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McClure Health Science High School student awarded scholarship from Amazon
McClure Health Science High School senior Jasmine Osorio is headed to college with the help of a major scholarship from Amazon.McClure Health Science High School senior Jasmine Osorio is headed to college with the help of a major scholarship from Amazon.
NSWCPD Applies AI and Machine Learning to Predictive Machinery Health
In a soundproof chamber at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD), a steel-gray air compressor hums as engineers test an experimental machine learning model designed to detect early signs of failure through vibration analysis. The effort, part of NSWCPD’s growing portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) projects, shows early promise for potential future Navy use.
Engineering, game design faculty turn nuclear science into interactive learning experience
At Kennesaw State University, learning about nuclear energy isn’t limited to textbooks and lectures. Researchers are developing a video game that helps users understand how reactors operate through hands-on experience. At the center of the project titled “Simulating the AP1000: An Educational Game to Promote Understanding of Nuclear Energy Safety and Sustainability” is a collaboration between engineering and game design faculty. The initiative focuses on turning complex nuclear concepts into an interactive learning experience.
Two inducted into Thomas Green Clemson Academy of Engineers and Scientists
Gary Mercer and Jim Kaplan receive college's highest honor, and Jie Huang, Thomas Kuckhoff and Toni Bloodworth Pence are honored as Outstanding Young Alumni.
Roman Space Telescope Science Platform Will Open New Frontiers in Space Science
Preparations for NASA's soon-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have already introduced historic changes to the field of astronomy. Starting in 2027, Roman will deliver an unprecedented volume of complex survey data that will be impractical to download to individual computers for analysis. Astronomers and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), working in close collaboration with the mission’s partners at NASA and Caltech/IPAC, have met these new developments head
LTRI hosts annual Region 1 Science and Engineering Fair
The Louisiana Tech Research Institute (LTRI) recently partnered with Bossier Parish Community College (BPCC) to host the 2026 Louisiana Region 1 Science Fair, marking the second consecutive year the e
How Dangerous Is Anthropic’s New AI Model? Its Chief Science Officer Explains.
Just how fast is the future coming at us, and how worried should we be? Last week, Anthropic announced Claude Mythos, the latest in what has become the leading family of AI models. In a very short time, AI models from Anthropic and other companies have become shockingly powerful at coding. But Mythos stands out because it is not just able to write code that can hack into critical systems, like those that run financial companies, but also to analyze systems and find and string together vulnerabilities in them, allowing Mythos to evade even sophisticated defenses. Anthropic chose to release Mythos to only about 40 leading corporations, so they could analyze the model’s capabilities and prepare countermeasures, in an effort it calls Project Glasswing. The release of Mythos—and the prospect of similarly powerful AIs to follow—has caused tremors at the top levels of Washington and corporate America. Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer at Anthropic, is at the center of this breakthrough. We sat down with Kaplan so he could walk us through just how powerful Mythos is, what the implications are for issues like our personal privacy, and what comes next. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Sean Fischer: For the layman, how is Claude Mythos different—more powerful, more dangerous—from previous models released by Anthropic? Jared Kaplan: I think most people have experienced the fact that our computers get faster and faster over time and over many decades. There’s this very smooth trend where every 18 months, maybe, computer processing power doubles. I think AI is on a trend in which it’s improving maybe 10 times faster than that. A lot of the earliest work that I did in AI was around identifying this scaling trend in AI. Claude Mythos is the latest model from Anthropic, but it’s not different because it’s qualitatively different. It’s really just kind of the culmination of the trend of AI models getting smarter and smarter at all kinds of general capabilities, from reasoning to software engineering to scientific research to knowledge work. For us, it was the first model to demonstrate very elite-level cybersecurity capabilities. It wasn’t because we trained Claude Mythos to focus on cybersecurity, but it was because, as a byproduct of its general intelligence and its general ability with software, it’s particularly good at identifying vulnerabilities in software and how to exploit them.
Thinking Machines Lab loses another founding member to Meta
Meta has hired another founding engineer from Thinking Machines Lab as the AI talent wars intensify. The startup is still rapidly expanding.
Thinking Machines Lab loses another founding member to Meta
Meta has hired another founding engineer from Thinking Machines Lab as the AI talent wars intensify. The startup is still rapidly expanding.
Siri Engineers Sent to AI Coding Bootcamp as Apple Prepares to Deliver Siri Overhaul
Apple is sending a large portion of its Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, reports The Information. Apple's decision to teach its programmers to better use AI for coding comes just two months before Apple is expected to unveil a smarter, more capable version of Siri at WWDC. While employees attend the coding bootcamp, around 60 members of the Siri development team will stick around to work on Siri, and an additional 60 will evaluate how Siri is performing.
Pleasanton Innovation Fair Brings Robots, Drones, Electric Buses and More This Weekend
The one-day free event at the Alameda County Fairgrounds is the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering, art and innovation in the area, according to organizers.
AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship welcomes 2026 fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Fifteen early career scientists — spanning research areas from medical artificial intelligence to exoplanets to bug science — will join newsrooms around the country and in Puerto Rico this summer to contribute their skills towards increased public understanding of science and technology.
95% of people carry this virus and scientists may have just found how to stop it
Scientists have taken a major step toward stopping Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), an extremely common infection linked to cancer and chronic disease. By using mice engineered with human antibody genes, researchers created powerful human-like antibodies that block the virus from attaching to and entering immune cells. One of these antibodies completely prevented infection in lab models with human immune systems, marking a breakthrough after years of difficulty tackling EBV’s ability to invade nearly all B cells.
Explore Purdue’s integrated business and engineering major
Nicole Welsh knows that progress is possible when business-minded and engineering-minded people work together.
Simon Cherry Receives ESMI Award for Significant, Long-Term Contributions to Imaging Science
The Distinguished Research Professor of biomedical engineering has received the 2026 ESMI Award from the European Society for Molecular Imaging. Among the most prestigious honors in imaging science, the award celebrates a researcher for their outstanding contributions to the interdisciplinary field.
UW STEM-ology Provides Energy and Natural Resources Activities for All
STEM-ology, a monthly series of themed science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) events for all ages, concludes this month at the University of Wyoming, with events including Toddler Tue
Angelo State names new dean for Science and Engineering College
Angelo State University has appointed Dr. Chih-Chien "Linus" Yu as the new dean of its College of Science and Engineering, effective April 1.
21 Long Island students win first place at science competition
The winners are eligible to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix.
Two Yale student scientists named Goldwater Scholars
Two Yale juniors have received the prestigious Goldwater scholarship, which supports students interested in research careers in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
Scholarships support rising stars of science
Two UVA students – a neuroscience major and a materials engineering major – received Goldwater Scholarships.
Engineering and Computer Science Awards for 2025-26 Presented at Convo
The College of Engineering and Computer Science at Arkansas State University presented graduating student awards during a Convocation of Scholars awards ceremony.
Two Pitt Materials Science Students Receive Ellwood Scholarships
University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering students Margo Levenson and Koh Bauman have received Ellwood Metallurgy Scholarships, which include a paid summer internship. Ellwood, a family-owned metals manufacturer, offers the scholarship to high-caliber, third-year college students studying metallurgy.Levenson, a Pittsburgh native who...
Student view: Celebrating learning as much as winning
Navya Bhardwaj will graduate on May 3 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering and minors in data science, and computational mathematics, science and engineering. She is president of MSU Women in Computing and served as co-director of SpartaHack.
Ann Brach Appointed Executive Director of Transportation Research Board at National Academies
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today that Ann Brach has been named the executive director of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).
The ‘bar has raised’ for UF computer science and engineering students
AI is changing expectations of CSE students entering the workforce
Sand, science and strategy: Strengthening the shores of Presque Isle
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District, has just released a very interesting video named ‘Sand, science and strategy: Strengthening the Shores of Presque Isle’. This video shows how the Buffalo District – using modern technology and hands-on expertise – fights erosion and protects the coastline of Presque Isle for the future: This content […]
Hidden weak spots in HIV and Ebola revealed with breakthrough nanodisc technology
A new nanodisc-based platform lets scientists study viral proteins in a form that closely mimics real viruses, revealing how antibodies truly recognize them. This approach uncovered hidden interactions in viruses like HIV and Ebola that traditional methods missed. By recreating the virus’s membrane environment, researchers can better understand how immune defenses work. The technique could speed up the development of more effective vaccines.
Aerospace engineer who worked on Artemis II thanks middle school science teachers
A little more than a decade ago, Nate Eller was an standout student at Twin Hills Middle School in Sebastopol. Today, he’s an aerospace engineer at NASA who played a role in the Artemis II mission.
Photos: Makeup tests, shoulder cuff health and student presentations
Darryna Guy-Williams, a bioengineering and bio chemistry major, sprays Jenna King, class TA and postdoctorate candidate in chemistry and chemical biology, with a facial hydrating mist in Leila Deravi’s cosmetic chemistry class.
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (K-12)
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—often called STEM—help students understand how the world works and how to shape what comes next.
Neuroscientist To Lead Engineering-Driven Brain Health Research
Dr. Matthew Walker joined UT Dallas in January to build the future of sleep science. His research spans fundamental neuroscience and the development of innovative engineering tools to improve the quality of life. Dr. Matthew Walker is helping to transform sleep research from an observational field into one in which engineered solutions can measure and […]
Neuroscientist To Lead Engineering-Driven Brain Health Research
Dr. Matthew Walker joined UT Dallas in January to build the future of sleep science. His research spans fundamental neuroscience and the development of innovative engineering tools to improve the quality of life. Dr. Matthew Walker is helping to transform sleep research from an observational field into one in which engineered solutions can measure and […]
Science fiction becomes reality at USF's Engineering Expo
At the University of South Florida’s Engineering Expo, visitors can control a robotic catapult using nothing but their thoughts. It's one of dozens of hands-on exhibits drawing thousands of students and families to campus.
O’Keefe named chair of Engineering Sciences
Dr. Jen O'Keefe was appointed chair of Morehead State University's Engineering Sciences, emphasizing research excellence and student mentorship in diverse programs.
Health Physicists: The Quiet Experts Keeping Radiation Risks in Check
When radioactive materials are involved, whether at a former nuclear weapons site, a decommissioned reactor, or a legacy industrial facility, the goal is simple: protect workers, safeguard communities and reduce potential radiation risks to levels that are demonstrably safe. At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), health physicists are the professionals responsible for making that happen. Their work is often behind the scenes but always with consequences that matter deeply to the public.
Ex-Apple engineers create an AI button – but can't explain why
I said a couple of years ago that AI hardware devices were like trying to invent the iPod after the...
Breaking: NVIDIA N1 laptop motherboard has been pictured, features 128GB LPDDR5X memory
NVIDIA N1 engineering board leak shows 128 GB LPDDR5X memory with SK hynix chips NVIDIA entry into the laptop market seemingly confirmed. An
Middle schoolers bring big science to Louisiana's state science and engineering fair at LSU
See the full list of winners.
Middle schoolers bring big science to Louisiana's state science and engineering fair at LSU
See the full list of winners.
This AI Wearable From Ex-Apple Engineers Looks Like an iPod Shuffle
Two former Apple Vision Pro developers made an AI wearable that only listens when you tap it. They hope to win where other AI gadgets have fumbled: privacy.
Max Verstappen's Red Bull engineer Gianpiero Lambiase set to join McLaren in 2028 in shock move having turned down Aston Martin
Max Verstappens engineer Gianpiero Lambiase is set to leave Red Bull and join McLaren in a shock move; Sky Sports News understands Lambiase will become head of race engineering at McLaren, having previously turned down an offer from Aston Martin
Jennifer Shepherd Named Dean of Gonzaga School of Engineering and Applied Science
Gonzaga University has named Jennifer Shepherd dean of its School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), following a competitive national search. Shepherd brings to the role a long-standing commitment to the University and a leadership style shaped by nearly three decades of service, scholarship, and mission-centered collaboration.
NVIDIA’s Upcoming N1 SoC For AI PC Laptops Spotted On Engineering Motherboard: 128 GB Memory, User Claims Launch Expected This Year
An engineering sample motherboard featuring NVIDIA's upcoming N1 SoC, which will power its AI PC laptops, has been spotted online.
Your DNA has a secret “second code” that decides which genes get silenced
Not all parts of our genetic code are equal, even when they appear to say the same thing. Scientists have discovered that cells can detect less efficient genetic instructions and selectively silence them. A protein called DHX29 plays a key role in this process by identifying and suppressing weaker messages. This finding reveals a hidden layer of control in how genes are used.
XAI reorganizes its engineering team ahead of SpaceX IPO
A SpaceX executive said xAI is "clearly behind" competition, in a memo sent to staff.
Sparks and barks: College of Engineering and Science unveils robot dog
The Louisiana Tech University College of Engineering and Science (COES) has officially introduced its newest and most innovative ambassador: CHIP, a robotic dog enhanced and programmed by COES student
'Tokenmaxxing' is the new Silicon Valley AI debate
Some engineers are "tokenmaxxing," or spending as many AI tokens as possible. But are leaderboards tracking token use the answer?
2026 Texas Science and Engineering Fair Results
Posts Details/Default Board Post Page - Plano Independent School District
Alarm in health service over Palantir staff being given NHS email accounts
Exclusive: Sources believe AI tech company’s engineers have been granted access to directory of up to 1.5m staff
McLeod Health Teams Honored at Harbor Freight Summit
In March, seven McLeod Health Engineering/Facilities Management team members were recognized with awards at the 2026 Harbor Freight Skilled Trades Youth Summit for
MedTech Entrepreneurs Secure a Leg Up with PLASMA Health at Aggie Square
There’s a new educational arm to PLASMA, the flagship entrepreneurship program of the Student Startup Center. The 12-week accelerator, which helps undergraduates launch a startup business, now features a track for students interested in medtech.
Computer Science Students Compete in Software Hackathon - University of the Ozarks
A group of University of the Ozarks computer science students took part this past weekend in HogHacks, a 24-hour collegiate hackathon held at the University of Arkansas. Hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) at the U of A, the event is an overnight software engineering competition among area college students that takes place […]
Graduate programs in health sciences and engineering rose in U.S. News & World Report rankings
Seven health sciences specialty programs cracked the top 10, including a No. 1 ranking for occupational therapy, and the Swanson School of Engineering ranks No. 24 for public universities.
4 NYU faculty honored for STEM research by American Association for the Advancement of Science
Four NYU faculty members were recognized for their research in areas of biology, neuroscience and chemical and biomolecular engineering as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS — which aims to shape science policy and build a community for STEM researchers — elected 449 researchers across the United States for...
Report: Apple's foldable iPhone may be delayed due to engineering snags
Apple has reportedly run into "more issues than expected" with its foldable iPhone that may delay its release.
MIT graduate engineering and business programs ranked highly by U.S. News for 2026-27
U.S. News and World Report ranked MIT’s graduate engineering program No. 1 in the country for 2026-27. The MIT Sloan School of Management is ranked as the nation’s No. 6 business school.
Apple's foldable iPhone encounters engineering snags, faces potential shipment delays, Nikkei Asia reports
Apple has been encountering setbacks in the engineering test phase of its first foldable iPhone, which could lead to delays in its mass production and product shipment schedule, Nikkei Asia reported on Monday, citing sources.
Foldable iPhone hits engineering snags, shipment delays possible: sources
April-May 'extremely critical' period for Apple to resolve issues in time
Zhou earns CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation
Through the early-career grant, Peipei Zhou will advance the scalable, verifiable co-design of heterogeneous reconfigurable computing systems, enabling domain experts to efficiently build next-generation customized AI and data-intensive applications, such as autonomous physical systems, adaptive intelligent agents, and advanced healthcare technologies.
2026 Distinguished Lecture Series in Materials Science and Engineering
The Distinguished Lecture Series in Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State will be held in April and will include two Richard E. Tressler Award Lectures in Materials and the David Ford McFarland Award Lecture for Achievement in Metallurgy.
ACPS students shine at State Science and Engineering Fair
Multiple students earn recognition at three-day event.
How the Voyager missions rewrote planetary science, tested the limits of 1970s engineering, and became humanity's longest-running experiment in institutional patience
In November 2026, Voyager 1 will become the first human-made object to reach one light-day from Earth. Nearly 49 years after launch, the twin Voyager missions remain the most productive space exploration program ever flown, and a case study in what happens when engineering resilience meets institutional patience.
Meta salaries revealed: How much engineers, researchers made in 2025
See how much Meta paid in 2025, with software engineers earning as much as $450,000. Salary data shows pay ranges across over 5,000 roles.
Tongcang Li receives Bement Award for innovative quantum research
Tongcang Li has been chosen to receive the 2025 Arden L. Bement Jr. Award. The award recognizes Purdue University faculty for recent outstanding contributions in pure and applied science and engineering.
Isle of Man children inspired by insight into STEM career choices
An event to showcase Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths careers was recently held.
On plant health and embracing new plant-breeding techniques in South Africa
The major challenge currently confronting South Africa’s agriculture is the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. For many farmers across the country, the most urgent tasks are both securing sufficient vaccines and rolling them out quickly in the coming months, particularly as the beef and dairy industries continue to suffer big losses. There is also pressure on sheep, goats, and other livestock to prevent the disease from spreading. As efforts to get the country through this monumental challenge continue, I believe it is important to sharpen our focus on the broader task at hand: strengthening biosecurity. This covers both animal and plant health. In recent years, we haven’t focused much on plant health, except a few times, such as when we had a goss’s wilt scare in the maize industry, a few cases of citrus black spot, or cases of sclerotinia in sunflower seeds. But the fact that South Africa managed to control the outbreaks of these particular diseases when they occurred a few years ago was due to organized agricultural and government scientific capabilities, and, most importantly, the availability of crop protection or agrochemicals necessary to address some of them. Therefore, as the animal health division in the Department of Agriculture focuses on the pressing challenge of the day, the foot-and-mouth disease, there is an opportunity for the plant health division to assess if they have all the requirements to tackle any outbreak that may occur on fruits, vegetables or crops in future. The challenge with crop diseases is that they can spread quickly and cause much more rapid damage in the field than we typically see with livestock. Therefore, speed is everything in ensuring the appropriate controls are available. I raise this as an important area, particularly given the drastic climate variation we observe across the country. The production conditions in some areas have changed noticeably over time, which may introduce new risks. The other essential part is ensuring that South Africa has access to the best crop protection technology available in the market. Many technology developers worldwide have operations in South Africa. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture, along with the Agricultural Research Council, must continuously interact with technology developers to assess the various crop protection technologies they are releasing globally and determine their suitability and need in South Africa. This will require a proactive approach from the government, unlike the current approach, in which technology developers typically approach regulators with new technologies. The government, recognising the food security risks, must take a proactive approach to ensure that South African farmers have access to the latest crop protection technologies, thereby safeguarding the country’s food security. Beyond crop protection, we must never forget that South Africa’s agriculture is key to ensuring that the country is the most food-secure country at the national level in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa is also the only African country in the top-40 global agricultural exporters, having more than doubled since 1994 on the back of the adoption of high-yielding seed cultivars. South Africa has been the only African country to adopt a bold approach to embracing science and adopting genetically engineered seeds for grains and oilseeds in the early 2000s. Since then, we have seen crop yields improve noticeably, contributing to the gains we mentioned above. But ensuring that South Africa improves further is not a given. The key lies in South African regulators’ attitudes towards new technologies. We have to maintain a progressive approach and not give in to the politics of non-food and non-scientific voices that shout on the sidelines. Food security is national security, and the government must ensure we progress, leaning on science. Therefore, the registration of high-yielding new genomic techniques is required. South Africa cannot afford to fall behind the EU, the USA, South America, and many of its competitors in global agriculture. The Department of Agriculture’s crop science division must adopt a progress-and-science-embracing approach for the good of the country. Thanks for reading AgriView! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe Share
The university is trading its liberal arts identity for science
The university is betraying its artistic reputation and making a move toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
ACPS student takes first place award at state science fair; seven others also recognized
Howard Bishop Middle School 8th-grader Aradhya Kasala won a first-place award at the State Science and Engineering Fair of Florida
Chinese Scientists Bioengineering Plants With Firefly Genes to Glow, in Effort to Light Cities at Night
Night lighting may be due for a plant-based glow-up.
Expecting a baby? Get 24/7 virtual health support for you and your family - Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
BLET members covered under the National Health & Welfare Plan can take advantage of several benefits for maternity and newborn care. Expecting a baby? T ...
Humans can still beat AI at video games
AI may have teams of engineers on its side, but humans have lived experience and better learning skills.
AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy
An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions
MassLive: Boston, Springfield land on top 10 list of best cities for STEM professionals
Boston and Springfield were among the "Top 10 best metro areas for STEM professionals" in 2018, according to statistics compiled by WalletHub, a personal finance website. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Boston was ranked second and Springfield eighth on the list. Worcester came in at 18th. The full results can be found here. "We made another good list," Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said. "Glad to see our educational and workforce development are starting to pay off - this is all about a good four-letter word - jobs!" The 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country were ranked in 17 key metrics, WalletHub said. The evaluation ranged from "per-capita job openings for STEM graduates to annual median growth for STEM jobs, to projected demand for STEM workers by 2020," according to the summary. Seattle was top-rated, followed in order by Boston; Pittsburgh; Austin, Texas; Minneapolis; Madison, Wisconsin; Salt Lake City; Springfield; Chicago; and Atlanta. Original article: https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/11/springfield_makes_top_10_natio.html
Animal Sciences Faculty Wendie Cohick Among Eight Rutgers Researchers Named 2026 AAAS Fellows
Wendie Cohick, Vice Provost and Vice Chancellor for Research, Rutgers-New Brunswick and faculty in the Department of Animal Sciences, is one of eight Rutgers faculty named to the 2026 class of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows. Cohick and her Rutgers colleagues were among the 500 scientists, engineers and innovators spanning 24 scientific […]
The Happy Accident: How Benetta MacAuley Found Her Joy in Materials Science and Music
Benetta MacAuley didn't know materials science was a major when she applied to UC Davis. Now the senior investigates sustainable cement alternatives and leads the viola section of the Video Game Orchestra, proving that the best paths are often unplanned.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
Southeastern Regional students shine at Region V science fair
Southeastern Regional students earned top awards at the Region V Science and Engineering Fair at Bridgewater State University.
Southeastern Regional students shine at Region V science fair
Southeastern Regional students earned top awards at the Region V Science and Engineering Fair at Bridgewater State University.
Southeastern Regional students shine at Region V science fair
Southeastern Regional students earned top awards at the Region V Science and Engineering Fair at Bridgewater State University.
Materials Science and Engineering Weekly Seminar with Dr. Mathias Kläui
Combining The Best Of All Worlds: Altermagnets – A New Class Of MagnetsAbstract While known for a long time, antiferromagnetically ordered systems have previously been considered as “interesting but useless”.
School of Health Undergraduate Wins 2026 Goldwater Scholarship
Ishaan Sharma has been named a 2026 Goldwater Scholar, an undergraduate scholarship awarded to the next generation of scientists, researchers and engineers.
Morehead State names Dr. Steve Fenster as dean of College of Science & Engineering
An academic leader with a track record of over 20 years of student success in the sciences will now take on a key role at Morehead State University. Dr. Steve Fenster, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, will serve as the next dean of the College of Science & Engineering at MSU, succeeding Dr. Ahmad Zargari, who will retire on June 30. To learn more about programs in MSU’s College of Science & Engineering, email dsci@moreheadstate.edu or call 606-783-2626.
A Forecast of What’s Next for Chemical Engineering and Materials Science - USC Viterbi
The 20th annual Student Symposium and Showcase at the USC Viterbi Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science highlights research in AI-driven materials discovery, energy transition and biomolecular engineering.
Students from Nome showcase homegrown research at Alaska Science and Engineering Fair
The Alaska Science and Engineering Fair took place in Anchorage on March 28, where students from all over the state gathered to present their research and inventions, including several young scientists from Nome's Anvil City Science Academy (ACSA). Before the statewide competition, ACSA students presented at the school's annual science…
Learn about the Master of Science in Data Science for fall 2026 | CWRU Newsroom | Case Western Reserve University
Case School of Engineering’s new Master of Science in Data Science program will equip students with advanced skills in data science, artificial inte...
The Genesis Mission: How AI Supercomputing Is About to Reshape American Science and Energy
DOE's Dr. Dario Gil explains how the Genesis Mission will use AI supercomputing to transform U.S. science, energy, and engineering.
Business for Good: Sonura, a Cap that Protects Preemies
Penn Engineering grads developed Sonura, a high-tech beanie that protects preemies' ears from NICU noise and transmits parents' messages
Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once
From plants, mushrooms, and toads.
Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once
From plants, mushrooms, and toads.
Eureka! Scientists develop new way to detect breakthroughs in science
The history of science and technology is marked by major breakthroughs — the theory of evolution, the splitting of the atom, the development of antibiotics — and a research team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has developed a method to help pinpoint discoveries that reshaped the course of science. A study publishing in Science Advances on April 1 maps the landscape of innovation to identify disruptive studies and patents that challenge existing paradigms and inspire waves of follow-up research. The measure was developed by a team including Sadamori Kojaku, assistant professor of systems science and industrial engineering at Binghamton University, along with his colleagues Munjung Kim and Yong-Yeol Ahn at the University of Virginia.
Apple’s biggest product in its 50-year history surprised the engineers who designed it
Apple had never built anything so complex. But it was at a crossroads.
Apple's 50-year transformation into a cultural and technology powerhouse
A scrawny hippie and a nerdy engineer who became prank-playing friends vowed to change the world when they founded a Silicon Valley startup on April Fools’ Day 50 years ago and then — no joke — pulled it off.
Spokane students headed to global science fair with eight qualifiers
SPOKANE, Wash. — Eight Spokane students who qualified for the International Science and Engineering Fair, a major science and engineering competition.
Spokane students qualify to attend prestigious science and engineering competition
SPOKANE, Wash. – Eight high school students from Spokane will travel to Arizona in May for the prestigious Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.
UC Davis Engineers Help Advance Collaboration, Innovation with New AI and Health Award
The AI and Health Seed Funding Program is a new initiative focused on strengthening interdisciplinary connections between schools and colleges across UC Davis and UC Davis Health. Engineers are members of three out of six teams to receive the program’s inaugural awards.
UD leads nation with five Goldwater Scholars
Students recognized for excellence in science, engineering and mathematics research
I pivoted from software engineering to welding after layoff; happier
A former software engineer in Oklahoma transitioned to welding after a tech industry layoff, finding stability and job satisfaction in her new career.
Midjourney engineer debuts open source Pretext to revolutionize web design
It allows developers to treat text as a fluid substance that can be recalculated every single frame without dropping a beat.
The Clever Engineering Of Shipping The Chevy Vega By Train
The 1971 Chevrolet Vega had an MSRP of a little over $2,000, but shipping costs could reach $300 per car. Then the Vert-A-Pac system saved the day.
Cadets focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics • United States Air Force Academy
Cadets focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the U.S. Air Force Academy to produce tomorrow’s problem solvers.