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This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!Engineers Aren’t Bad at Communication. They’re Just Speaking to the Wrong Audience.There’s a persistent myth that engineers are bad communicators. In my experience, that’s not true.Engineers are often excellent communicators—inside their domain. We’

This is a sponsored article brought to you by General Motors. Visit their new Engineering Blog for more insights.Autonomous driving is one of the most demanding problems in physical AI. An automated system must interpret a chaotic, ever-changing world in real time—navigating uncertainty, predicting human behavior, and operating safely across an immense range of environments and edge cases.At General Motors, we approach this problem from a simple premise: while most moments on the road are predictable, the rare, ambiguous, and unexpected events — the long tail — are what ultimately defines whether an autonomous system is safe, reliable

When you hear the term humanoid robot, you may think of C-3PO, the human-cyborg-relations android from Star Wars. C-3PO was designed to assist humans in communicating with robots and alien species. The droid, which first appeared on screen in 1977, joined the characters on their adventures, walking, talking, and interacting with the environment like a human. It was ahead of its time.Before the release of Star W

A technical exploration of IEEE 802.11bn’s physical and MAC layer enhancements — including distributed resource units, enhanced long range, multi-AP coordination, and seamless roaming — that define Wi-Fi 8.What Attendees will LearnWhy Wi-Fi 8 prioritizes reliability over raw throughput — Understand how IEEE 802.11bn shifts the design philosophy from peak data-rate gains to ultra-high reliability.How new physical layer features overcome uplink power limitations — Learn how distributed resource units spread tones across wider distribution bandwidths to boost per-tone transmit power, and how enhanced long range protocol data units use power-boosted preamble fields and frequency-domain duplication to extend uplink cov

“Can I get an interview?” “Can I get a job when I graduate?” Those questions came from students during a candid discussion about artificial intelligence, capturing the anxiety many young people feel today. As companies adopt AI-driven interview screeners, restructure their workforces, and redirect billions of dollars toward AI infrastructure, students are increasingly unsure of what the future of work will look like.We had gathered people together at a coffee shop in Auburn, Alabama, for what we called an AI Café. The event was designed to confront concerns about AI directly, demystifying the technology while pushing back against the growing narrative of technological doo

U.S. doctoral programs in electrical engineering form the foundation of technological advancement, training the brightest minds in the world to research, develop, and design next-generation electronics, software, electrical infrastructure, and other high-tech products and systems. Elite institutions have long served as launchpads for the engineers behind tomorrow’s technology. Now that foundation is under strain.With U.S. universities increasingly entangled in political battles under the second Trump administration, uncertainty is beginning to ripple through doctoral admissions for electrical engineering programs. While some departments are reducing the number of spots available in anticipation of potential federal

Last week’s Nvidia GTC conference highlighted new chip architectures to power AI. But as the chips become faster and more powerful, the remainder of data center infrastructure is playing catch-up. The power-delivery community is responding: Announcements from Delta,

The undying thirst for smarter (historically, that means larger) AI models and greater adoption of the ones we already have has led to an explosion in data-center construction projects, unparalleled both in number and scale. Chief among them is Meta’s planned 5-gigawatt data center in Louisiana, called Hyperion, announced in June of 2025. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Hyperion will “cover a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” and the first phase—a 2-GW version—will be completed by 2030.Though the project’s stated 5-GW scale is the largest among its peers, it’s just one of several dozen similar projects now underway. According to Michael Guckes, c

WHEN KYIV-BORN ENGINEER Yaroslav Azhnyuk thinks about the future, his mind conjures up dystopian images. He talks about “swarms of autonomous drones carrying other autonomous drones to protect them against autonomous drones, which are trying to intercept them, controlled by AI agents overseen by a human general somewhere.” He also imagines flotillas of autonomous submarines, each carrying hundreds of drones, suddenly emerging off the coast of California

Mel OlkenFormer executive director of the IEEE Power & Energy SocietyFellow, 92; died 9 JanuaryOlken became the first executive director of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) in 1995. In 2002 he left the position to serve as founding editor in chief of the society’s Power & Energy Magazine. Olken led the publication until 2016, when he retired.After receiving a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the