2026-03-28 03:05:59
In a landmark case, a jury found this week that Meta and YouTube negligently designed their platforms and harmed the plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman referred to as Kaley G.M. The jury agreed with the plaintiff that social media is addictive and harmful and was deliberately designed to be that way. This finding aligns with my view as a clinical psychologist: that social media addiction is not a failure of users, but a feature of the platforms themselves. I believe that accountability must extend beyond individuals to the systems and incentives that shape their behavior.
In my clinical practice, I regularly see patients struggling with compulsive social media use. Many describe a pattern of “doomscrolling,” often using social media to numb themselves after a long day. Afterwards, they feel guilty and stressed about the time lost yet have had limited success changing this pattern on their own.
It’s easy to understand why scrolling can be so addictive. Social media interfaces are built around a powerful behavioral mechanism known as intermittent reinforcement, says Judson Brewer, an addiction researcher at Brown University, which is the strongest and most effective type of reinforcement learning. This is the same mechanism that slot machines rely on: Users never know when the next reward—a shower of quarters, or a slew of likes and comments—will appear. Not all the videos in our feeds captivate us, but if we scroll long enough, we are bound to arrive at one that does. The ongoing search for rewards ensnares us and reinforces itself.
Individuals typically struggle on their own to address compulsive social media use. This should be no surprise, as habits are not typically broken through sheer discipline but rather by altering the reinforcement loops that sustain them. Brewer argues that “there’s actually no neuroscientific evidence for the presence of willpower.” Placing the burden to self-regulate solely on users misses the deeper issue: These platforms are engineered to override individual control.
A growing body of research identifies social media use and constant digital connectivity as important influences on the growing incidence of adolescent mental health problems. Brewer notes that adolescents are particularly vulnerable, as they are in a “developmental phase” in which reinforcement learning processes are especially strong. This vulnerability can be exploited by the design features of large social media platforms.
NPR uncovered records from a recent lawsuit filed by Kentucky’s attorney general against TikTok. According to these documents, TikTok implemented interface mechanisms such as autoplay, infinite scrolling, and a highly personalized recommendation algorithm that were systematically optimized to maximize user engagement.
TikTok’s algorithmically tailored “For You” content continuously tracks user behaviors, such as how long a video is watched, whether it is replayed, or quickly skipped. The feed then curates short videos, or reels, for the user based on past scrolling behavior and what is most likely to hold attention.
These documents show one example of a tech company knowingly designing products to maximize attention. I believe social media companies also have the capacity to reduce addictiveness through intentional design choices.
The good news is we are not helpless. There are multiple levers for change: how we collectively talk about social media, how our governments regulate its design and access, and how we hold companies accountable for practices that shape user behavior.
Some countries are moving quickly to set policy around social media use. Australia has imposed a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts, with similar bans pending in Denmark, France, and Malaysia.
These bans typically rely on age verification. Users without verified accounts can still passively watch videos on platforms like YouTube, but this approach removes many of the most addictive features, including infinite scroll, personalized feeds, notifications, and systems for followers and likes. At the same time, age verification may cause different problems in the online ecosystem.
Other countries are targeting social media use in specific contexts. South Korea, for example, banned smartphone use in classrooms. And the United Kingdom is taking a different approach; its Age Appropriate Design Code instructs platforms to prioritize children’s safety while designing products. The code includes strong privacy defaults, limits on data collection, and constraints on features that nudge users toward greater engagement.
A report called Breaking the Algorithm, from Mental Health America, argues that social media platforms should shift from maximizing engagement to supporting well-being. It calls for revamping recommendation systems to spot patterns of unhealthy use and adjusting feeds accordingly—for example, by limiting extreme or distressing content.
The report also argues that users should not have to intentionally opt out of harmful design features. Instead, the safest settings should be the default. The report supports regulatory measures aimed at limiting features such as autoplay and infinite scroll while enforcing privacy and safety settings.
Platforms could also give users more control by adding natural speed bumps, such as stopping points or break reminders during scrolling. Research shows that interrupting infinite scroll with prompts such as “Do you want to keep going?” substantially reduces mindless scrolling and improves memory of content.
Some social media platforms are already experimenting with more ethical engagement. Mastodon, an open-source, decentralized platform, displays posts chronologically rather than ranking them for engagement, and does not offer algorithmically generated feeds like “For You.” Bluesky gives users control by letting them customize their own algorithms and toggle between different feed types, such as chronological or topic-based filters.
In light of the recent verdict, it is time for a national conversation about accountability for social media companies. Individual responsibility will always be important, but so are the mechanisms employed by big tech to shape user behavior. If social media platforms are currently designed to capture attention, they can also be designed to give some of it back.
2026-03-28 02:00:04
In today’s technological landscape, the only constant is the rate of obsolescence. As engineers move deeper into the eras of 6G, ubiquitous artificial intelligence, and hyper-miniaturized electronics, a traditional degree is only a starting point.
To remain competitive in today’s job market, technical specialists must evolve into future-ready professionals by cultivating more than just niche expertise. Success now demands a high degree of adaptive intelligence and strategic communication, allowing specialists to translate complex data into actionable business decisions as industry shifts accelerate.
To bridge the gap between technical proficiency and organizational leadership, the IEEE Professional Development Suite offers training on programs designed to build the strategic competencies required to navigate today’s complex landscape. The suite provides deep technical dives into domains such as telecommunications connectivity and microelectronics reliability. Organizations can stay ahead of the curve through informed decision-making and a future-ready workforce.
Within the semiconductor sector, which is projected to become a US $1 billion industry by 2030, electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a major reliability challenge. Because even a microscopic, unnoticed discharge can compromise a semiconductor, ESD issues account for up to one-third of all field failures, according to the EOS/ESD Association.
IEEE’s targeted training—the online Practical ESD Protection Design certificate program—equips teams with technical protocols to mitigate the risks and ensure long-term hardware reliability. Specialized ESD training has become essential for chip designers and manufacturing professionals seeking to improve discharge control.
The interactive modules cover theory, real-world case studies, and practical mitigation techniques. The standards-based instruction is aligned with ANSI/ESD S20.20–21: Protection of Electrical and Electronic Parts and other industry guidelines.
As 5G network capabilities expand globally, so does the demand for engineers who can master the protocols and procedures required to manage complex telecommunications systems. The IEEE 5G/6G Essential Protocols and Procedures Training and Innovation Testbed, in partnership with Wray Castle, takes a deep dive into the 5G network function framework, registration processes, and packet data unit session establishment. The program is designed for system engineers, integrators, and technical professionals responsible for 5G signaling. Stakeholders such as network operators, equipment vendors, regulators, and handset manufacturers could find the program to be beneficial as well.
“The IEEE Professional Development Suite ensures that learners are not just keeping pace with change but helping to drive it.”
To bridge the gap between theory and practice, the course includes three months of free access to the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed. The secure, cloud-based platform offers a private, end-to-end 5G network environment where individuals and teams can gain hands-on experience with critical system signaling and troubleshooting.
Technical knowledge alone is not enough to climb the corporate ladder. To thrive today, engineering leaders must have a strategic vision and people-centric leadership skills.
The IEEE Leading Technical Teams training program focuses on the challenges of managing engineers in R&D environments and fostering creative problem-solving through an immersive learning experience. It’s designed for professionals who have been in a leadership position for at least six months. Participants can gain self-awareness.
The program includes a 360-degree assessment that gathers feedback about the individual from peers and direct reports to build a personalized development plan. The goal is to help technical professionals transition from high-performing individual contributors into leaders who drive innovation by inspiring their teams rather than just managing tasks.
Organizations can enroll groups of 10 or more to learn as a cohort—which can ensure that everyone stays on the same page while setting a training schedule that fits the team’s deadlines.
In collaboration with the Rutgers Business School, IEEE offers two mini MBA programs to bridge the gap between technical expertise and executive leadership. The programs offer flexibility to fit the demanding schedules of senior professionals. The online format lets participants engage with content as their time permits, while live virtual office hours with faculty provide opportunities for real-time interaction.
During the mini MBA for engineers 12-week curriculum, technical professionals master core competencies such as financial analysis, business strategy, and negotiation to effectively transition into management roles.
The mini MBA in artificial intelligence embeds AI literacy directly into business strategy rather than treating the technology as a standalone subject. Participants learn to evaluate AI through financial modeling and governance frameworks, gaining a practical foundation to lead initiatives that incorporate the technology.
The programs are offered to individuals as well as to organizations interested in training groups of 10 employees or more.
All the programs within the IEEE Professional Development Suite offer continuing education units and professional development hours.
Earning globally recognized credits provides a professional advantage, signaling a commitment to growth that often serves as a prerequisite for advancing into senior, lead, or principal roles. Additionally, the credits satisfy annual professional engineering license renewal requirements, ensuring practitioners remain compliant while expanding their capabilities.
Developed by IEEE Educational Activities, the training programs are peer-reviewed and built to align with industry needs. By focusing on upskilling (improving current skills) and reskilling (learning new ones), the IEEE Professional Development Suite ensures that learners are not just keeping pace with change but helping to drive it.
2026-03-28 00:30:03
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!
“Roadrunner” is a new bipedal wheeled robot prototype designed for multimodal locomotion. It weighs around 15 kg (33 lb) and can seamlessly switch between its side-by-side and in-line wheel modes and stepping configurations depending on what is required for navigating its environment. The robot’s legs are entirely symmetric, allowing it to point its knees forward or backward, which can be used to avoid obstacles or manage specific movements. A single control policy was trained to handle both side-by-side and in-line driving. Several behaviors, including standing up from various ground configurations and balancing on one wheel, were successfully deployed zero-shot on the hardware.
Incredibly (INCREDIBLY!) NASA says that this is actually happening.
NASA’s SkyFall mission will build on the success of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Using a daring midair deployment, SkyFall will deliver a team of next-gen Mars helicopters to scout human landing sites and map subsurface water ice.
[ NASA ]
NASA’s MoonFall mission will blaze a path for future Artemis missions by sending four highly mobile drones to survey the lunar surface around the Moon’s South Pole ahead of astronauts’ arrival there. MoonFall is built on the legacy of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. The drones will be launched together and released during descent to the surface. They will land and operate independently over the course of a lunar day (14 Earth days) and will be able to explore hard-to-reach areas, including permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), surveying terrain with high-definition optical cameras and other potential instruments.
For what it’s worth, Moon landings have a success rate well under 50%. So let’s send some robots there to land over and over!
[ NASA ]
In Science Robotics, researchers from the Tangible Media group led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, together with colleagues from Politecnico di Bari, present Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles: a new class of artificial muscle fibers for robots and wearables. Unlike the rigid servo motors used in most robots, these fiber-shaped muscles are soft and flexible. They combine electrohydrodynamic (EHD) fiber pumps—slender tubes that move liquid using electric fields to generate pressure silently, with no moving parts—with fluid-filled fiber actuators. These artificial muscles could enable more agile untethered robots, as well as wearable assistive systems with compact actuation integrated directly into textiles.
[ MIT Media Lab ]
In this study, we developed MEVIUS2, an open-source quadruped robot. It is comparable in size to the Boston Dynamics Spot, equipped with two lidars and a C1 camera, and can freely climb stairs and steep slopes! All hardware, software, and learning environments are released as open source.
[ MEVIUS2 ]
Thanks, Kento!
What goes into preparing for a live performance? Arun highlights the reliability testing that goes into trying a new behavior for Spot.
[ Boston Dynamics ]
In this work, a multirobot planning and control framework is presented and demonstrated with a team of 40 indoor robots, including both ground and aerial robots.
That soundtrack, though.
[ GitHub ]
Thanks, Keisuke!
Quadrupedal robots can navigate cluttered environments like their animal counterparts, but their floating-base configuration makes them vulnerable to real-world uncertainties. Controllers that rely only on proprioception (body sensing) must physically collide with obstacles to detect them. Those that add exteroception (vision) need precisely modeled terrain maps that are hard to maintain in the wild. DreamWaQ++ bridges this gap by fusing both modalities through a resilient multimodal reinforcement learning framework. The result: a single controller that handles rough terrains, steep slopes, and high-rise stairs—while gracefully recovering from sensor failures and situations it has never seen before.
That cliff behavior is slightly uncanny.
[ DreamWaQ++ ]
I take issue with this from iRobot:
While the pyramid exploration that iRobot did was very cool, they did it with a custom-made robot designed for a very specific environment. Cleaning your floors is way, way harder. Here’s a bit more detail on the pyramids thing:
[ iRobot ]
More robots in the circus, please!
[ Daniel Simu ]
MIT engineers have designed a wristband that lets wearers control a robotic hand with their own movements. By moving their hands and fingers, users can direct a robot to perform specific tasks, or they can manipulate objects in a virtual environment with high-dexterity control.
[ MIT ]
At Nvidia GTC 2026, we showcased how AI is moving into the physical world. Visitors interacted with robots using voice commands, watching them interpret intent and act in real time—powered by our KinetIQ AI brain.
[ Humanoid ]
Props to Sony for its continued support and updates for Aibo!
[ Aibo ]
This robot looks like it could be a little curvier than normal?
[ LimX Dynamics ]
Developed by Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd., the Naviai Robot is an intelligent cooking device. It can autonomously process ingredients, perform cooking tasks with high accuracy, adjust smart kitchen equipment in real time, and complete postcooking cleaning. Equipped with multimodal perception technology, it adapts to daily kitchen environments and ensures safe and stable operation.
That 7x is doing some heavy lifting.
[ Zhejiang Lab ]
This CMU RI Seminar is by Hadas Kress-Gazit from Cornell, on “Formal Methods for Robotics in the Age of Big Data.”
Formal methods—mathematical techniques for describing systems, capturing requirements, and providing guarantees—have been used to synthesize robot control from high-level specification, and to verify robot behavior. Given the recent advances in robot learning and data-driven models, what role can, and should, formal methods play in advancing robotics? In this talk I will give a few examples for what we can do with formal methods, discuss their promise and challenges, and describe the synergies I see with data-driven approaches.
2026-03-27 22:41:42
We’re all familiar with mixing red, yellow, and blue paint in various ratios to instantly make all kinds of colors. This works great for oils or watercolors, but fails when it comes to cans of spray paint. The paint droplets can’t be blended once they are aerosolized. Consequently, although spray cans are great for applying even coats of paint to large areas very quickly, spray-paint artists need a separate can for every color they want to use—until now.
Back in 2018, when I first saw professional spray artists lugging dozens to hundreds of cans to their work sites, I was inspired to start noodling on a solution. I’ve worked at Google X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” as a hardware engineer, and I’m now building a startup in mechanical-design software. I’m no painter, but I know my way around mechatronics.
I wanted my solution to be inexpensive and simple enough to build as a DIY project and functional enough for an artist to use, without breaking their flow. So I began prototyping a system that combines base colors while they are still in pressurized form from off-the-shelf cans.
This new rotary pinch valve can be opened and closed in tens of milliseconds and prevents backpressure from clogging lines.James Provost
I tried a few approaches where pres-surized paint from the base-color cansfed through tubes into a mixing channel, before emerging from a spray head. To control the ratios, I decided to borrow a trick that would be familiar to anyone who’s ever had to control the bright-ness of an LED using a microcontroller: pulse-width modulation. Initially, I used electronically controlled solenoid valves to release the paint from the cans. The paint would flow into a mixing channel for a relative duration that corresponded to the ratio of the base colors required to make a given hue. However, this failed because different cans never have the same internal pressure. Whenever two valves were open at the same time, the pressure difference would make paint flow backward into the lower-pressure can.
As an alternative, I removed the mixing channel and tried making the paint pulses from each can sequentially converge into a tube so that no more than one valve would ever be open at a time. Surprisingly, this worked perfectly. The backflow was eliminated, and it turned out that the natural turbulence of the flow was sufficient to mix the paints. Let’s say you want to produce a clementine orange color. This requires yellow and red paint in a ratio of 1:2, so the yellow valve opens for a period of time, and then the red valve opens for twice as long. The system then keeps repeating this cycle of pulses in a rapid pace to instantly create the spray-paint color you want.
The theory is straightforward, but making this work in practice took quite a bit of experimentation. First, I had to determine the actual durations of pulses that would produce evenly mixed colors, not just their ratios. I also needed to work out the size of the tubing (too narrow and you’d get low spray force; too wide and you’d have paint accumulating in the tubes). Eventually I settled on a maximum pulse duration of 250 milliseconds and a tube diameter of 1 millimeter.
Even though the system worked, the solenoid valves I used constantly clogged up. Designed for water purifiers, the valves didn’t prevent paint from entering the mechanism, where the paint would harden. Moreover, when the valves were turned off, they could stop backflow only if the inlet remained pressurized. So disconnecting a paint can from the system would cause instant leaking. Other off-the-shelf valves I tried couldn’t cycle fast enough and were too expensive.
I had some spectacular failures along the way of the sort that only pressurized paint can provide.
So I created my own mechanism: a high-speed, electronically controlled, rotary pinch valve. It has a stepper motor that rotates a lever with a rolling bearing to constrict fluid flow inside a flexible tube. This concept isn’t new—there’s something like them in every peristaltic pump. But I added a spring to firmly hold the lever in the closed position against any back pressure when the motor isn’t powered, making it a normally closed valve that isolates the attached can. Additionally, the valve is fast enough to be open for as little as 30 milliseconds.
I went through four major prototypes of the system before reaching a working version, and I had some spectacular failures along the way of the sort that only pressurized paint can provide. The final version uses four base colors—red, yellow, blue, and white—with the color mix controlled by four knobs attached to an Arduino Nano and a small display. The flow of paint is triggered by a push button placed above the spray head, similar to a spray can’s nozzle.
Cans holding base colors (A) are attached to valves (B). An Arduino-based control panel (C) opens and closes valves to mix paint before it is aerosolized (E). By quickly opening and closing valves with varying durations in sequence (D), you can mix paint in specific ratios to create desired colors.James Provost
The length of time a base color’s paint valve can be open is one of eight values between 30 and 250 ms. This means that the entire system—which I coincidentally dubbed Spectrum—can create hundreds of distinct spray-paint colors instantly. It produces less than 84 (or 4,096) colors because duration ratios that are a multiple of each other will produce the same color—for example, 2:3 and 4:6. I added a force sensor to the push button, which allows for a gradient: Two color mixes can be dialed in, and as I increase my thumb’s pressure on the button, the paint mix shifts from one color to the other.
Spectrum’s various fixtures are 3D-printed, and project files and videos are available through my website at https://www.sandeshmanik.com/projects/spectrum. Preprints of technical descriptions of the rotary pinch valve and mixing methodology are available on TechRxiv. The total cost for the bill of materials is less than US $150.
Working on and off on the side for about seven years, I finally finished developing my system and writing the documentation in late 2025. After I posted a video to social media, I was heartened by the immediate positive response from spray-paint artists around the world. I’m now creating step-by-step instructions so that nontechnical people can build their own Spectrum paint sprayer. I look forward to seeing what creations artists out in the wild make!
2026-03-27 18:02:05
This sponsored article is brought to you by NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Within a 6 mile radius of New York University’s (NYU) campus, there are more than 500 tech industry giants, banks, and hospitals. This isn’t just a fact about real estate, it’s the foundation for advancing quantum discovery and application.
While the world races to harness quantum technology, NYU is betting that the ultimate advantage lies not solely in a lab, but in the dense, demanding, and hyper-connected urban ecosystem that surrounds it. With the launch of its NYU Quantum Institute (NYUQI), NYU is positioning itself as the central node in this network; a “full stack” powerhouse built on the conviction that it has found the right place, and the right time, to turn quantum science into tangible reality.
Proximity advantage is essential because quantum science demands it. Globally, the quest for practical quantum solutions — whether for computing, sensing, or secure communications — has been stalled, in part, by fragmentation. Physicists and chemical engineers invent new materials, computer scientists develop new algorithms, and electrical engineers build new devices, but all three often work in isolated academic silos.
Gregory Gabadadze, NYU’s dean for science, NYU physicist and Quantum Institute Director Javad Shabani, and Juan de Pablo, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and executive dean of the Tandon School of Engineering.Veselin Cuparić/NYU
NYUQI’s premise is that breakthroughs happen “at the interfaces between different domains,” according to Juan de Pablo, Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology at NYU and Executive Dean of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The Institute is built to actively force those necessary collisions — to integrate the physicists, engineers, materials scientists, computer scientists, biologists, and chemists vital to quantum research into one holistic operation. This institutional design ensures that the hardware built by one team can be immediately tested by software developed by another, accelerating progress in a way that isolated departments never could.
NYUQI’s premise is that breakthroughs happen at the interfaces between different domains. —Juan de Pablo, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
NYUQI’s integrated vision is backed by a massive physical commitment to the city. The NYUQI is not just a theoretical concept; its collaborators will be housed in a renovated, million-square-foot facility in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village, backed by a state-of-the-art Nanofabrication Cleanroom in Brooklyn serving as a high-tech foundry. This is where the theoretical meets physical devices, allowing the Institute to test and refine the process from materials science to deployment.
NYUQI will be housed in a renovated, million-square-foot facility in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village.Tracey Friedman/NYU
Leading this effort is NYUQI Director Javad Shabani, who, along with the other members, is turning the Institute into a hub for collaboration with private and public sector partners with quantum challenges that need solving. As de Pablo explains, “Anybody who wants to work on quantum with NYU, you come in through that door, and we’ll send you to the right place.” For New York’s vast ecosystem of tech giants and financial institutions, the NYUQI offers a resource they can’t build on their own: a cohesive team of experts in quantum phenomena, quantum information theory, communication, computing, materials, and optics, and a structured path to applying theoretical discoveries to advanced quantum technologies.
The NYUQI’s integrated structure is less about organizational management, and more about scientific requirement. The challenge of quantum is that the hardware, the software, and the programming are inherently interconnected — each must be designed to work with the other. To solve this, the Institute focuses on three applications of quantum science: Quantum Computing, Quantum Sensing, and Quantum Communications.
For Shabani, this means creating an integrated environment that bridges discovery with experimentation, starting with the physical components all the way to quantum algorithm centers. That will include a fabrication facility in the new building in Manhattan, as well as the NYU Nanofab in Brooklyn directed by Davood Shahjerdi. New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand recently secured $1 million in congressionally-directed spending to bring Thermal Laser Epitaxy (TLE) technology — which allows for atomic-level purity, minimal defects, and streamlined application of a diverse range of quantum materials — to NYU, marking the first time the equipment will be used in the U.S.
NYU Nanofab manager Smiti Bhattacharya and Nanofab Director Davood Shahjerdi at the nanofab ribbon-cutting in 2023. The nanofab is the first academic cleanroom in Brooklyn, and serves as a prototyping facility for the NORDTECH Microelectronics Commons consortium.NYU WIRELESS
Tight control over fabrication, and can allow researchers to pivot quickly when a breakthrough in one area — say, finding a cheaper, more reliable material like silicon carbide — can be explored for use across all three applications, and offers unique access to academics and the private sector alike to sophisticated pieces of specialty equipment whose maintenance knowledge and costs make them all-but-impossible to maintain outside of the right staffing and environment.
The NYU Nanofab is Brooklyn’s first academic cleanroom, with a strategic focus on superconducting quantum technologies, advanced semiconductor electronics, and devices built from quantum heterostructures and other next-generation materials.NYU Nanofab
That speed and adaptability is the NYUQI’s competitive edge. It turns fragmented challenges into holistic solutions, positioning the Institute to solve real-world problems for its New York neighbors—from highly secure data transmission to next-generation drug discovery.
The integrated approach also makes the NYUQI a testbed for the most critical near-term applications. Take Quantum Communications, which is essential for creating an “unhackable” quantum internet. In an industry first, NYU worked with the quantum start-up Qunnect to send quantum information through standard telecom fiber in New York City between Manhattan and Brooklyn through a 10-mile quantum networking link. Instead of simulating communication challenges in a lab, the NYUQI team is already leveraging NYU’s city-wide campus by utilizing existing infrastructure to test secure quantum transmission between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The NYUQI team is already leveraging NYU’s city-wide campus by utilizing existing infrastructure to test secure quantum transmission between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
This isn’t just theory; it is building a functioning prototype in the most demanding, dense urban environment in the world. Real-time, real-world deployment is a critical component missing in other isolated institutions. When the NYUQI achieves results, the technology will be that much more readily available to the massive financial, tech, and communications organizations operating right outside their door.
NYUQI includes a state-of-the-art Nanofabrication Cleanroom in Brooklyn serving as a high-tech foundry.NYU Tandon
While the Institute has built the physical infrastructure and designed the necessary scientific architecture, its enduring contribution will be the specialized workforce it creates for the new quantum economy. This addresses the market’s greatest deficit: a lack of individuals trained not just in physics, but in the integrated, full-stack approach that quantum demands.
By creating a pipeline of 100 to 200 graduate and doctoral students who are encouraged to collaborate across Computing, Sensing, and Communications, the NYUQI is narrowing the skills gap. These will be future leaders who can speak the language of the physicist, the materials scientist, and the engineer simultaneously. This commitment to interdisciplinary talent is also fueled by the launch of the new Master of Science in Quantum Science & Technology program at NYU Tandon, positioning the university among a select group worldwide offering such a specialized degree.
Interdisciplinary education creates the shared language and understanding poised to make graduates coming from collaborations in the NYUQI extremely valuable in the current landscape. Quantum challenges are not just technical; they are managerial and philosophical as well. An engineer working with the NYUQI will understand the requirements of the nanofabrication cleanroom and the foundations of superconducting qubits for quantum computing, just as a physicist will understand the application needs of an industry partner like a large financial institution. In a field where the entire team must be able to communicate seamlessly, these are professionals truly equipped to rapidly translate discovery into deployable technology. Creating a talent pipeline at scale will provide a missing link that converts New York’s vast commercial energy into genuine quantum advantage.
The vision for the NYUQI is an act of strategic geography that plays directly into the sheer volume of opportunity and demand right outside their new facility. By building the talent, the technology, and the structure necessary to capitalize on this dense environment, NYU is not just participating in the quantum race, it is actively steering it.
Attendees of NYU’s 2025 Quantum Summit.Tracey Friedman/NYU
The initial hypothesis for the NYUQI was simple: the ultimate advantage lies in pursuing the science in the right place at the right time. Now, the institute will ensure that the next wave of scientific discovery, capable of solving previously intractable problems in finance, medicine, and security, will be conceived, built, and tested in the heart of New York City.
2026-03-26 03:03:20
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!
There’s a persistent myth that engineers are bad communicators. In my experience, that’s not true.
Engineers are often excellent communicators—inside their domain. We’re precise. We’re logical. We structure arguments clearly. We define terms. We reason from constraints.
The breakdown happens when the audience changes.
We’re used to speaking in highly technical language, surrounded by people who share our vocabulary. In that environment, shorthand and jargon are efficient. But outside that bubble, when talking to executives, product managers, marketing teams, or customers, that same precision can be confusing.
The problem isn’t that we can’t communicate. It’s that we forget to translate.
If you’ve ever explained a critical issue or error to a non-technical stakeholder, you’ve probably experienced this: You give a technically accurate explanation. They leave either more confused than before, or more alarmed than necessary.
Suddenly you’re spending more time clarifying your explanation than fixing the issue.
Under pressure, we default to what we know best—technical detail. But detail without context creates cognitive overload. The listener can’t tell what matters, what’s normal, and what’s dangerous.
That’s when the “engineers can’t communicate” narrative shows up.
In reality, we just skipped the translation step.
One of the simplest ways to improve written communication today is surprisingly easy: Run your explanation through an AI model and ask, “would this make sense to a non-technical audience? Where would someone get confused?”
You can also say:
Large language models are particularly good at identifying jargon and offering alternative framings. They’re essentially translation assistants.
Analogies are especially powerful. If you’re explaining system latency, compare it to traffic congestion. If you’re describing technical debt, compare it to skipping maintenance on a house. If you’re explaining distributed systems, try using supply chain examples.
The goal isn’t to “dumb it down.” It’s to map the unfamiliar onto something familiar.
Before sending an email or report, ask yourself:
When speaking—especially in meetings or presentations—most engineers have one predictable habit: We speak too fast.
Nerves speed us up. Speed causes filler words. Filler words dilute authority.
To prevent that, follow a simple rule: Speak 10 to 15 percent slower than feels natural.
Slowing down cuts down the number of times you say “um” and “uh”, gives you time to think, makes you sound more confident, and gives the listener time to process.
Another rule: Say only what the audience needs to move forward.
Explain just enough for the person to make a decision. If you overload someone with implementation details when they only need tradeoffs, you’ve made their job harder.
The key skill in communication is audience awareness.
The same engineer who can clearly explain a concurrency bug to a peer can absolutely explain system risk to an executive. The difference is framing, vocabulary, and context. Not intelligence.
In the age of AI, where code generation is increasingly commoditized, the ability to translate complexity into clarity is becoming a defining advantage.
Engineers aren’t bad communicators. We just have to remember that outside our bubble, translation is part of the job.
—Brian
Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket 100 years ago, but his legacy still has relevant lessons for today’s engineers. Although Goddard’s headstrong confidence in his ideas helped bring about the breakthrough, it later became an obstacle in what systems engineer Guru Madhavan calls “the alpha trap.” Madhavan writes: “We love to celebrate the lone genius, yet we depend on teams to bring the flame of genius to the people.”
For Communications of the ACM, two Microsoft engineers propose a model for software engineering in the age of AI: Making the growth of early-in-career developers an explicit organizational goal. Without hiring early-career workers, the profession’s talent pipeline will eventually dry up. So, they argue, companies must hire them and develop talent, even if that comes with a short-term dip in productivity.
Looking for a job? Last year, IEEE Industry Engagement hosted its first virtual career fair to connect recruiters and young professionals. Several more career fairs are now planned, including two upcoming regional events and a global career fair in June. At these fairs, you can participate in interactive sessions, chat with recruiters, and experience video interviews.