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Wilmington Small Business Coalition: Building Momentum in 2026 by Heather McWhorter
This article was contributed by Lydia Thomas, UNCW CIE Program Manager. North Carolina continues to be one of the best states to start a business and in 2025, Wilmington, North Carolina earned a spot on the GoDaddy list of the top 10 most entrepreneurial cities in the U.S. While many know Wilmington as small beach town with exceptional food, lots of coffee shops, and fun, vibrant summer activities, a closer look reveals a thriving innovation economy. You’ll find startups emerging across industries including software, healthtech, bluetech, and fintech. At the core of this entrepreneurial ecosystem is the Wilmington Small Business Coalition, with small business advocates and entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) dedicated to helping founders grow, thrive, and succeed. “No Wrong Door” Established in 2016, the Coalition was designed to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to access resources most suited to their particular needs. The Coalition is designed to have a “no wrong door” entryway into the regional startup ecosystem. Whether you are exploring a new idea sketched on the back of a napkin or leading a more established, growth-stage company, Coalition members can help connect you with the programs, funding opportunities, mentors, and resources best suited to your needs. No matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, any Coalition organization can help point you in the right direction. Coalition Members and Leadership Coalition members include the UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (UNCW CIE), AARP, Brunswick Community College Small Business Center, Cape Fear Community College Small Business Center, Cape Fear Region SCORE, Genesis Block Foundation, Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW), Small Business & Technology Development Center (SBTDC), Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, YWCA Living the Dream Center for Entrepreneurship, Carolina Community Impact Fund (CCI Fund), Partner Community Capital, 717mkt Office Collaborative, NC Biotech, and Institute NC. In May 2026, the Coalition held its leadership elections, resulting in the selection of a new executive team. The following officers were elected to serve two-year terms: Chair: Lydia Thomas, UNCW CIE Vice Chair: Diane Lantz, CCI Fund Secretary: Aariene Hansley, Genesis Block Foundation Treasurer: Gloria Monroe, SBTDC Vision for the Wilmington Small Business Coalition In 2026, the Wilmington Small Business Coalition continues its work as a collaborative network of organizations. By connecting programs, expertise, and services across partner organizations, entrepreneurs can more easily find the right support at the right time. Rather than operating in silos, the Coalition aims to function as a unified, cohesive system of support for small businesses and entrepreneurs, ensuring that resources and expertise across partner organizations are visible and accessible. Through stronger collaboration and shared pathways, entrepreneurs can move more seamlessly from idea to startup to growth. Looking to dive into the Wilmington entrepreneurial ecosystem? Connect with any of the Coalition partners to get started! Connect with CIE To learn more about CIE and our services, programs, and events, join the CIE newsletter. You can also follow us on social media: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube. CIE’s website is uncw.edu/cie. Heather McWhorter is the director of the UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE). CIE supports innovation-forward start-ups and helps to build a vibrant innovation economy for all in southeast NC.
Fly Phishing: How Business Aviation Can Fight AI-Supercharged Cybertheft
AI is making cybercriminals faster, smarter and harder to detect. Learn how business aviation operators can recognize emerging threats, defend against sophisticated phishing attacks and protect their aircraft, data and organizations.
Lebanon County cafe and catering business announces closure
ANNVILLE, Pa. (WHTM) — A local cafe that got its start as a food truck and catering company announced its closure after operating for a decade. abc27 News reported back in February 2025 when …
Members-only club Common House is under new management as operator withdraws after 2 years
Common House has withdrawn from all four of its clubs over the past three months.
Santa Cruz County business filings: Week of June 30
Businesses operating in Santa Cruz County must register with the county clerk. Lookout Santa Cruz reviews the public filings from local businesses to report on new businesses starting in the area.
SGMC Health Names Chad Nelms Associate Vice President of Nursing
SGMC Health announces the promotion of Chad Nelms, RN, to Associate Vice President of Nursing. In this role, Nelms will provide strategic and operational leadership for nursing services across the organization, supporting a cohesive and patient-centered approach to care.
PENN Entertainment Sheds Indiana Bid to Boost Income Tax Base
Penn Entertainment Inc. convinced the Indiana Supreme Court to allow the casino operator to exclude unapportioned wagering taxes it paid to other states from its in-state income tax base.
Vanderbilt Health performs nation’s first breast cancer surgery using intraoperative PET-CT scan technology
The novel imaging technology provides surgical teams with a real-time view of tumor margins in the operating room.
Reaching communities close to hostilities in Ukraine
Primary health care teams in Ukraine are reaching 121 locations within 60 km from active hostilities. This is part of the largest primary health care intervention in frontline areas in the country. European Union (EU)-supported teams are delivering essential services to people trapped by constant shelling and severe security constraints in 7 regions where no pharmacies operate, no health facilities function and evacuation remains impossible for residents.
Venezuela quake: key services crippled and health workers missing
Search and rescue operations continued in Venezuela on Tuesday as thousands of displaced people struggled to find shelter and humanitarians warned about the spread of infectious disease.
Hormel Foods sells Brazil business
Domestic food producer Zanchetta Alimentos is acquiring the business operating under the Ceratti brand.
Twin Cities Somali businesses face long, slow recovery after Operation Metro Surge
Customer traffic and spending remain down, and many Somali-owned shops have had to lay off workers and fallen behind on rent.
AI cuts hospital system's MRI wait times by more than 50%
The health network, which operates 37 hospitals in California, drastically reduced scheduling delays after integrating an FDA-cleared algorithm designed to speed up imaging acquisition times.
Republic bakery owner loses home and business in weekend fire
A bakery and boutique that had operated in Republic for nearly three decades was destroyed by fire over the weekend, leaving its owner without her business or her home.
Reviews clear Telescope Health of fraud allegations; officials encourage Jacksonville residents to use HealthLink JAX
Multiple reviews have found no evidence of fraud, criminal wrongdoing or misuse of taxpayer dollars by Telescope Health, ending months of scrutiny over the Jacksonville company that operates the city’s HealthLink JAX program for uninsured residents.
What we know about Sixers' situation heading into free agency
Mike Gansey’s first free agency window as the Sixers’ president of basketball operations is about to begin.
Former Trump adviser Jason Miller eyed to join White House in midterms shake-up
The White House is bringing on new staff as part of a new effort to boost its messaging operation ahead of the midterm elections.
Apple says it is releasing updates early in response to AI cybersecurity concerns
Apple said it is pushing forward a series of software updates that would previously have been bundled with a new version of its iOS operating system, making them available earlier than in previous cycles in response to AI-driven security concerns.
5 takeaways from STAT’s investigation into microhospital operator Nutex Health
Read the takeaways from STAT's investigation into Nutex, which used the No Surprises Act to fuel a stunning financial turnaround.
Apple Releases iOS 26.5.2 With Security Fixes
Apple today released iOS 26.5.2 and iPadOS 26.5.2, minor updates to the iOS and iPadOS 26 operating systems that came out in September. iOS 26.5.2 comes a month after the launch of iOS 26.5.1, an update that added a charging fix for the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 models. iOS 26.5.2 and iPadOS 26.5.2 can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Sony Pictures Entertainment invests $100m in Cosm
As lead investor in Cosm’s Series C financing round, SPE will acquire a minority ownership stake in the operator of shared reality venues showing sports and films on 27m-wide, 12K+ LED screens.
Ohio Casino Control Commission seizes illegal gaming machines from Sidney business
Complaints had been filed alleging that the business was operating gaming machines in violation of state law, prompting an investigation.
Rocket Lab Buys Satellite Operator Iridium in Bid to Challenge SpaceX
The deal would give Rocket Lab control over a satellite fleet and access to wireless resources it could use to compete with SpaceX.
Comcast Plans Company Split, Sending Shares Soaring 22%
The spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky will separate the company’s connectivity business from its film, theme park and streaming operations.
The ERs that can turn patients away
The hospital operator Nutex enriched itself by exploiting loopholes in laws meant to protect patients, STAT found.
BT and Verizon to create joint global business in $625m deal
UK telecoms group’s 50/50 venture ends more than 18-month search for a buyer of its international operations
BT, Verizon to Form International Joint Venture
The London-listed telecommunications operator said the 50:50 joint venture would serve more than 3,000 customers in around 180 countries.
BT and Verizon to create new international business in $625mn deal
New 50:50 venture will be milestone in UK group’s strategy of refocusing on its domestic operations
Former Mets coach Eric Chavez slams David Stearns in rant
Former New York Mets hitting coach and bench coach Eric Chavez offered a brutal takedown of David Stearns, the team’s president of baseball operations, in an episode of “The EC3 Pod” on June 28. Stearns has come under heavy criticism…
John Oliver scores his dream job: A soap opera gig on 'General Hospital'
The host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight" will realize one of his big wishes in July with a guest spot on the ABC soap opera "General Hospital."
NI health: Resident doctors begin strike action over pay
The BMA said there will "undoubtedly be cancellation of operations, outpatient appointments and elective care" but "patient safety will still be prioritised".
Prediction market Kalshi sues Illinois over its push to regulate sports bets
The most recent move in the ongoing legal battle between the state and prediction market operators came after the state enacted new sports wagering taxes to support the $55.9 billion budget it passed this spring.
Then and Now: Brandenburg manages through global uncertainty
For James Brandenburg, president of U.S. operations for JVS Export, a family-owned textile manufacturer headquartered in India, the hardest part of his job isn’t selling home textiles to Walmart, Target...
UNC, NC State to get millions from sports betting; gambling deductions allowed in budget proposal
Not only would the tax on sports betting operators rise to 23%, but North Carolina would levy taxes on prediction market operators as well under proposals expected to be included in the state budget.
Spend Five Minutes With This Hellish Operating System Simulator and You'll Never Swear at Your Computer Again
Seriously, I'm sorry I had a gazillion browser tabs open alongside several hours' worth of unsaved work. Please don't crash. Please.
Trump says he is nominating former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer as ICE director
Schroyer's nomination comes after former ICE director Todd Lyons resigned at the end of May. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, has been serving as the acting head of the agency.
Fidelio: Classical music meets politics
Vitali Alekseenok is passionate about classical music and politics. He is actively involved in Ukraine, advocates for a free Belarus, and conducts Beethoven's opera of freedom, 'Fidelio,' at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
Anthropic's Mythos 5 gets limited carveout from US restrictions
Anthropic said it is restoring access to Mythos 5 for a set of US organizations that "operate and defend critical infrastructure."
Germany news: Heat soars as political reforms split opinion
As Europe's heatwave rages, Germany continues to swelter with new records expected Saturday. Elsewhere, politicians bicker over reforms and industry blames train operator DB for billions in losses. DW has the latest.
Businesses across Oahu prepare to close as rising costs strain operations
Community members say the closures are difficult to watch, especially as familiar businesses continue to disappear across the island.
ICE mask ban takes effect in N.Y. amid dueling lawsuits and a race for governor
The Trump administration’s lawsuit argues that states do not have the authority to regulate the federal government’s operations.
Guided kayak tours stopped at Pinellas Bayway South
FDOT said no private for-profit business is allowed to operate within the state transportation facility right of way per Florida Statute.
Local business celebrates 10 year anniversary with $5,000 in cash prizes up for grabs
It is a celebratory feat for any small business to successfully reach 10 years in operation.To mark their 10 year anniversary, Escape It Grandview will be host
Colonial Market owner closes south Minneapolis location due to sharp drop in business following Metro Surge
Colonial Market owner Daniel Hernandez has closed the chain’s south Minneapolis location, which he said never recovered after the store’s employees and customers were targeted during Operation Metro Surge.
Manufacturing business cuts ribbon in Putnam County, set to bring 120 jobs to area
The operation is a joint venture between global engineering group Sandvik and mining company Alpha Metallurgical Resources.
The Venezuela Earthquakes Hit a Health System Already in Crisis
Firefighters are using cellphone lights because of a flashlight shortage, and an overwhelmed hospital in the disaster zone is operating without running water, one doctor said.
Moncks Corner woman, 35, charged after running business without retail license
A Berkely County woman was charged after South Carolina Department of Revenue officals found that she was with operating a business without a Retail LicenseFrid
Business owner in South Carolina arrested, officials say
A business owner in South Carolina was arrested Friday and is accused of operating without a retail license, according to the South Carolina Department of Revenue.
Sweden and WHO launch new long-term initiative to transform Ukraine’s health system
WHO and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) have launched a new multi-year cooperation project to support the long-term recovery and transformation of Ukraine’s health system. The new project, “Ukraine’s Health System Transformation Initiative: Strengthening Health Governance, Health Financing and Service Delivery for Long-Term Recovery”, was launched at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2026 in Gdansk, Poland on 26 June, and will run from June 2026 to 2029. Sweden will contribute approximately US$ 26 million (240 million Swedish krona) to support this project. This contribution forms part of Sweden’s broader support to Ukraine through the Team Europe approach, which brings together the European Union, its Member States, and key partners such as the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood and Enabel, and WHO as lead health agency, to support Ukraine’s recovery, reform agenda and European integration.“Ukraine’s health recovery cannot be measured only by what is rebuilt, but by whether people can count on the health system when they need it most. The scale of the task is immense, with health reconstruction and modernization needs estimated at US$ 19.4 billion over the next decade. Sweden’s US$ 26 million contribution to Ukraine’s Health System Transformation Initiative is a timely investment in the institutions, financing and services that will support Ukraine’s long-term recovery and European integration. WHO remains a trusted partner of the Government of Ukraine in advancing this process. I am deeply grateful to Sweden for its consistent support and partnership,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. More than 4 years of war have placed unprecedented pressure on Ukraine’s health system, creating 3 interconnected challenges. The first is responding to the immediate consequences of the war and the urgent health needs of the population. The second is recovering and modernizing health services today. The third is continuing reforms and aligning the health system with European standards in the context of Ukraine’s future accession to the European Union. The war has led to large-scale population displacement, an increasing need for trauma care and rehabilitation, and shortages of health workers. High out-of-pocket payments in Ukraine make access to health services more difficult. Around 46% of total health expenditure is paid directly by individuals, placing a significant financial burden on many households and underscoring the need for reforms in health financing. Older people, persons with disabilities, women, children and veterans continue to face the greatest difficulties in accessing health services. “Ukraine is demonstrating that health system transformation can continue even during war. Ukraine is also continuing to align its health system with European norms and standards. WHO is committed to supporting Ukraine on this journey. We provide technical support, help coordinate partners’ efforts and support the institutional changes needed to strengthen the system. We are grateful to Sweden for its support. Through this partnership, we can help Ukraine build a more resilient, accessible and people-centred health system,” said Dr Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative in Ukraine. About the Health System Transformation InitiativeThe new initiative will support Ukraine through 3 interconnected areas: strengthening governance and coordination of health sector reforms through more inclusive coordination platforms and structured policy dialogue; transforming service delivery by reinforcing a primary health care-centred model that integrates family medicine, nursing and midwifery; and improving financial sustainability by supporting reforms that ensure the long-term viability of the national health system and reduce out-of-pocket payments for households. Overall, these reforms are expected to make the health system more coherent and easier to navigate, improve the quality and continuity of care, and ensure more equitable access to services, particularly for those who need them most. They will also support Ukraine’s progress towards a more modern health system aligned with European standards. “We are convinced that long-term recovery is not possible without strong, high-quality, person-centred health services that are accessible to everyone. Our partnership with WHO is designed to support deep and lasting systemic changes. Investments in human capital especially autonomous midwives, whose role for maternal, newborn and adolescent sexual and reproductive health cannot be understated, stronger governance, digital transformation and the financial sustainability of the health system are investments in Ukraine’s future. We are proud to support this process,” said Malin Perhult, the Head of the Ukraine Unit at Sida. Focus throughout implementation will be given to the most vulnerable population groups, including older people, women and children, and persons with disabilities, who have been affected by the war and face greater health-care needs. The initiative will be implemented in close cooperation with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the National Health Service of Ukraine, the Public Health Centre of Ukraine, regional authorities and international partners. This project will help Ukraine move towards a system where everyone can access the health care they need. It will strengthen primary care, make the health finance system more stable and predictable, and reduce the out-of-pocket costs that Ukrainians face when using health services. As a result, the Ukrainian health system will become more aligned with European standards and more sustainable in the long run.
Sam Fuld, player-turned-business exec, is a new Wharton grad. Up next: The Phillies’ future.
Last month, Fuld graduated from Penn's Wharton School and formally assumed his new role as the Phillies' president of business operations.
233-acre Franklin farm could become major youth sports complex
A Nashville Predators-operated ice rink and athletic facility could transform historic Franklin property.
Business Council deliberations continue with four bill drafts
Lawmakers on the Joint Appropriations Committee spent another day diving through the Wyoming Business Council’s dealings. This time, they also reviewed draft bills that would influence how the council operates.
Illinois financial adviser charged with operating Ponzi scheme
Prosecutors allege Paaris Kopsaftis of Des Plaines-based Blackwater Assets took more than $150,000 from clients in a Ponzi-like scheme.
Making Our Own Luck
We are cross-posting a piece that former NIH official Kris Willis wrote for Macroscience. Kris is now the President and Founder of the Woodley Park Institute, for which I’m a board member. Picking winners or hedging bets? Federal science agencies have long wrestled with the question of how to ensure their billions of dollars of grants and contracts result in maximum benefits for Americans. On the surface, it might seem that a goal-oriented, interventionist style of management would be the best policy: prioritize our most pressing problems and distribute funding accordingly.This top-down strategy creates a unique hazard, though: bad choices can send resources in the wrong direction, resulting in slow progress that impedes the delivery of tangible benefits to citizens. Moreover, if decision makers pursue an applied advance when the underlying scientific principles remain poorly understood, they risk costly failures and a loss of support for the research enterprise at large. Examples include Nixon’s 1971 War on Cancer, undertaken on the premise that a cure could be achieved in less than a decade, the drive to build an operational commercial fusion plant by the mid-1990s, and the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, which failed to produce the effective treatments and prevention strategies promised by 2025. The contrasting laissez-faire approach is to hedge your bets. If the path to an advance is impossible to predict, then the wisest choice might be to distribute funding to as widely as possible. The main risk of this strategy is that spreading funding thinly may limit the resources available to the most promising research, resulting in the same negative outcomes as the interventionist approach: limited support for the most promising topics, slow progress, and delayed returns. In reality, at science agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, program managers navigate between these two extremes, setting some funds aside to target high-priority areas and using the rest to cover the widest possible range of meritorious proposals. This middle path seems like the most rational way to proceed, but it still requires making choices. How much should be set aside for high priority topics? What should those topics be? How should we define merit? Expert opinion can provide a helpful guide, but leading experts can have remarkably different opinions about what matters and what should be prioritized. Moreover, experts and administrators alike can be risk averse, giving an edge to high-profile, well-established concepts. What’s really needed is a data-driven framework to help guide decision-making, one that doesn’t simply repackage prestige or incumbency. Recognizing breakthroughs years in advance Many breakthroughs fail to attract funding or recognition at the earliest stages of development. Katalin Karikó, for example, spent years struggling to win grants for work on mRNA that would eventually win her and Drew Weissman a Nobel Prize. Similar stories can be told about Jim Allison’s groundbreaking studies leading to the development of cancer immunotherapy, Stan Pruisner’s demonstration that prions can self-replicate without DNA, or Robin Warren and Barry Marshall’s proof that Helicobacter pylori, not stress, causes ulcers. Yet at some point, the scientific community recognizes and responds to transformative breakthroughs like these. How does that change happen? And what if science funders could identify the areas that are on the cusp of a breakthrough? Those questions led my collaborators and me to study how scientists responded to past breakthroughs. Based on patterns in that data, we developed a means of predicting future breakthroughs, using biomedicine as a proof of concept. It’s worth taking a moment to describe how our approach works. Briefly, our prediction process begins by grouping the 18 million or so peer-reviewed papers in PubMed, the authoritative database of biomedical research, into roughly 50,000 unique topics. A small subset of these topics are so widely acclaimed as breakthroughs that they have been recognized with a major prize like a Nobel or a Lasker Award. We theorized that studying the development of these outliers over time, especially before they gained acclaim, was the key to identifying future instances of them. After defining topics, we chose 21 representative breakthroughs and asked what they looked like before they won prestigious prizes. To answer that question, we re-ran our topic-mapping algorithm repeatedly, winding back the clock one year each time, stringing together the years to follow the progress of each field as it grew and advanced. We found that in each case, the years leading up to a discovery followed a pattern: a burst of papers on a new, rapidly evolving topic, many of which quickly became influential. These characteristics—the percent of papers that are new, the percentage of papers that are brought in from other topics, and the influence of each individual paper—can all be measured separately for any given topic. Together, they act as a predictive signal that is detectable an average of five years before a transformative discovery is made, and up to thirty years before the discovery receives a major prize. Scanning the current research landscape for topics that display this signal allows us to predict what work will likely produce a future breakthrough. Each year we analyzed includes four or five signals, a number that appears to have remained constant across a twenty year time frame. In their classic work on the sociology of science, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar established that the desire to participate in a major discovery is an important motivator for scientists as they consider whether they should take up (or abandon) a research problem. Although further work is needed, the simplest explanation for our results is that this behavior is widespread enough to detect at scale. A foundational advance, or something like it, draws the attention of scientists and causes them to change the direction of their research. They vote with their feet, staking their own reputation and careers by publishing on and citing the new idea. That upswell of interest is the foundation of our breakthrough signal. What kind of research does our model identify as a breakthrough? After building a model based on the patterns in our 21 preselected breakthroughs, we tested it by identifying all early signals of discovery from 1994 through 1997. Of the 18 signals we found in that time period, 17 can be traced forward in time to a breakthrough. Examples include super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (see the image above), the directed evolution of proteins and enzymes (Chemistry Nobel, 2018), and sequencing the human genome (National Medal of Science, 2008). The discovery of the role of leptin signaling in obesity is a particularly interesting case study. Around 1950, scientists noticed the existence of a type of lab mouse that suffered from a unique inherited form of obesity. When given the freedom to choose their own diet, these mice ate more than normal and preferred food that was high in fat. Researchers had few clues as to why the animals overate; early experiments pointed to the existence of a soluble ob factor found circulating in the bloodstream that regulated appetite, but its identity was unknown. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified and sequenced the ob gene, noting that the protein it encoded appeared to fit the profile of a circulating factor. A year later, a trio of high-profile publications demonstrated that ob was a hormone that regulated body weight and fat deposition by regulating appetite. One of these was co-authored by Friedman, who christened it leptin from the ancient Greek word for thin. Using our model, the data from 1996 make it clear this advance would become a breakthrough. Scientists had flocked to study the biology of the new hormone, generating the flurry of new papers and citations required to produce a signal. One of these demonstrated that serum leptin concentrations reflected the amount of adipose tissue in the human body, providing clinical validation of the earlier mouse studies. Before the identification of leptin, scientists were unable to point to a specific molecule that controlled appetite and adiposity, so that it was impossible to rule out non-physiological causes of obesity; its characterization fundamentally changed our concept of weight gain. In 2010, Friedman and fellow pioneer Douglas Coleman were awarded a Lasker for the discovery. Our work also identifies breakthroughs in clinical practice and behavioral and social sciences, even though these areas are less likely to draw the attention of major prize committees. One example that falls into this category is the introduction of endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm, a leading cause of death among Americans over the age of 65. Relative to the previous standard of care, it reduces in-hospital mortality by almost four-fold. In 2017, Timothy Chuter received the American College of Surgeons’ prestigious Jacobsen Innovation award for his multiple refinements to the technique. Another under-recognized breakthrough identified by our model is the development of standardized survey instruments to assess the quality of life for HIV+ patients. The antiretroviral cocktails introduced in the mid-1990s reduced AIDS mortality, but treatment came with serious side effects. The new evaluations showed that patients whose disease progressed had worse physical functioning than Americans with other chronic diseases, while those who were asymptomatic maintained a health-related quality of life on par with the overall US population. This evidence made it possible for patients and activists to argue that even in the absence of a total cure, and in spite of the side effects, alleviation of symptoms was a worthwhile priority for clinicians. My colleagues and I have failed to identify any significant recognition for the physicians and health policy experts who pioneered this advance, although in 2016, researchers called for the World Health Organization to set targets for good health-related quality of life as part of its framework to end the AIDS pandemic. From forecasting to funding How should science funders use our predictions? Any serious discussion of what we should do with this new capability needs to begin with an understanding of its limitations. We can’t (and shouldn’t) invest all of our resources in the small number of topics predicted to produce breakthroughs. Innovative new fields are born from existing ones; they rarely arise de novo. If funders don’t maintain a diverse portfolio, the breakthroughs of tomorrow will have no antecedents. Think of this as eating the seed corn, or killing the goose that lays the golden egg. There are also multiple goals of funding beyond basic scientific discovery, including translating discoveries into clinical practice, developing new technologies, supporting economic development, and training new scientists. The investments needed to accomplish these goals are likely different from those required to support emerging breakthroughs. Finally, we must be aware that we may not capture every instance of a breakthrough. The concept is fuzzy, and not every significant discovery is recognized with a major award. Further, breakthroughs are rare, meaning that our dataset is, by necessity, small. This makes formal estimates of accuracy challenging. Although our overall success rate appears to be high, any one signal may turn out to be a false positive. We found one apparent example: the development of the third generation COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which were much celebrated in the early 2000s as effective but non-addictive pain relievers, meets all the algorithmic criteria of a breakthrough. Five years after it received FDA approval, researchers demonstrated that Vioxx was associated with serious cardiovascular complications, and the manufacturer voluntarily pulled the drug from the market. Celebrex remains available, although like other NSAIDs, it carries an FDA warning for increased cardiovascular risk. Decision makers who were overly focused on the breakthrough potential of this research might have wasted substantial resources nurturing an area that ultimately proved to be a failure—but so would those who relied on expert opinion at the time. That said, the potential benefits of funding the next mRNA vaccine or cancer immunotherapy years earlier than we might have are large. When we can’t assume the outcome of an action, it’s worth conducting an experiment. Can targeted support for areas that are poised to produce a breakthrough increase the return on scientific investment without cannibalizing future advances? With the necessary administrative infrastructure in place, conducting this experiment would be straightforward. First, identify all the breakthrough signals between 2018 and 2023, select half at random, and commit to a decade of investment. For biomedicine, a six year window should yield about 30 topics with the potential to produce a breakthrough. Providing strong support to half of these might be accomplished for $300 million a year. That’s roughly half of the recent annual budget of the NIH Common Fund or around 20% of the fiscal year 2025 budget for ARPA-H. After five years, then again at ten, compare to see which group — the one that was actively managed, or the control — produced more breakthroughs, and on what timescale. Although we used biomedicine as an example, the same experiment could just as well be run for physics, materials science, or any other discipline. Any attempt to undertake such an experiment should keep three points top of mind. First, we can predict the topic of future breakthroughs, but the people and vision for how to move the work forward are still important. In practice, this means success requires active program managers with the expertise to develop the science and the authority to do so, including by recruiting investigators. Second, we would be wise to learn from the failures of past attempts to fund transformative research. High among these are funding modestly repackaged work, confusing the genuinely novel with the merely unfamiliar, and relying too much on incumbent investigators. All of these risks can be mitigated by thoroughly and intelligently integrating high quality data into portfolio management. Finally, we need to have patience. Even with strong funding support, producing a breakthrough takes time. If supporting breakthroughs is the best way to nurture the birth of new fields, we also need to accurately describe and properly manage the other two stages, so that we invest wisely throughout the productive lifetime of ideas and divest once they reach the point of diminishing returns. We would benefit from more study of all of these phases, especially the transition from one to another. More research could answer questions like: When does a breakthrough become an established field? How do the availability of funding, the size and characteristics of the available workforce, and the accumulation of evidence that disagrees with prevailing models affect a field’s decline? Exactly how do old ideas give birth to new ones, and can we speed up the process? The more we understand about the dynamics of scientific progress, the better we can maximize the odds that our curiosity leads to results. I’d call that finding a way to make our own luck.
Who is Anuk Karunaratne? Meet the Cardinals’ new President of Business Operations
The St. Louis Cardinals formally promoted Anuk Karunaratne to the role of President of Business Operations on Wednesday as the franchise unveiled changes to its organizational leadership structure.
Target rolls out new attendance tracking system for workers
Target's new point-based attendance tracking system rolls out in the coming months, the latest of several changes aimed at improving store operations.
Microsoft adds another year to Windows 10 extended update program
About a quarter of PCs are still running Microsoft's previous operating system.
Life Aboard the Langseth: A Q&A With Chief Science Officer Cody Bahlau
On Columbia’s global research vessel, the R/V Marcus G. Langseth, Bahlau serves as the key link between scientists, crewmembers and operations on shore.
Agentic-Native Platforms Are Creating A New Technology Business Model
For decades, the enterprise technology industry operated on a simple principle: software companies built products, and services firms helped enterprises.
Cheshire orchard closes after 75 years in business
A longtime Cheshire orchard has announced its closing for good. In a message shared with customers, the family that owns Drazen Orchards said it is now permanently closed and will not reopen for the foreseeable future. The orchard has been open since 1951. The Drazen family said the decision was difficult, citing rising operating costs, the physical demands of running…
Comcast's Sky to Buy ITV's Media and Entertainment Unit for $2.1 Billion
Comcast-owned Sky Group has reportedly agreed to acquire the media and entertainment business unit of U.K.-based ITV for $2.1 billion. The deal is expected to be officially announced in two weeks. Satellite operator Sky will absorb ITV’s broadcast network, linear free-to-air channels, and the ITVX subscription streaming service with 900,000 paid subscribers and 16.4 million … Continue reading "Comcast’s Sky to Buy ITV’s Media and Entertainment Unit for $2.1 Billion"
Gilbert-backed Cosm gets $100M Sony investment as immersive theater operator expands to Detroit
A Cosm location in downtown Detroit is expected to open in September as part of Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC real estate firm’s Development at Cadillac Square project.
Health Union Launches 2027 Innovation Suite, Pairing Community Leadership with AI to Accelerate Patient and HCP Connections
/PRNewswire/ -- Health Union, the pioneer in online health communities operating 125+ condition-specific sites reaching over 50 million patients and 9.5...
News | Family entertainment company inks retail lease at West Michigan shopping center
Screen-free indoor play operator plans fall move-in at popular Walker retail corridor
How should European scientists respond to the US AI kill switch?
Earlier in June, Europe’s worst fears of technological dependence were confirmed when the White House ordered the AI firm Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using its leading models. This kill-switch moment crystalised anxieties in Brussels that the continent, lagging the US on the creation of leading-edge AI models, is now a technological of vassal of Washington. The shock has specific implications for European scientists and universities. Some governments are now worried that with AI being integrated into labs, Donald Trump now has his finger hovering over an off switch for European science. “Having restrictions on this tool, it can have an impact on our own research,” said France’s research minister, Philippe Baptiste, at the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 18.Baptiste, himself a former academic, said that colleagues in mathematics had recently warned him they were now cut off from leading-edge US models, risking their work. “This model is not available anymore now because of the US restriction, and for the first time this had an impact on mathematics,” a field where large language models (LLMs) are making a significant contribution, said Baptiste. So, should European scientists avoid relying on US models in the future? Or would this be a self-harming overreaction? And how is AI being used in science, anyway? What happened?On June 12, it emerged that Washington, citing cybersecurity concerns, had ordered Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using two models: Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5, a version of Mythos but with guardrails to prevent abuse. Anthropic said Washington’s concerns were overblown. But forced to follow the order, yet with no way to check who was using the models, the company suddenly shut down access for everyone, US citizens included. There’s still no agreement on how to restore broad access. But last week, Bloomberg reported that select US companies, and the US government, still had access to Mythos despite the ban, but the EU’s cybersecurity agency Enisa had been shut out. Class division of researchersIn the longer term, access outside the US should be restored, said Marcel Salathé, co-director of the AI centre at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), because a permanent restriction would be financially ruinous to US AI firms. “Even Trump will eventually budge to economic pressure,” he said.However, US AI firms might end up operating rather like banks, doing due diligence on users of their leading-edge AI models, he went on.European scientists are unlikely to fall foul of such checks, he said. But having a Chinese postgraduate in their lab, or doing a type of research the US disapproved of, could potentially result in access being denied. “It will create a sort of class division of researchers,” he said. More than frontier modelsHowever, successfully deploying AI in science is about far more than just having access to leading LLMs such as Mythos.Instead, many science-specific tools, most famously Alphafold, which predicts protein folding structures, require “far less” computing power to train than frontier models, well within the capabilities of European supercomputers, according to a recent analysis by the Arq Foundation, a Brussel-based AI think tank. Instead, tools such as Alphafold are possible because certain fields, like protein folding, weather prediction or astronomy, have large, clean, standardised datasets that can be used to train predictive models. Rather than compute, “data is the central constraint for AI for science,” the report says. For example, a less powerful physics model trained on CERN’s data “will be more valuable than the best model without certain data,” said Bengüsu Özcan, author of the report. European advantage?Europe could therefore steal a march by using its scientific data and infrastructure to create models US digital giants cannot. “They might actually match or go even beyond what these big [US] companies are doing,” said Özcan.Indeed, some European start-ups hope to create automated testing labs to create the kind of standardised data that could speed up the discovery of new materials. Materials scientists say there’s currently too little data to train models. AI scientistsHowever, even if the bottleneck for AI in science is often data, rather than compute, being at the mercy of the US for LLM access could still become a problem for European scientists. A new class of “AI scientists” based on leading LLMs is also emerging, Özcan’s report says.Unlike domain-specific tools like Alphafold, these try to automate day-to-day scientific work, by providing an overarching tool that coordinates specific models to synthesise existing literature, generate hypotheses or run analysis of data. The problem for Europe, however, is that these tools are sometimes based on US leading models. Google Deepmind’s AI Co-Scientist, for example, is built on Google’s Gemini LLM. Systematic failureThese scientific automation tools are still in their early stages, and still exhibit “systematic failures on scientific tasks,” Özcan’s report says. One of the problems is that the messy, day-to-day process of scientific discovery is largely not documented, meaning LLMs don’t have a good source of data to learn how scientists actually work. Meanwhile, some tasks, such as literature synthesis, don’t typically require access to leading edge models.However, the performance of AI scientific assistants could improve as companies such as Google pour resources into developing them. Rely on US“Unfortunately, for scientific assistants, there is not much we can do right now except rely on US frontier AI,” said Antoine Bosselut, a natural language processing expert based at EPFL. Chinese-built open models, which can run on local computers, lessening the risk of a shutdown, are touted as one alternative to US dependence. There’s also Mistral, once seen as Europe’s main AI hope, but the Paris-based company has seen its recent models fall behind in performance. But the Chinese alternatives are generally not as capable as US frontier AI models, said Bosselut, unless paired with fiddly, custom tools that allows them to act as independent agents. “Most scientists do not have the time,” he said. Don’t jump ship yetAlthough the kill switch moment is seen a warning shot for European scientists, it doesn’t mean labs should abandon US AI tools immediately. “I do not think the right response is simply to abandon US-based models and systems under the banner of sovereignty or independence,” said Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university association. “That would be an overreaction.”Related articlesEuropean sovereignty in AI requires ‘ugly trade-offs,’ say experts Robotic lab start-up makes case for €500M EU-funded materials testing facilityAI in science: is it useful? Instead, European researchers need to ask themselves whether they’re becoming dependent on technology that could be turned off in Washington, said Özcan. “They might not see this today, but they should really start asking this question,” she said. European researchers need a plan B, said Salathé. “I would recommend to every researcher, very proactively explore alternatives.”Own toolsIn addition, Björnmalm and others want European research institutions to develop their own scientific AI tools.Instead of signing AI deals with US digital giants, European universities should be using this money to create their own models, which may end up being superior for research, said Sabine Leonelli, an expert on the use of AI in science at the Technical University of Munich. “Universities in Europe seem to be happy to sign commercial contracts with US companies on the assumption [their AI tools] are better,” she said. But US frontier LLMs are typically opaque, and have been developed without independent scientific input, she said. “This is not good enough for science.”Last year, Swiss researchers released Apertus, an LLM designed to be completely transparent, from its development methods to its training data. The idea is that this makes scientific tools built on top of the model far more reproducible than with closed, commercial alternatives.“Europe needs more of this: serious capacity-building that gives researchers, universities and companies credible options,” said Björnmalm.
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