to be able to judge whether the answers it provides are correct.”
As AI continues to reshape engineering, Cheng remains grounded in a simple principle, she says: “We should use these tools. But we should never let them replace our judgment. AI can give you more possibilities, but thinking is still our responsibility.”
In her lab and classroom, Cheng prioritizes independent thinking, critical evaluation, and persistence. Many of her research students are undergraduates, and she encourages them to take ownership of their work—planning ahead, testing ideas, and learning from failure.
“The students who succeed don’t give up easily,” she says.
What she finds most rewarding, she says, is watching students mature. Reserved first-year students often become confident seniors who can present complex work and manage demanding projects.
“Getting to witness that transformation is why I teach,” she says.
For students considering engineering, Cheng offers straightforward advice: “Focus on mathematics. Engineering looks hands-on, but math is the foundation behind everything.”
With practice and persistence, she says, students can succeed and find meaning in the field.
Cheng joined IEEE in 2017, the year she submitted her first paper to ICRA. The organization has remained central to her professional development, she says.
She has served as a reviewer for IEEE journals and conferences including Robotics and Automation Letters, Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, Transactions on Robotics, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, and ICRA.
IEEE’s interdisciplinary scope aligns naturally with her work, she says, adding that the organization is “one of the few places that truly welcomes research across boundaries.”
More personally, IEEE helped her see a future she had not initially imagined.
“That first conference was a turning point,” she says. “It helped me realize I belonged.”
2026-02-28 22:00:02
Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a towering figure in the early decades of electrical engineering, easily the intellectual equal of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla—men he considered his friends. One of Steinmetz’s most significant achievements was to quantify and characterize the phenomenon of magnetic hysteresis—the behavior of magnetism in materials—and then devise a simple law that allowed for predictable transformer and motor design. He also established a revolutionary framework for analyzing AC circuits, which is still taught today in power engineering. And from 1893, he served as chief consulting engineer at General Electric at a pivotal moment for the young company and for the U.S. effort to expand its power grid. For these and other accomplishments, he was well known in his time, even if he’s not exactly a household name today.
Steinmetz was also an evangelist for electric vehicles. In March 1920, he typed out his thoughts, comparing the pros and cons of EVs to the gasoline-propelled alternative. Among the advantages: low cost of maintenance, reliability, simplicity of operation, and lower cost of operation. The disadvantages: dependence on charging stations, limited range on a single charge, and lower speeds. More than a century later, his list remains remarkably pertinent.
Steinmetz could often be seen decked out in a suit and top hat, smoking his trademark BlackStone panatela cigar while riding around Schenectady, N.Y., in his 1914 Detroit Electric sedan. According to John Spinelli, emeritus professor of electrical and computer engineering at Union College, in Schenectady, sometimes both Steinmetz and his chauffeur sat in the backseat—you could control the car from both the front and the rear—so that it would appear to be a driverless car. With a top speed of 40 kilometers per hour (25 miles per hour), the car ran on 14 six-volt batteries and could go about 48 km between charges.
Steinmetz’s 1914 Detroit Electric car is now at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., where Steinmetz had founded, chaired, and taught in the department of electrical engineering.Paul Buckowski/Union College
In 1971, the car was purchased by Union College, where Steinmetz had founded, chaired, and taught in the department of electrical engineering. The car had been discovered rotting in a field, so it needed some work. Over the next decade, faculty and engineering students restored it to its former glory. Still in running condition, it’s now on permanent display at the college.
Karl August Rudolf Steinmetz was born in 1865 in Breslau, Prussia (now known as Wrocław, Poland). He studied mathematics, physics, and the burgeoning field of electricity at the University of Breslau. He also joined a student socialist club and edited the party newspaper, The People’s Voice. He completed his doctoral studies, but before receiving his degree, Steinmetz fled to Switzerland in 1888, after his socialist writings came under the scrutiny of the Bismarck government.
Steinmetz immigrated to New York the following year, anglicized his first name, dropped his two middle names, and added Proteus, a nickname he had picked up at university (after the shape-shifting sea god of Greek mythology). Eventually, he became a U.S. citizen.
Charles Proteus Steinmetz solved a number of important problems that helped the power grid expand.Bettmann/Getty Images
In January 1892, Steinmetz burst onto the engineering scene when he read his paper “On the Law of Hysteresis” before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, a forerunner of today’s IEEE. I can’t quite imagine sitting through the delivery of its 62 pages, but those assembled recognized its groundbreaking nature. The ideas Steinmetz outlined allowed engineers to calculate power losses in the magnetic components of electrical machinery during the design phase. Prior to this, the design process for transformers and electric motors was largely trial and error, and power losses could be measured only after the machine was built, which greatly added to the cost.
Steinmetz was not just an equations and theory guy, though. He loved working in the lab and building things. In 1893, General Electric acquired the small manufacturing firm of Eickemeyer & Osterheld, in Yonkers, N.Y., where Steinmetz had worked since shortly after his arrival in the United States. So Steinmetz began his new life as a corporate engineer, an interesting turn for the socialist. During his first few years with GE, he mostly designed generators and transformers. But he also created an informal position for himself as a consultant, giving expert opinions on various problems across divisions. He eventually formalized this role, becoming GE’s chief consulting engineer, and he maintained a relationship with the company for the rest of his life, even after joining the faculty of Union College in 1902.
By the time Steinmetz died in 1923 at the age of 58, he had been granted more than 200 patents and had made major contributions to various subfields in electrical engineering, including phasors and complex numbers (for steady-state AC analysis); electrical transients, switching surges, and surge protection (based on his research on lightning); industrial research (including how to run a corporate lab); and engineering methods (by writing textbooks that standardized practice).
By 1914, Steinmetz was convinced that the future of transportation was electric. In June, he addressed the National Electric Light Association convention in Philadelphia with a bold prediction: “I have no doubt that in 10 years, more or less—rather less than more—we will see the field of the pleasure and business vehicle covered by such an electric car in large numbers. And I believe I underestimate when I say that 1,000,000 or more will be used.”
As we now know, Steinmetz was overly optimistic. At the time, there were about 1.2 million gasoline-powered cars in use in the United States, and only about 35,000 EVs. It would take until 2018 for the number of EVs (including plug-in hybrids) on U.S. roads to surpass a million. Worldwide, there are now about 60 million electric vehicles in use.
But Steinmetz had his reasons. He firmly believed that electric vehicles would flourish in urban areas, where most rides involved short distances at low speed. He also thought EVs would be a boon for power companies, which were eager to drum up more business, especially at night. With 1 million electric cars being charged about 5 kilowatt-hours on most nights, and at a rate of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, Steinmetz predicted US $75 million (about $2.5 billion today) of new business for central power stations each year.
In 1971, Union College purchased Steinmetz’s car, which had been found rotting in a field, and faculty and students restored it to working condition.Special Collections & Archives/Schaffer Library/Union College
Steinmetz went to work to improve the electric car. He developed a double-rotor motor that was integrated into the rear axle, which did away with the need for a mechanical differential or drive shaft and drastically reduced the overall weight, which improved the mileage. Dey Electric Corp. incorporated Steinmetz’s design into its electric roadster and priced it under $1,000. Unfortunately, an internal combustion engine Ford Model T cost about half as much, and the Dey roadster flopped, ending production within a year.
Undeterred, Steinmetz formed the Steinmetz Electric Motor Car Corp. in 1920 with the initial goal of bringing to market an electric truck for deliveries and light industrial use. The first truck debuted on a cold February day in 1922 with a publicity stunt of climbing the steep Miller Avenue hill in Brooklyn, N.Y. According to a report in The New York Times, the vehicle went up the 14.5 percent grade between Jamaica Avenue and Highland Boulevard in 51 seconds. During a second climb, it stopped a number of times to show how easily it restarted. The truck had a range of 84 km (52 miles).
The company planned to manufacture 1,000 trucks per year and 300 lightweight delivery cars, plus a five-passenger coupe, but it made a total of only 48 vehicles. After Steinmetz died in 1923, the company soon ceased operation.
Steinmetz wasn’t only bullish on the electric car, but on electricity in general. A New York Times article recorded his belief that by 2023, we would work no more than 4 hours a day, 200 days a year because electricity would have eliminated the drudgery and unpleasantness of labor. He also predicted that electricity would bring about an end to urban pollution: “Every city would be a spotless town.” With an expansion of leisure time, people would be healthier, engaging in gardening (especially growing their own food) and pursuing educational interests to become “much more intelligent and self-expressive creature[s].”
I decided to write about Steinmetz last year, after IEEE Spectrum published an essay I wrote about why engineering needs the humanities. The article contains this line: “In 1909, none other than Charles Proteus Steinmetz advocated for including the classics in engineering education.” I had been impressed to learn of Steinmetz’s recognition of the value of a liberal arts education. But my copy editor didn’t know who Steinmetz was or why he merited the qualifier “none other.” More people should know about this remarkable man, I decided. And so I went looking for a museum object associated with him, so I could include him in a Past Forward column.
Steinmetz [left] was easily the intellectual equal of Thomas Edison [right], whom he considered a friend.Corbis/Getty Images
The electric car is only one avenue into Steinmetz’s life. I could instead have looked into Steinmetz solids (the geometric shapes that form when two or three identical cylinders intersect at right angles), Steinmetz curves (the edges of a Steinmetz solid), or the Steinmetz equivalent circuit (a mathematical model that describes a transformer using resistors and inductors). But none of those concepts could be easily captured in a picture-worthy object. His love of his electric car, on the other hand, was a fun and fitting entry point for this most unusual engineer.
I also saw an opportunity to highlight how Steinmetz became a family man. Steinmetz had dwarfism—he stood just 122 centimeters tall—as well as kyphosis, a severe curvature of the spine, as did his father and grandfather. He didn’t wish to pass along those traits, and so he never married or had children of his own. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want a family.
In 1903, Steinmetz’s favorite lab assistant, Joseph LeRoy Hayden, told his boss that he was getting married. Steinmetz invited the couple to dinner, and then invited them to live in his large home. They agreed to this unusual living arrangement, with Corinne Rost Hayden running the household and cooking for her husband and Steinmetz. She forced the men to set aside their work for regular family meals.
Eventually, the Hayden family expanded, welcoming Joe, Midge, and Billy. Steinmetz legally adopted the elder Hayden, thereby gaining three grandchildren as well. Steinmetz, whom The New York Times had named a “modern Jove” who “hurls thunderbolts at will” (from a high-voltage lightning generator), delighted at entertaining the grandkids with wondrous tricks of electricity and chemistry.
In writing about the history of electrical engineering, I sometimes fall into the trap of focusing too much on the technology. But it’s just as important to recognize the people behind the technology—their personalities, their frailties, their feelings, their challenges. Steinmetz faced adversity for his political beliefs, for being an immigrant, and for his physical stature, yet none of that ever stopped him. In word and deed, he showed that he had a generous heart as mighty as his intellect.
Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the March 2026 print issue as “Charles Proteus Steinmetz Loved His Electric Car.”
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine published Steinmetz’s pro/con list comparing electric cars to those with internal combustion engines in the September/October 2005 issue, along with a good biographical overview of Steinmetz by Carl Sulzberger.
Union College published a nice story about the restoration of Steinmetz’s electric car in 2014, when it received its permanent home on campus.
There are many biographies of Steinmetz, one published as early as 1924, but I am particularly fond of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist by Ronald Kline (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
Gilbert King’s 2011 article “Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady” for Smithsonian magazine describes Steinmetz’s chosen family and includes several fun anecdotes not mentioned above.
2026-02-28 02:00:55
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
Our robots Lynx M20 help transport harvested crops in mountainous farmland—tackling the rural “last mile” logistics challenge.
[ DEEP Robotics ]
Once again, I would point out that now that we are reaching peak humanoid robots doing humanoid things, we are inevitably about to see humanoid robots doing non-humanoid things.
[ Unitree ]
In a study, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the University of Michigan, and Cornell University show that groups of magnetic microrobots can generate fluidic forces strong enough to rotate objects in different directions without touching them. These microrobot swarms can turn gear systems, rotate objects much larger than the robots themselves, assemble structures on their own, and even pull in or push away many small objects.
[ Science ] via [ Max Planck Institute ]
Bipedal—or two-legged—autonomous robots can be quite agile. This makes them useful for performing tasks on uneven terrain, such as carrying equipment through outdoor environments or performing maintenance on an ocean-going ship. However, unstable or unpredictable conditions also increase the possibility of a robot wipeout. Until now, there’s been a significant lack of research into how a robot recovers when its direction shifts—for example, a robot losing balance when a truck makes a quick turn. The team aims to fix this research gap.
[ Georgia Tech ]
Robotics is about controlling energy, motion, and uncertainty in the real world.
[ Carnegie Mellon University ]
Delicious dinner cooked by our robot Robody. We’ve asked our investors to speak about why they’re along for the ride.
[ Devanthro ]
Tilt-rotor aerial robots enable omnidirectional maneuvering through thrust vectoring, but introduce significant control challenges due to the strong coupling between joint and rotor dynamics. This work investigates reinforcement learning for omnidirectional aerial motion control on over-actuated tiltable quadrotors that prioritizes robustness and agility.
[ DRAGON Lab ]
At the CMU Robotic Innovation Center’s 75,000-gallon water tank, members of the TartanAUV student group worked to further develop their autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called Osprey. The team, which takes part in the annual RoboSub competition sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, is comprised primarily of undergraduate engineering and robotics students.
[ Carnegie Mellon University ]
Sure seems like the only person who would want a robot dog is a person who does not in fact want a dog.
Compact size, industrial capability. Maximum torque of 90N·m, over 4 hours of no-load runtime, IP54 rainproof design. With a 15 kg payload, range exceeds 13 km. Open secondary development, empowering industry applications.
[ Unitree ]
If your robot video includes tasty baked goods it WILL be included in Video Friday.
[ QB Robotics ]
Astorino is a 6-axis educational robot created for practical and affordable teaching of robotics in schools and beyond. It has been created with 3D printing, so it allows for experimentation and the possible addition of parts. With its design and programming, it replicates the actions of industrial robots giving students the necessary skills for future work.
We need more autonomous driving datasets that accurately reflect how sucky driving can be a lot of the time.
[ ASRL ]
This Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute Seminar is by CMU’s own Victoria Webster-Wood, on “Robots as Models for Biology and Biology and Materials for Robots.”
In the last century, it was common to envision robots as shining metal structures with rigid and halting motion. This imagery is in contrast to the fluid and organic motion of living organisms that inhabit our natural world. The adaptability, complex control, and advanced learning capabilities observed in animals are not yet fully understood, and therefore have not been fully captured by current robotic systems. Furthermore, many of the mechanical properties and control capabilities seen in animals have yet to be achieved in robotic platforms. In this talk, I will share an interdisciplinary research vision for robots as models for neuroscience and biology as materials for robots.
[ CMU RI ]
2026-02-27 19:00:02
Designing a medical device? This whitepaper helps you evaluate adhesive options for biocompatibility, sterilization resistance, and manufacturability — so you can make the right material decision early.
What Attendees will Learn
2026-02-27 03:00:03
When doctors in the United States refer patients to specialty or post-acute medical care such as physical therapy or long-term nursing care, nearly half never complete the process of finding help. Referrals stall in part because provider directories are outdated, insurance coverage is unclear, and much coordination still relies on phone calls and faxes.
Carenector, a Denver-based startup launched in 2024, is working to improve the process with software that quickly connects patients with appropriate care providers while protecting their personal data. Instead of presenting a long list of providers, many of whom would not be a good match, the company’s referral platform uses AI to eliminate facilities that don’t meet the patient’s rehabilitation needs, don’t accept the patient’s insurance, or are not conveniently located.
Cofounder:
Naheem Noah
Founded:
2024
Headquarters:
Denver
Employees:
5
The startup’s platform serves individuals seeking care as well as health care organizations and care coordination teams that manage patient referrals. The company aims to help patients while reducing the administrative burden on clinicians and discharge planners, says cofounder Naheem Noah. As of now, Carenector works with patients and facilities only in Colorado, but it plans to expand coverage nationwide.
Noah, a Ph.D. candidate who joined IEEE in 2022 as a student member, encountered the referral problem firsthand after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament in a knee while playing soccer. Finding a physical therapist who accepted his insurance, specialized in ACL rehabilitation, had appointments available, and was near his home required hours of phone calls and searches through inaccurate provider lists, he says.
That experience helped shape the company’s direction, but Carenector is aimed at a broader, persistent failure in U.S. health care coordination.
The company took shape when Noah connected with his cofounder, licensed social worker Aminata Diarra, a social director at a nursing facility. Her role included discharge planning: placing patients in post-acute-care facilities that bridge the gap between hospital discharge and the patient’s ability to independently manage life’s daily activities.
For a single patient, Diarra says, that often meant she made 10 to 15 phone calls over the course of a week to find a facility with a bed available, that accepted the patient’s insurance, and that could meet the care requirements.
She and Noah soon realized they were dealing with the same broken system from opposite sides. Existing research on referral lapses supported their experience. Primary care physicians often send referral notes—analogous to prescriptions—that list the patient’s medical history and describe the needed treatment.
Noah discovered that only about one-third of the notes are transmitted in a way that allows providers at nursing homes and rehab facilities to access the information.
Physicians often post their suggestions for ongoing treatment in sections of a patient’s electronic health records, but providers at post-acute facilities don’t have access to those because of medical privacy laws. What gets shared is a pared-down document that omits progress notes and discharge summaries.
Noah is currently a researcher in the University of Denver computer science department, where his academic work focuses on privacy and security in digital systems.
He is Carenector’s chief executive and technical lead, overseeing the system’s design, making technical decisions, and meeting with investors.
Although the startup is separate from his dissertation research, the company reflects his broader interest in building secure systems that work in real-world conditions.
Beginning a company while a student, he has access to university resources that many early-stage startups lack. He has participated in the university’s BaseCamp accelerator and received mentorship and business planning support.
The Carenector team was assembled with the plan to scale up in the future with health care compliance in mind. The group includes professionals from regulatory, legal, and data engineering fields.
By using standardized digital information shared among medical facilities, Carenector eliminates the need for staff to make phone calls or send faxes. At the core of the platform is a structured database that links care providers—including post-acute, specialty, and rehabilitation facilities—with insurance plan criteria and facility attributes such as accessibility and service capabilities.
One of the biggest challenges for Noah is getting accurate data on which services facilities offer, which insurance they accept, and whether a patient’s insurance plan covers the treatment proposed by the referring physician.
“Health care information in the United States is not centralized,” he says, “and insurance provider directories are often wrong or out of date.”
To address that, Carenector incorporates publicly available datasets from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), including plan attributes, service areas, quality ratings, and issuer-level transparency data. These public-use files provide plan-level and provider-level information that help standardize coverage criteria, geographic availability, and performance indicators. Carenector integrates this structured public data with facility-supplied information and referral outcome analytics to improve matching accuracy.
“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data, and built-in privacy protections, we hope to make accessing care a routine step in recovery—not another obstacle.”
This structured data helps Carenector evaluate plan criteria, provider capabilities, geographic availability, and quality indicators to support referral decision-making. The company standardizes and organizes the information within its own system architecture and uses mapping and geolocation APIs to integrate location-based filtering and workflow functionality for patients, providers, and care coordinators.
Because CMS data is updated periodically, Carenector supplements it with additional structured data sources and referral outcome analytics to better understand plan acceptance patterns. Room availability information comes directly from participating facilities, which are responsible for updating their status within Carenector’s system.
Whether referrals succeed or fail provides critical feedback, Noah says. When referrals to specific facilities repeatedly go uncompleted—meaning the patient does not receive the recommended care from the provider—Carenector’s AI-driven matching algorithm adjusts to that pattern and reduces the likelihood of that facility being considered for similar cases. Facilities that consistently accept and complete referrals are ranked preferentially.
The company has poured its data management wizardry and AI smarts into apps for patients and clinicians.
The patient app helps users locate appropriate health care services at no cost. Users can search for care by service type, ZIP code, or insurance company without creating an account. They receive a list of matching facilities that can be shared via clipboard or sent by email to themselves or family members..
In the facility app, clinicians enter the diagnosis, rehabilitation needs, equipment requirements, insurance type, and location without sharing personally identifiable patient information. Organizations can communicate using secure messages that disappear after a set period. Files and images are shown only once and deleted after viewing.
Facilities that use the app pay Carenector a flat fee for each successful referral. The patient app is free.
The startup does not sell or share data with third parties, Noah says.
“Privacy is a central design requirement for Carenector’s system, not a last-minute add-on to the finished product,” he says.
The company minimizes the collection of personal data to avoid becoming a data repository. Although its role is limited to coordinating referrals, Carenector is working with independent security auditors to validate that its operational and data-handling practices align with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. The HIPAA law sets standards meant to protect sensitive patient information from unauthorized disclosure.
Noah says he is confident that Carenector will achieve that rating because the app is designed to reduce the collection and exposure of sensitive information wherever possible.
Carenector’s growth plan, Noah says, is strategic. Rather than scaling rapidly, he says, he is looking to enter one region at a time, incorporating feedback from each local deployment before expanding the company further.
He envisions that in five years, Carenector will serve as a core piece of health care referral infrastructure—embedded in the workflows of hospitals, post-acute facilities, insurers, employers, and major electronic health record systems such as Epic and Cerner—while also increasing visibility for care facilities in underserved and remote areas. The plan, he says, is to support thousands of facility recommendations per day, compared with the approximately 200 daily facility recommendations it currently generates. Noah also looks forward to the broader adoption of APIs that allow care coordination and facility discovery to occur directly within clinical workflows.
He says he sees his startup as a way to reduce unnecessary stress from moments when patients are vulnerable.
“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data, and built-in privacy protections,” he says, “we hope to make accessing care a routine step in recovery—not another obstacle.”
2026-02-27 01:00:03
As electric vehicles roll off assembly lines, a bottleneck sits upstream: lithium refinement. Turning raw lithium into the compounds needed for batteries is expensive, messy, and energy intensive, but Mangrove Lithium, a Vancouver-based startup, has a better way. The company has developed an electrochemical refining process that converts lithium feedstocks into battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
Converting raw lithium to lithium hydroxide typically requires roasting spodumene—a mineral from which lithium is derived—at high temperatures, and then leaching it with acid to convert it to lithium sulfate. That compound then needs to be converted to lithium hydroxide. “It’s a thermochemical reaction that uses heavy amounts of reagent chemicals, and generates a sodium sulfate waste stream,” says Ryan Day, Mangrove Lithium’s director of operations.
Further tightening the bottleneck, the majority of the world’s lithium—60 to 70 percent—is now refined in China, and export restrictions and geopolitical tensions have disrupted supply chains in recent years. Shipping raw lithium overseas to be refined also adds to batteries’ total carbon footprint. A new model for lithium refining could reshape not just the economics of electric vehicles but also the geography and environmental footprint of the global battery supply chain.
Mangrove’s demo plant in British Columbia is scheduled to start production in the second half of 2026.
Mangrove replaces the conventional, resource-intensive reaction with a process that uses electricity, water, and oxygen. In an electrochemical cell, they flow brine through an electrolyzer, which consists of a metal box with three compartments between the cathode and anode. The compartments are separated by ion exchange membranes, semipermeable barriers that allow only certain ions to pass. Lithium sulfate flows through the central compartment, and the cell’s electric field splits the salt apart. “Lithium, which is a positive ion, will move across a membrane toward the cathode,” says Day. There, “we are reacting oxygen and water to create hydroxide ions, which join with the lithium from the salt to make lithium hydroxide.”
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the cell, the sulfate—a negative ion—moves toward the anode, where water is being split to produce protons and oxygen gas. The protons combine with sulfate ions to make sulfuric acid.
“You run that process continuously, and over time you’re generating lithium hydroxide, which you can send to a crystallizer,” Day says. “There’s no significant waste product, and all you’re feeding in is brine, water, oxygen, and electricity.” The sulfuric acid is recovered and can be circulated back upstream to leach more brine from the raw feed material.
In general, keeping the ion exchange membrane intact is one of the biggest challenges for scaling this type of process, says Feifei Shi, assistant professor of energy engineering at Penn State. Shi, who researches electrochemical-based refinement methods, notes that the approach can more easily activate the necessary reactions, but faces limitations for large-scale applications.
The electrochemical process separates out lithium by passing it through three compartments separated by semipermeable barriers. Mangrove Lithium
Mangrove’s key innovation and what enables the process is an oxygen-based cathode. “Driving the reaction requires detailed engineering,” says Day. The company designed an electrode that lets a gas and a liquid react together, using just enough water to make the oxygen reaction work—without adding so much that it floods the system and creates hydrogen gas instead.
The electrodes are made with a proprietary process that combines several dedicated layers that allow for a balanced flow of water and oxygen to access the active catalyst sites. This design favors the oxygen-reduction reaction for over 99.5 percent of the total cathode activity. It also reduces the amount of electricity needed to drive the process, because “oxygen reduction requires less voltage than water reduction,” Day says. Demand for battery minerals is surging beyond just lithium, with automakers competing for supplies of nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese. Simultaneously, utilities are deploying grid-scale batteries that use the same materials in even larger volumes. Refining capacity—not just mining—could become the critical choke point in this buildout, because battery makers require highly specified, ultrapure compounds.
While Mangrove is initially targeting lithium, their electrochemical architecture is not inherently lithium-specific, and could be adapted to other battery materials that face similar purification bottlenecks. Nickel and cobalt sulfate production, for example, still rely on multistep precipitation and solvent-extraction processes that generate significant waste and require large reagent inputs. “It would work immediately in application to other alkali-metal salts,” Day says.
Mangrove’s demo plant in British Columbia will make 1,000 tonnes per year of lithium hydroxide. If the company can scale its technology as it hopes, it could begin to reshape not just the battery supply chain but also the geopolitics of the energy transition.