IEEE Collabratec Reaches 100,000 Member Milestone

IEEE Collabratec reached a milestone in August: more than 100,000 IEEE members (plus 250,000 nonmembers) on the online networking platform. To commemorate the achievement, IEEE released a 100,000-member badge for users.

The badges recognize members for their participation in IEEE Collabratec’s communities and discussion forums. They also reward users for creating networks with other IEEE members and solving IEEE Puzzlers brainteasers.

“Since 2021 IEEE Collabratec has been a game-changer in my membership journey,” IEEE Member Jaramogi Khalfani Adofo Odhiambo says. He is a member of the IEEE Uganda Section. “I connect with fellow volunteers around the world and have found mentorship and support for personal growth.

“Collabratec is more than a network; it’s a vibrant community that celebrates learning, leadership, and collaboration.”

The platform was launched in 2015 to help members stay connected with the organization and local sections.

Rolling out new features

Since its debut, IEEE Collabratec has introduced new features. Here are some recent additions:

• The IEEE Puzzlers community, which premiered in 2021, offers a fun, engaging experience for those who enjoy solving brainteasers such as missing numbers and logic games. There are different levels of difficulty. People who correctly solve the puzzles receive badges and recognition on the website. There are several types of badges, based on how many puzzles users solve. A badge is awarded when participants solve 7, 15, 30, 50, and 75 puzzles. Seventeen community participants from seven countries currently have the highest level badge, which is awarded for solving 555.
• The IEEE Mentoring Program pairs mentors with members who are seeking guidance on topics such as their career, education, leadership, volunteering, or a particular technical field. The program, created in 2023, is open to IEEE members of any grade. Anyone can be a mentor, whether they’re a student or a seasoned professional. As of July, about 3,700 members have signed up to guide others, a 25 percent increase since last year. There are about 1,300 mentor-mentee pairings now, with IEEE senior members representing half of the mentors. A new community dedicated to mentoring is scheduled to debut this year.
• To better reflect members’ IEEE contributions, such as leading a committee or organizing an event, digital certificates are offered for volunteering. Each individualized document includes the person’s name, the position they held, and the years served. Every position held has its own certificate. A member’s list of roles is updated annually. Users can download the certificates and add them to their LinkedIn profile or résumé. Certificates also may be printed for displaying.

“IEEE Collabratec has served as a truly unifying force across our global technical community—bridging disciplines, geographies, and generations,” IEEE Life Fellow Fredrick Mintzer says. Mintzer, recipient of the 2022 IEEE Emberson Award, is a frequent Collabratec contributor. “For a decade, Collabratec has embodied the One IEEE philosophy by fostering collaboration and empowering members and nonmembers alike to connect, contribute, discuss, debate, and grow together.”

To learn more about IEEE Collabratec, check out the user guide, FAQs, and users’ forum.

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DeepSeek tests “sparse attention” to slash AI processing costs

Ever wonder why ChatGPT slows down during long conversations? The culprit is a fundamental mathematical challenge: processing long sequences of text requires massive computational resources, even with the efficiency tricks that companies have already deployed. While US tech giants can afford to throw more hardware at the problem, Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which is cut off from a steady supply of some advanced AI chips by export restrictions, has extra motivation to squeeze more performance from less silicon.

On Monday, DeepSeek released an experimental version of its latest simulated reasoning language model, DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp, which introduces what it calls "DeepSeek Sparse Attention" (DSA). It's the company's implementation of a computational technique likely already used in some of the world's most prominent AI models. OpenAI pioneered sparse transformers in 2019 and used the technique to build GPT-3, while Google Research published work on "Reformer" models using similar concepts in 2020. (The full extent to which Western AI companies currently use sparse attention in their latest models remains undisclosed.)

Despite sparse attention being a known approach for years, DeepSeek claims its version achieves "fine-grained sparse attention for the first time" and has cut API prices by 50 percent to demonstrate the efficiency gains. But to understand more about what makes DeepSeek v3.2 notable, it's useful to refresh yourself on a little AI history.

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California’s newly signed AI law just gave Big Tech exactly what it wanted

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act into law, requiring AI companies to disclose their safety practices while stopping short of mandating actual safety testing. The law requires companies with annual revenues of at least $500 million to publish safety protocols on their websites and report incidents to state authorities, but it lacks the stronger enforcement teeth of the bill Newsom vetoed last year after tech companies lobbied heavily against it.

The legislation, S.B. 53, replaces Senator Scott Wiener's previous attempt at AI regulation, known as S.B. 1047, that would have required safety testing and "kill switches" for AI systems. Instead, the new law asks companies to describe how they incorporate "national standards, international standards, and industry-consensus best practices" into their AI development, without specifying what those standards are or requiring independent verification.

"California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive," Newsom said in a statement, though the law's actual protective measures remain largely voluntary beyond basic reporting requirements.

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Why the World Needs a Flying Robot Baby

One of the robotics projects that I’ve been most excited about for years now is iRonCub, from Daniele Pucci’s Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence Lab at IIT in Genoa, Italy. Since 2017, Pucci has been developing a jet propulsion system that will enable an iCub robot (originally designed to be the approximate shape and size of a five year old child) to fly like Iron Man.

Over the summer, after nearly 10 years of development, iRonCub3 achieved liftoff and stable flight for the first time, with its four jet engines lifting it 50 centimeters off the ground for several seconds. The long-term vision is for iRonCub (or a robot like it) to operate as a disaster response platform, Pucci tells us. In an emergency situation like a flood or a fire, iRonCub could quickly get to a location without worrying about obstacles, and then on landing, start walking for energy efficiency while using its arms and hands to move debris and open doors. “We believe in contributing to something unique in the future,” says Pucci. “We have to explore new things, and this is wild territory at the scientific level.”

Obviously, this concept for iRonCub and the practical experimentation attached to it is really cool. But coolness in of itself is usually not enough of a reason to build a robot, especially a robot that’s a (presumably rather expensive) multi-year project involving a bunch of robotics students, so let’s get into a little more detail about why a flying robot baby is actually something that the world needs.

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In an emergency situation like a flood or a fire, iRonCub could quickly get to a location without worrying about obstacles, and then on landing, start walking for energy efficiency while using its arms and hands to move debris and open doors. IIT

Getting a humanoid robot to do this sort of thing is quite a challenge. Together, the jet turbines mounted to iRonCub’s back and arms can generate over 1000 N of thrust, but because it takes time for the engines to spool up or down, control has to come from the robot itself as it moves its arm-engines to maintain stability.

“What is not visible from the video,” Pucci tells us, “is that the exhaust gas from the turbines is at 800 degrees Celsius and almost supersonic speed. We have to understand how to generate trajectories in order to avoid the fact that the cones of emission gasses were impacting the robot.”

Even if the exhaust doesn’t end up melting the robot, there are still aerodynamic forces involved that have until this point really not been a consideration for humanoid robots at all—in June, Pucci’s group published a paper in Nature Engineering Communications, offering a “comprehensive approach to model and control aerodynamic forces [for humanoid robots] using classical and learning techniques.”

“The exhaust gas from the turbines is at 800 degrees Celsius and almost supersonic speed.” —Daniele Pucci, IIT

Whether or not you’re on board with Pucci’s future vision for iRonCub as a disaster response platform, derivatives of current research can be immediately applied beyond flying humanoid robots. The algorithms for thrust estimation can be used with other flying platforms that rely on directed thrust, like eVTOL aircraft. Aerodynamic compensation is relevant for humanoid robots even if they’re not airborne, if we expect them to be able to function when it’s windy outside.

More surprising, Pucci describes a recent collaboration with an industrial company developing a new pneumatic gripper. “At a certain point, we had to do force estimation for controlling the gripper, and we realized that the dynamics looked really similar to those of the jet turbines, and so we were able to use the same tools for gripper control. That was an ‘ah-ha’ moment for us: first you do something crazy, but then you build the tools and methods, and then you can actually use those tools in an industrial scenario. That’s how to drive innovation.”

What’s Next for iRonCub: Attracting Talent and Future Enhancements

There’s one more important reason to be doing this, he says: “It’s really cool.” In practice, a really cool flagship project like iRonCub not only attracts talent to Pucci’s lab, but also keeps students and researchers passionate and engaged. I saw this firsthand when I visited IIT last year, where I got a similar vibe to watching the DARPA Robotics Challenge and DARPA SubT—when people know they’re working on something really cool, there’s this tangible, pervasive, and immersive buzzing excitement that comes through. It’s projects like iRonCub that can get students to really love robotics.

In the near future, a new jetpack with an added degree of freedom will make yaw control of iRonCub easier, and Pucci would also like to add wings for more efficient long distance flight. But the logistics of testing the robot are getting more complicated—there’s only so far that the team can go with their current test stand (which is on the roof of their building), and future progress will likely require coordinating with the Genoa airport.

It’s not going to be easy, but as Pucci makes clear, “this is not a joke. It’s something that we believe in. And that feeling of doing something exceptional, or possibly historical, something that’s going to be remembered—that’s something that’s kept us motivated. And we’re just getting started.”

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Anthropic says its new AI model “maintained focus” for 30 hours on multistep tasks

On Monday, Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, a new AI language model the company calls its "most capable model to date," with improved coding and computer use capabilities. The company also revealed Claude Code 2.0, a command-line AI agent for developers, and the Claude Agent SDK, which is a tool developers can use to build their own AI coding agents.

Anthropic says it has witnessed Sonnet 4.5 working continuously on the same project "for more than 30 hours on complex, multi-step tasks," though the company did not provide specific details about the tasks. In the past, agentic models have been known to typically lose coherence over long periods of time as errors accumulate and context windows (a type of short-term memory for the model) fill up. In the past, Anthropic has mentioned that previous Claude 4.0 models have played Pokémon for over 24 hours or refactored code for seven hours.

To understand why Sonnet exists, you need to know a bit about how AI language models work. Traditionally, Anthropic has produced three differently sized AI models in the Claude family: Haiku (the smallest), Sonnet (mid-range), and Opus (the largest). Anthropic last updated Haiku in November 2024 (to 3.5), Sonnet this past May (to 4.0), and Opus in August (to 4.1). Model size in parameters, which are values stored in its neural network, is roughly proportional to overall contextual depth (the number of multidimensional connections between concepts, which you might call "knowledge") and better problem-solving capability, but larger models are also slower and more expensive to run. So AI companies always seek a sweet spot in the middle with reasonable performance-cost trade-offs. Claude Sonnet has filled that role for Anthropic quite well for several years now.

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Electric Boats Drive New England Aquaculture

This article was originally published by Canary Media.

At a dock along the banks of the Cousins River, Chad Strater loaded up his small aluminum workboat with power tools and a winch. Strater, who owns a marine construction business, was setting out to tinker with floating equipment at a nearby oyster farm. On the quiet morning in August, with the sun already beating down hard, his vessel whirred to life, only without the usual growl of an oil-guzzling motor. The boat is all electric.

Just north of where the Cousins River meets Casco Bay, Willy Leathers was powering up his own electric watercraft, which had its first outing in July. Leathers uses his 28-foot (8.5-meter) boat for cultivating oysters at Maine Ocean Farms, where roughly 3 million of the animals grow in dozens of floating cages.

Both Strater and Leathers said they switched to electric workboats for several reasons. Their new watercraft are a cleaner alternative to the smelly, polluting petroleum-powered vessels that dominate Maine’s 3,500 miles (5,633 kilometers) of coastline. Electric propulsion is also significantly quieter than a gas or diesel motor. For Leathers, whose 10-acre (4-hectare) sea farm is a significant presence in the cove where he operates, the swap is about being a good neighbor to the shoreside community.

“It’s an innovation born from necessity for us,” said Strater about his electric boat, which he docks each night at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, the nonprofit boatyard and aquaculture innovation hub he runs with several other small business owners. “[The boat] really works well for what we do with it, and we’re letting farmers use it to see how it could work for them.”

The Rise of Electric Boats

Battery-powered vessels are starting to catch on in the United States and worldwide as companies and maritime authorities work to reduce emissions and improve the experience of cruising waterways. The technology ranges from small outboard motors on workboats and recreational watercraft to powerful inboard systems on ferries, tugboats, and supply vessels for offshore wind farms and oil rigs.

In recent decades, Norway, with its extensive coastline and ample government funding, has spearheaded the transition globally. China, which is both the world’s largest shipbuilder and battery manufacturer, has rapidly deployed hundreds of battery-powered vessels over the last several years. Falling battery costs, better technology, and stricter environmental rules are compelling some vessel owners to install partial or fully electric systems, primarily for watercraft that operate near the shore or on fixed routes. For commercial fishing in particular, customers are helping to drive the push to clean up.

“Everyone’s more concerned now with where their food comes from, and we’ve seen that [consumers] are looking for that complete sustainable supply chain,” said Ed Schwarz, the head of marine solutions sales in North America for Siemens Energy, which has built electric propulsion systems for U.S. ferries.

Maine Ocean Farms founders Eric Oransky [left] and Willie Leathers switched to an electric workboat in July 2025.Brendan Bullock

Electrification has only very recently come to America’s aquaculture sector. In Maine, the small but fast-growing segment includes nearly 200 farms for shellfish, fin fish, and edible seaweed. Strater and Leathers are among the first in their business to trade gas motors for electric propulsion—a switch they say they’re hoping to accelerate. Oil-guzzling motors are among the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions for the state’s multibillion-dollar seafood sector.

Still, electrifying commercial watercraft can be a difficult course to navigate, given the higher up-front costs of electric motors and the lack of charging infrastructure—and grid infrastructure in general—in rural waterfront communities.

Early adopters like Strater and Leathers said they hope the experiences gained from their demonstrations can help pave the way for decarbonizing Maine’s blue economy. With the help of the Island Institute, a Maine-based nonprofit that works on marine-related energy transitions, Leathers is collecting performance data from his vessel to share more broadly with the industry.

“People say it looks cool and shiny and looks like it operates great,” Lia Morris, the Island Institute’s senior community development officer, said of electric boats. “But we really want to be able to prove out the [business] case.”Electric boats can cost between 20% and 30% more than a gas- or diesel-powered vessel of a comparable size. However, owners can save on maintenance and fuel over the long term, Strater’s business partner Nick Planson said.

“The high-level math that we’ve come up with” is a financial break-even point of “about four to five years, and then over a 10-year time span, you’re definitely coming out way ahead based on the vastly reduced maintenance cost, replacement cost of failed equipment, and fuel costs,” said Planson.

Battery-Powered Workboats Lack Charging Infrastructure

But the initial price tag presents a significant hurdle. Strater and Planson’s sleekly designed, no-frills watercraft cost $100,000 to build and outfit with a single electric outboard motor. Leathers’ boat, called Heron, cost about four times more. It has two electric outboards and a ramp for unloading and hauling more than 10,000 oysters at a time from the sea farm to distributors waiting on the dock. Its hull is also equipped with a small cabin and toilet.

Both operations relied on grant funding to defray the expense of going electric.

For their part, Strater and Planson used about $50,000 from a larger U.S. Department of Agriculture small business grant they got in 2024 to establish a use case for electric workboats in the aquaculture industry. Leathers’ business, Maine Ocean Farms, was included on a collaborative $500,000 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant last year that earmarked about $289,000 for boat building and propulsion systems, in addition to other funds for charging infrastructure and data collection.

The prospects for funding future projects are now much murkier under the Trump administration, maritime policy experts say.

The DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which awarded the money to Maine Ocean Farms and its partners, is facing significant budget cuts in the next fiscal year. The GOP-backed spending law that passed in July rescinded some unobligated grant funding for cleaning up marine diesel engines. While other programs were spared, it’s unclear whether the current Congress will approve new funding for initiatives ranging from electrifying huge urban ports to deploying low-emissions ferries in rural communities.

“We can go really fast for a short distance. We can go really slow for a long distance, and it works for what we do with it,” says Strater.

But federal grants aren’t the only way to address the higher cost of electric boats. Strater and Planson also worked with Coastal Enterprises Inc., a Maine-based community development financial institution focused on climate resilience, to establish a “marine green” loan program that can make the up-front costs of switching to electric propulsion more accessible to small businesses.

“The more electric engines that are being employed in Maine helps lift the whole tide for everyone,” said Nick Branchina, director of CEI’s fisheries and aquaculture program. As part of its marine green lending, CEI offers loans starting at $25,000 for small businesses to make the switch to electric propulsion and comfortably afford the cost of batteries or a shoreside charging installation.

Planson said that as electrification moves beyond initial grant-funded projects, the challenge is keeping systems affordable. He said he wants to see other small business owners able to “take a reasonable swing” at electric propulsion.

Buying a boat, of course, is only the first obstacle. Electric vessel owners must also learn how to use their new propulsion systems and find a place to charge them.

How Do Electric Boats Perform in Cold Weather?

This summer, Leathers said he’s had no trouble making the nearly two-mile (three-kilometer) round trip from the slip where he docks Heron in South Freeport, Maine, to his farm on Casco Bay. With a full charge, he can make trips slightly farther to meet distributors closer to Portland. But as temperatures drop this winter, Leathers said he’s not sure how far the outboards’ two batteries will take him. Cold weather can reduce battery capacity and impact performance, shrinking an electric motor’s range. It’s a part of Leathers’ demonstration to find out what the impacts are in practice.

Like Leathers, Strater and Planson also work year-round. They said they’re both impressed with how their boat performed last winter after launching in the fall of 2024. For Planson, who markets battery-powered equipment to aquaculture farmers as part of his startup, Shred Electric, a boat’s ability to run through the year’s coldest months is a key selling point.

“The proof is in the pudding,” said Planson. “When you’re working with … waterfront applications, it really needs to work every day and all year.”

Strater and Planson said their boat’s range was an important consideration when they partnered with the startup Flux Marine to build the electric outboard motor. With limited shoreside charging infrastructure in place, the boat has to make it out and back on a single charge, sometimes to aquaculture operations seven miles (eleven kilometers) away. In the 10 months since the boat’s launch, Strater has learned range correlates to speed. He can modulate the boat’s pace depending on how far he wants to go.

“We can go really fast for a short distance. We can go really slow for a long distance, and it works for what we do with it,” he said.

Soon, Maine’s early adopters will have shared access to a higher-capacity Level 2 charger that will be installed at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation and can charge batteries in little over two hours, or three times faster than the current system. The startup Aqua SuperPower was awarded a portion of the DOE funding last year to install additional marine chargers there and at a wharf in Portland owned by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Island Institute also helped with grant funding for the charger at the Sea Meadow boatyard.

Maine will need much more high-capacity charging infrastructure for the marine industry to transition to electric propulsion, said the Island Institute’s Morris. As the state’s aquaculture and fisheries industries look to grow beyond small-scale operations, other businesses will need to charge more frequently to make longer, farther trips up and down the coast.

Expanding charging stations north of Casco Bay represents what Morris calls a “chicken and egg” problem: a dynamic where chargers are either installed before demand gets high, and sit unused, or electric boats hit the water and there’s not enough charging infrastructure, stalling future adoption.

This challenge is compounded by both New England’s aging grid infrastructure and the remote nature of some of the region’s waterfront access points. Getting the right amount of power to a charging station on the shore can be costly, even in Yarmouth, which sits on Casco Bay. Often it’s the last mile that can be the most expensive. At Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, three-phase power, which can accommodate higher loads, is limited by the dirt road that separates the boat launch from the more heavily trafficked U.S. Route 1.

“There are a lot of complicated questions,” Morris said. “I don’t think it’s unique to Maine, it’s any rural area, but complicated questions and conversations with the utilities and the rural municipalities are going to have to be solved for.”

Back on the water, Leathers docked his electric boat, Heron, alongside the sea farm’s barge, where thousands of oysters pass through for processing on harvest days. He switched the motor off and hopped onto the floating platform. For a moment, the bay was calm to the point of near silence. Then Leathers picked up an oyster cage with a rattle, turning it over in his hands as water splashed out. The sounds of the workday began.

“As a whole industry, I think it’s going to take proving that someone like us can do it,” Leathers said. “And then the next person kind of snowballing after that.”

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Array-Scale MUT Simulations Powered by the Cloud

Designing and optimizing ultrasound transducers—whether PMUTs or CMUTs—requires accuracy at scale.

Yet traditional simulation approaches are often constrained to individual cells or limited structures, leaving important array-level effects poorly understood until expensive and time-consuming testing begins.

This gap can lead to longer development cycles and higher risk of failed devices.

In this webinar, we will introduce the improved approach: full array-scale MUT simulations with fully coupled multiphysics.

By leveraging Quanscient’s cloud-native platform, engineers can model entire transducer arrays with all relevant physical interactions (electrical, mechanical, acoustic, and more) capturing system-level behaviors such as beam patterns and cross-talk that single-cell simulations miss.

Cloud scalability also enables extensive design exploration.

Through parallelization, users can run Monte Carlo analyses, parameter sweeps, and large-scale models in a fraction of the time, enabling rapid optimization and higher throughput in the design process.

This not only accelerates R&D but ensures more reliable designs before fabrication.

The session will feature real-world case examples with detailed insights of the methodology and key metrics.

Attendees will gain practical understanding of how array-scale simulation can greatly improve MUT design workflows reducing reliance on costly prototypes, minimizing risk, and delivering better device performance.

Join us to learn how array-scale MUT simulations in the cloud can improve MUT design accuracy, efficiency, and reliability.

Register now for this free webinar!

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The High-Speed Plan for Interstellar Travel

To the naked eye, the stars are diamond flecks scattered across the inner surface of a celestial sphere. Telescopes have brought depth to our vision, mapping the true distances to cosmic objects. But the universe they reveal appears utterly beyond the human scale of space and time. Even the closest stars seem infinitely remote, and reaching them a thing of science fiction, save for a few dead and dying probes drifting outward for eternity.

This article is part of our special report The Scale Issue.

Now, though, a cadre of researchers are working to make interstellar travel a reality, at least to our nearest neighbors. They are coalescing around an approach that could lead to closeup images of a star and an exoplanet just 25 years after mission launch.

Most of each 4-meter probe will be a disc of aerographene or similar material, just a few micrometers in thickness, with optical sensors and transmitters on one side and a reflective surface on the other that the launch laser will aim at. The rim of the probe will be a 2-centimeter-thick band. The trailing edge will have apertures for interprobe laser communications. Power and processing electronics will form a ring inside the rim. The swarm’s optical transmitters will pulse in unison to send data to Earth at a rate of around 1 kilobit per second.Chris Philpot

The first generation of theoretical starship designs had featured massive vehicles propelled by fission or fusion drives. Top speed was estimated at about 10 percent of the speed of light, or 0.1c. This meant that a flyby mission to the closest star system, Proxima Centauri, would take over 42 years to reach its target.

In contrast, the new generation of starship designs are tiny, and they have no drives at all. The spacecraft have a mass of a few grams each. They’ll be accelerated out of our solar system by ground- or space-based lasers, traveling at an estimated 0.2c.

A 100-gigawatt laser beam made by combining many smaller lasers will propel hundreds to thousands of tiny probes. Pushing against interstellar magnetic fields, the probes will turn edge on to minimize radiation and impact damage. By adjusting the launch laser to accelerate later probes to higher speeds than earlier ones, the string of probes will coalesce into a swarm by the time of arrival.Chris Philpot

One version of this small-and-fast approach calls for sending a swarm of these puny flyers to the Proxima Centauri b exoplanet. Data would be returned by having the swarm emit light pulses in synchrony, detectable by telescopes on Earth. Put forward by a team led by Thomas Marshall Eubanks at Space Initiatives, this mission was selected for a 2024 phase one study by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program. It didn’t make the list for a phase two study this year, but Eubanks plans to retry in 2026.

With a swarm, “we could do gigapixel imaging of the planet,” says Eubanks. “That’s at a level where if it was a planet like Earth, we’d be able to see things like coral reefs and airports.”

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Build Your Own Commodore 64 Cartridge

Have you ever thought “IEEE Spectrum is terrific, but I just wish I had a way to experience even more of it, perhaps at a local science and technology museum?” Well, I am pleased to say that your very specific wish has been granted! In collaboration with the IEEE History Center and the IEEE Global Museum and the support of generous donors, Spectrum’s Chip Hall of Fame has been adapted into a traveling exhibit that has just begun making its way around U.S. museums, and, hopefully, the world.

Our Chip Hall of Fame celebrates microchips that have had a significant impact. Six of the chips from the hall were chosen to be part of the “Chips That Shook The World” exhibit, along with artifacts embodying how each was used. One of the chosen was the 8-bit 6502 processor, so naturally we thought a Commodore 64 home computer, which used a 6502 variant, should be one of the artifacts. Which led to another thought: Why not have the C64 run a program demonstrating an 8-bit CPU in action?

That’s how I ended up, 35 years after I last programmed a C64, sitting at my office desk creating a brand-new plug-in cartridge.

The C64 supported plug-in cartridges as a way of distributing software, and our demo program needed to be put on one. Each morning, the museum curator can just turn on the exhibit and presto! The demo program instantly begins running. The alternatives would have required the curator to type in commands to load the demo manually.

But this convenience comes with two big caveats: One, the demo has to fit into just 16 kilobytes, the maximum size of a cartridge. Even by the standards of the 1980s, this is small, as some C64 titles spanned hundreds of kilobytes by loading data in chunks from disk or tape. Two, the demo would have to be written in 6502 assembly and control the C64 video hardware directly.

Cartridges require only a few components: a printed circuit board [bottom right], programmable memory chip [bottom middle], and some resistors, diodes, and a capacitor [top middle]. They are mounted in a 3D-printed shell [top left and right]. To make the video output compatible with modern screens, we used a RetroTink-2X Pro adapter [bottom left].James Provost

Fortunately, from attending Vintage Computer Federation events over the years, I knew there were a lot of free or inexpensive resources that would make it easier than ever before to do this sort of thing.

The first step was to figure out just how much I could do in 16 KB. The C64’s graphics hardware was groundbreaking in its day, capable of displaying images of up to 320 by 200 pixels with a palette of 16 colors. It could also display eight sprites at once; each sprite is a moveable single-color 24-by-21 pixel bitmap. The price for this power was complexity. The video chip’s control registers, screen bitmaps, text-screen data, default and custom character sets, sprites, and color information all live in different locations scattered across memory, with some data actually living in separate RAM and ROM chips.

So I sat down with the detailed memory maps and video hardware programming guides available for the C64. (This abundance of information is in stark contrast to the 1980s, when documentation was scant, even from Commodore itself). I worked out that I could cram in nine screens of explanatory text, animated graphics, and sprites. Creating these screens, including the custom character sets and sprites they rely on, was greatly simplified thanks to the online C64 graphics editor at petscii.krissz.hu. The editor can output some results as stand-alone assembly programs, which I adapted as subroutines in my demo code.

I had just enough space remaining for a lucky find. I wanted to display at least one full-screen bitmapped image, but a prerendered image would have required 8 KB of data, half the cartridge’s capacity. Instead I decided to use a classic hack of programmers since the days of games like Rogue and Elite: pulling free data out of the structure of mathematics by way of procedural generation.

Here’s where I got lucky: I came across the work of Marcello M., who had published the source for a C64 assembly program that quickly created a multicolor fractal Mandelbrot set using just 3.3 KB of code. With Marcello’s blessing, I incorporated his code as another subroutine.

Modern Tools For Writing C64 Software

The coding was done using the free IDE 65xx and Kick Assembler desktop software. I was able to test the code using the popular C64 Vice emulator, which allowed me to do handy things like examining live memory contents to find runtime bugs.

Regions of the Commodore 64’s RAM were mapped to things like the system ROMs, video-color memory, and the bitmaps of characters, the latter of which were actually mapped to multiple locations in RAM when accessed by the video hardware. Some of these mappings overlapped: Inserting a 16-KB cartridge automatically disabled the ROM storing the Basic interpreter. James Provost

The next step was to make a physical cartridge. Again, there’s modern help, this time in the form of US $5 printed circuit boards that need just a handful of components soldered in to make a cartridge. These components include a programmable ROM chip that I picked up for $3 on eBay. I burned my code to the memory chip with my trusty TL866 programmer and mounted it to the PCB, which in turn was mounted into a 3D-printed cartridge case.

Then came the moment of truth. It probably won’t come as a surprise to regular readers that I already own an original C64, which I connect to modern flat-screen displays via a RetroTink-2X Pro adapter. So I carefully pushed the cartridge into its slot and turned the machine on.

Naturally, my C64 immediately froze up. I had forgotten to remove a little bit of memory-management code that made the demo work in the Vice emulator by disabling the ROM that stores the C64’s Basic interpreter. On the real hardware, this snippet ended up disabling half the cartridge’s memory. A quick edit and a trip back to the TL866 and I was ready to try again. Success! I was finally literally ready to ship some software, all the way to Upland Exhibits, the people building our traveling display.

I hope you get a chance to see my little demo and our “Chips That Changed The World” exhibit in person: We’ll post current and upcoming locations on the Chip Hall of Fame page. But in the meantime, whether you used the C64 back in the day, or are just looking for a fun coding challenge, I recommend trying your hand at programming this 8-bit classic, now that so many of the original pain points have been reduced!

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Can AI detect hedgehogs from space? Maybe if you find brambles first.

You can't spot a hedgehog from space, but you might be able to find where they live by looking for brambles. That's the premise behind ongoing research at the University of Cambridge, where scientists are using satellite imagery and AI models to map potential hedgehog habitats across the UK by first identifying their favorite hiding spots: bramble patches.

European hedgehog populations have declined by roughly 30 to 50 percent over the past decade, so tracking these nocturnal creatures across large areas remains difficult and expensive. Rather than searching for the hedgehogs directly, researcher Gabriel Mahler developed an AI model that identifies brambles, which are thorny shrubs that hedgehogs use for shelter and foraging, from satellite data.

These small mammals rely on this type of dense vegetation for daytime shelter, nesting sites, and protection from predators. Brambles also attract insects and provide berries, supporting the invertebrate populations that hedgehogs eat.

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Bell Labs Scientists Accidentally Proved the Big Bang Theory

“How did we get here?”

That existential question about the universe has captivated humankind for centuries. Many scientists have attempted to answer it, including the Rev. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. In 1927 he theorized that the universe was created from a single particle he called the “primeval atom.”

That atom later disintegrated in an explosion, LeMaître figured, creating space, time, and an ever-expanding universe, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

LeMaître’s idea likely sounds familiar, as it is now known as the big bang theory. Direct evidence for the theory wasn’t found until almost four decades later, entirely by accident.

Bell Labs researchers Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson were conducting radio astronomy experiments in 1964 using a horn antenna located on the company’s campus in Holmdel, N.J. The reflector antenna was the most sensitive in the world at the time. It was constructed to pick up weak radio signals from space for Project Echo, NASA’s experimental 1960 satellite communications program. The project successfully did so twice, first in 1961 through the passive Echo communication satellite, and a second time in 1963 through the active Telstar communications satellite.

While Penzias and Wilson were using the Holmdel antenna to map radio signals from the Milky Way, it picked up a mysterious buzzing noise that wouldn’t go away despite their attempts to eliminate it.

The signals, which persisted day and night, turned out to be cosmic microwave background radiation that permeates the universe—a remnant from the creation of the cosmos—that helped confirm the big bang theory. The accidental breakthrough earned Penzias and Wilson the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Project Echo, Telstar, and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation were recognized as an IEEE Milestone at a ceremony held on 25 May in Holmdel at Wilson Park, where the horn antenna is located.

Penzias and Wilson’s evidence for the big bang theory shaped “our understanding of this universe and our place in it,” Thomas Coughlin, 2024 IEEE president, said in a news release about the dedication.

“Cosmic background radiation, one of the most transformative discoveries in the second half of the 20th century, has also led to non-terrestrial communication innovations that address some of the world’s greatest needs, including disaster relief aid,” Coughlin said.

Building the world’s most sensitive antenna

After the Soviet Union in 1957 launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite put into low Earth orbit, the U.S. government increased its efforts to fund the development of non-terrestrial communication innovations, as detailed in an Engineering and Technology History Wiki entry.

Government and industry worked together on initiatives at laboratories around the country. One of the first programs was Project Echo, which aimed to achieve two-way voice communication between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Goldstone, Calif., and Crawford Hill in Holmdel, 5 kilometers from the Bell Labs complex.

Langley engineers (from right): Norman Crabill, Edwin Kilgore, and an unidentified man take a peek inside the vast balloon during inflation tests of the Echo 1 Satellite in Weeksville, N.C.NASA

To make the communication possible, project leads developed and built the horn antenna on the Bell Labs site. The antenna was 15.24 meters long by 6.1 meters wide, weighing in at 16,329 kilograms. It funneled radio waves in or out of the horn shape, and the reflector bounced the waves into a single focused beam—similar to a huge metal megaphone pointing into a curved mirror. Despite its large size, the machine could be precisely aimed.

Unlike other antennas that are tuned to only one frequency, the Holmdel antenna worked across a wide band of frequencies, so it could pick up several types of radio signals. It also could handle radio waves moving in linear or circular paths.

The design accounted for the potential need to eliminate unwanted noise from the environment.

The receiver was placed at the horn’s apex, eliminating the need for a connecting line, which could result in external noise and signal loss.

The antenna allowed Project Echo to complete the first high-quality long-distance voice circuit in 1961 through its namesake’s passive communication satellite, Echo. A similar experiment was successfully completed two years later through the Telstar satellite, according to the proposal for the IEEE Milestone.

In 1964 Penzias and Wilson began using the Holmdel antenna to perform their own radio astronomy experiments.

What’s that buzzing sound?

The duo was trying to map weak radio signals from the Milky Way. They took pains to eliminate external noise from the ground, the environment, and the antenna itself so that their readings would not be affected. They even suppressed interference from the receiver on the antenna by cooling it with liquid helium to -269 °C—only 4 degrees above absolute zero, the theoretical temperature at which all motion stops.

Yet they kept hearing a persistent buzz. It was low, steady, and 100 times more intense than the researchers would expect for interference noise—and it was coming from all directions in space.

Penzias and Wilson redoubled their efforts to eliminate the interference, painstakingly retesting their equipment.

Penzias and Wilson’s evidence for the big bang theory shaped “our understanding of this universe and our place in it.” —Thomas Coughlin, 2024 IEEE president

“They went so far as to take rags and detergents to carefully wash the antenna from the droppings of a pair of pigeons that had nested there,” Leonardo Colletti told IEEE Spectrum in a 2023 article about the discovery. Colletti is a physics professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, in Italy.

But even after all the duo’s work, the mysterious buzz continued.

After Penzias and Wilson had accounted for everything, including the pigeon poop, they concluded that the radiation they detected could not have come from the Earth, the sun, or anything else in the galaxy.

They later learned that researchers and astrophysicists Robert H. Dicke, P. James Peebles, and David Todd Wilkinson at Princeton University predicted the existence of cosmic microwave background noise, which “they believed would have resulted from the big bang,” according to an entry on the Nokia Bell Labs website.

“As it turned out,” the article says, “the radiation detected by Penzias and Wilson was a perfect match for what the Princeton researchers had predicted.”

Saving the horn antenna

In 1989 the Holmdel antenna was named a national historic landmark. But in 2021 Nokia, which had acquired Bell Labs, sold the 43-acre area to technology entrepreneur Rakesh Antala.

The following year, the Holmdel planning board voted to undertake a study to consider reclassifying the site as an area in need of redevelopment.

[From left] Holmdel Deputy Mayor Kim LaMountain, former Bell Labs researcher Giovanni Vannucci, and 2024 IEEE President Tom Coughlin celebrating the Milestone dedication in front of the Horn Antenna in Holmdel, N.J.Bala Prasanna

That put the landmark at risk of being demolished, IEEE Spectrum reported.

The local community banded together, launching a publicity campaign and an online petition to save the antenna. The township ultimately secured ownership of the horn antenna site following an extensive legal process. Last year it dedicated the site as Dr. Robert Wilson Park, honoring it as the place where “we gained a critical understanding of the birth of our universe.”

A plaque recognizing the IEEE Milestone designation is displayed in the lobby of the AT&T Labs Science and Technology Center in Middletown, N.J., which is about 7 kilometers from Crawford Hill. The plaque reads:

In 1959–1960, NASA and AT&T developed a satellite Earth station in Holmdel, N.J., including a novel tracking horn-reflector antenna, maser preamplifier, and FM demodulator. The Earth station demonstrated the first high-quality long-distance voice circuit via the Echo passive communication satellite in 1960–1961, and via the active Telstar communications satellite in 1962–1963. Experiments conducted in 1964–1965 provided the first indication of the cosmic background radiation associated with the Big Bang.

The IEEE New Jersey Coast Section and the IEEE Photonics Society sponsored the nomination.

Administered by the IEEE History Center and supported by donors, the Milestone program recognizes outstanding technical developments around the world. Reference: https://ift.tt/JLWghM3

Video Friday: Gemini Robotics Improves Motor Skills

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL

World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Enjoy today’s videos!

Gemini Robotics 1.5 is our most capable vision-language-action (VLA) model that turns visual information and instructions into motor commands for a robot to perform a task. This model thinks before taking action and shows its process, helping robots assess and complete complex tasks more transparently. It also learns across embodiments, accelerating skill learning.

[ Google DeepMind ]

A simple “force pull” gesture brings Carter straight into her hand. This is a fantastic example of how an intuitive interaction can transform complex technology into an extension of our intent.

[ Robust.ai ]

I can’t help it, I feel bad for this poor little robot.

[ Urban Robotics Laboratory, KAIST ]

Hey look, no legs!

[ Kinisi Robotics ]

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have developed a soft robot that can crawl along a flat path and climb up vertical surfaces using its unique origami structure. The robot can move with an accuracy typically seen only in rigid robots.

[ University of Michigan Robotics ]

Unitree G1 has learned the “Anti-Gravity” mode: stability is greatly improved under any action sequence, and even if it falls, it can quickly get back up.

[ Unitree ]

Kepler Robotics has commenced mass production of the K2 Bumblebee, the world’s first commercially available humanoid robot powered by Tesla’s hybrid architecture.

[ Kepler Robotics ]

Reinforcement learning (RL)-based legged locomotion controllers often require meticulous reward tuning to track velocities or goal positions while preserving smooth motion on various terrains. Motion imitation methods via RL using demonstration data reduce reward engineering but fail to generalize to novel environments. We address this by proposing a hierarchical RL framework in which a low-level policy is first pre-trained to imitate animal motions on flat ground, thereby establishing motion priors. Real-world experiments with an ANYmal-D quadruped robot confirm our policy’s capability to generalize animal-like locomotion skills to complex terrains, demonstrating smooth and efficient locomotion and local navigation performance amidst challenging terrains with obstacles.

[ ETHZ RSL ]

I think we have entered the ‘differentiation-through-novelty’ phase of robot vacuums.

[ Roborock ]

In this work, we present Kinethreads: a new full-body haptic exosuit design built around string-based motor-pulley mechanisms, which keeps our suit lightweight (<5kg), soft and flexible, quick-to-wear (<30 seconds), comparatively low-cost (~$400), and yet capable of rendering expressive, distributed, and forceful (up to 120N) effects.

[ ACM Symposium on User Interface and Software Technology ]

In this episode of the IBM AI in Action podcast, Aaron Saunders, CTO of Boston Dynamics, delves into the transformative potential of AI-powered robotics, highlighting how robots are becoming safer, more cost-effective and widely accessible through Robotics as a Service (RaaS).

[ IBM ]

This CMU RI Seminar is by Michael T. Tolley from UCSD, on ‘Biologically Inspired Soft Robotics.’

Robotics has the potential to address many of today’s pressing problems in fields ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to disaster relief. However, the traditional approaches used on the factory floor do not perform well in unstructured environments. The key to solving many of these challenges is to explore new, non-traditional designs. Fortunately, nature surrounds us with examples of novel ways to navigate and interact with the real world. Dr. Tolley’s Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab seeks to borrow the key principles of operation from biological systems and apply them to robotic design.

[ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ]

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ChatGPT Pulse delivers morning updates based on your chat history

On Thursday, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pulse, a new "push" feature that generates personalized daily updates for users without having to ask each time. The preview feature, available now for Pro subscribers on mobile, marks OpenAI's latest attempt to make ChatGPT proactive rather than reactive, with the AI model conducting overnight research to deliver morning updates based on user history and connected apps. OpenAI calls it "personalized research and timely updates that appear regularly to keep you informed."

ChatGPT Pulse works by analyzing a user's chat history, saved preferences, and optional connections to Gmail and Google Calendar each night. The next morning, users receive visual "cards" (small illustrated squares with topic summaries that can be expanded for detail) containing updates on topics the model determines are relevant, such as project follow-ups, dinner suggestions, or travel recommendations. Users can provide feedback through thumbs up or down ratings and request specific topics through a "curate" button.

OpenAI says that rather than waiting for users to initiate conversations, ChatGPT now attempts to deliver information preemptively using what OpenAI calls "asynchronous research," essentially having the model generate queries and responses overnight using traditional methods. Updates appear once daily and disappear after 24 hours unless users save them or ask follow-up questions, which converts them into standard chat conversations.

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Configuring and Controlling Complex Test Equipment Setups for Silicon Device Test and Characterization

In this webinar, we will explore efficient, accurate, and scalable techniques for analog and mixed-signal device testing using reconfigurable test setups. As semiconductor devices grow more complex, engineers face the challenge of validating performance and catching edge cases under tight schedules. Test setups often include oscilloscopes, waveform generators, network analyzers, and more, potentially from different vendors with unique automation and configuration considerations. In order to keep pace with semiconductor validation requirements, multi-channel test setups designed for flexibility and performance can help engineers scale effectively.

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As many as 2 million Cisco devices affected by actively exploited 0-day

As many as 2 million Cisco devices are susceptible to an actively exploited zeroday that can remotely crash or execute code on vulnerable systems.

Cisco said Wednesday that the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-20352, was present in all supported versions of Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE, the operating system that powers a wide variety of the company’s networking devices. The vulnerability can be exploited by low-privileged users to create a denial-of-service attack or by higher-privileged users to execute code that runs with unfettered root privileges. It carries a severity rating of 7.7 out of a possible 10.

Exposing SNMP to the Internet? Yep

“The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) became aware of successful exploitation of this vulnerability in the wild after local Administrator credentials were compromised,” Wednesday’s advisory stated. “Cisco strongly recommends that customers upgrade to a fixed software release to remediate this vulnerability.”

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Microcredentials Chip Away at Semiconductor Workforce Gap

In 2017, Demis John noticed a staffing problem among the semiconductor companies in Santa Barbara. The area had about 28 small semiconductor companies at the time, many launched from the nanofabrication facility housed at University of California, Santa Barbara, where John works. But as these companies expand, “they are all headhunting the same 10 people, basically,” John says.

“It really was hindering their ability to scale. When you start up a company, you might have five or six highly educated people,” he says. “As [companies] get bigger and they go beyond the research devices, they really need technicians to start making more chips.… That’s where they often had these problems.”

This article is part of our special report The Scale Issue.

Now, following the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and increasing investment from companies like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the United States is expecting a shortage of workers who can staff new facilities. In the next few years, tens of thousands of additional skilled workers will be needed across the semiconductor industry; in 2024, McKinsey & Co. estimated a talent gap between 59,000 and 146,000 engineers and technicians before the end of the decade. As the United States invests in reshoring chip manufacturing, the industry faces a dilemma: How can the semiconductor workforce scale to meet the coming demand?

Efforts to develop a strong workforce have grown, for example with government-funded initiatives from the Microelectronics Commons, a U.S. Department of Defense program that established eight hubs across the country to bridge research and manufacturing. (The National Semiconductor Technology Center was also established by the CHIPS Act in part for workforce development. However, in late August, the Commerce Department revoked funding from the nonprofit that was set up to administer the program.) Through a combination of federal programs, state funding, and private-sector partnerships, U.S. colleges and universities are working to increase talent.

To fill the gap, some universities—including UC Santa Barbara—are also offering microcredential programs separate from traditional degree programs. In these bite-size courses, which can be as short as a week or two, future engineers and technicians can gain critical hands-on experience in clean-room fundamentals or an introduction to topics like lithography or etching. Deploying short, standardized, and skill-based courses across the country could be an essential part of building a sustainable U.S. semiconductor workforce.

Developing Microcredentials

UC Santa Barbara launched its clean-room training in 2021, opening the university’s clean room to enrolled students as well as those from outside the university, including community college students and people looking to make a career change. Many universities already have clean rooms where they teach undergraduates about semiconductor fabrication, but students outside of a four-year degree program typically can’t access these facilities to gain the necessary training.

“There’s a big mismatch in culture between companies and city colleges and universities. They all want to solve the same problem, but they don’t actually understand each other’s needs that well,” John says. To him, the importance of these courses is in aligning the needs of the industry, students, and educational institutions.

While developing the UC Santa Barbara course, however, John was surprised to find there was no established educational standard for those wishing to enter the semiconductor workforce outside of a bachelor’s degree.

A student at UC Santa Barbara loads wafers into a machine used for plasma etching. Ben Werner

Since then, he has collaborated with several other institutions and organizations working to implement a microcredential program developed by IEEE in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) as part of California DREAMS (Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub), funded by the DOD. Other programs also offer short training courses, but the standardization IEEE aims to provide is important for ensuring participants’ skills are widely recognized by employers across the country.

Initially, John aimed to address the shortage of technicians to help companies scale up production. But as the courses have expanded elsewhere, it has become clear that the same hands-on experience can be used for engineering students as well.

Students who take these introductory courses may go on to join the workforce or continue in their education to a bachelor’s or advanced degree. “The entire ladder of different workforce exits into the semiconductor industry is really important,” says John. The industry needs operators and technicians, who may seek employment right after high school, as well as Ph.D.-level engineers. “These microcredentials get somebody into the start of that workforce ladder.”

What the Semiconductor Industry Needs

Microcredentials assure employers that applicants have the skills needed to work in their fabs. A common misconception is that companies need students who have already been taught how to build their particular technology. But “it doesn’t matter exactly which specific device you made. What matters is that this person has had the experience of making some real chip,” John says. He compares it to carpentry: Someone who has spent time in a woodshop making furniture may not know how to frame a house, but “all the tools are basically the same. I know they can figure it out.”

So, in addition to specific skills, the course demonstrates a student’s ability to learn the processes—and tolerate the environment. With its loud machines, safety procedures, and protective bunny suits, the clean room isn’t a typical workplace. Having students experience that environment lowers the risk of employers hiring someone who dislikes it.

“It doesn’t matter exactly which specific device you made. What matters is that this person has had the experience of making some real chip.” —Demis John

The course has students spend several days in a clean room, which is more likely than a single clean-room day to filter out participants who wouldn’t last. That’s important for companies that invest a lot of resources in hiring and training new people, notes the University of Washington’s Darick Baker, who serves as acting director of the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, in Seattle.

Can Hands-On Courses Scale Up?

The hands-on experience is a critical part of semiconductor microcredential programs, because companies want employees who are excited about building things. But it also inherently limits how many students can enroll at once. “If I can handle 12 students at a time, maybe there’s the pathway to 100 students a year. But that’s not the numbers we need,” says Baker.

Instead, scalability will likely come from offering courses more frequently, and at more universities. Many universities already have a clean room and courses for university students, John says, so the goal was to make it easy for universities to adapt programs already in place to fit with the microcredential program. This also requires training of the instructors. USC, for example, offers a microcredential for instructors themselves in a “train the trainer” model.

For 10 years, Baker has run clean-room training courses during which students make a diode. He became excited about the possibility of awarding students IEEE’s professional microcredentials as a way to give students an advantage in the job market.

Baker visited USC and UC Santa Barbara to observe their programs and realized they were already quite similar to his. With a few small changes, he could make his program meet the requirements for IEEE microcredentials. His hope is that “somebody can look at that credential and say, maybe this person doesn’t know everything about working at a fab, but they spent one week gowned-up in a bunny suit. They’re not going to quit in that first month because they can’t handle being in the lab.”

Currently, these programs may have significance mostly to local employers. But “nationally, it starts to take meaning when you have a critical mass of universities that are offering these credentials,” says Baker. “The more universities we can get on board with this, the more meaning that credential has.”

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