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IEEE TryEngineering is celebrating 20 years of empowering educators with resources that introduce engineering to students at an early age. Launched in 2006 as a collaboration between IEEE, IBM, and the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), TryEngineering began with a clear goal: Make engineering accessible, understandable, and engaging for students and the teachers who support them.What started as an idea within IEEE

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.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! No system is immune to failure. The compromise between reducing failures and improving adaptability is a recurring problem in robotics. Mo

MicroLEDs, with pixels just micrometers across, have long been a byword in the display world. Now, microLED-makers have begun shrinking their creations into the uncharted nano realm. In January, a startup named Polar Light Technologies unveiled prototype blue LEDs less than 500 nanometers across. This raises a tempting question: How far can LEDs shrink?We know the answer is, at least, considerably smaller. In the past year, two different research groups have demonstrated LED pixels at sizes of 100 nm or less.These are some of the smallest LEDs

As new consumer hardware and software capabilities have bumped up against medicine over the last few years, consumers and manufacturers alike have struggled with identifying the line between “wellness” products such as earbuds that can also amplify and clarify surrounding speakers’ voices and regulated medical devices such as conventional hearing aids. On January 6, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued new guidance documents clarifying how it interprets existing law for the review of wearable and AI-assisted devices. The first document, for general wellness, specifies that the FD

During times of political turmoil, history often gets rewritten, erased, or lost. That is what happened to the legacy of Jan Czochralski, a Polish chemist whose contributions to semiconductor manufacturing were expunged after World War II.In 1916 he invented a method for growing single crystals of semiconductors, metals, and synthetic gemstones. The process, now known as the Czochralski method, allows scientists to have more control over a semiconductor’s quality.After th

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!We’d like to introduce Brian Jenney, a senior software engineer and owner of Parsity, an online education platform that helps people break into AI and modern software roles through hands-on training. Brian will be sharing his advice on engineering careers with you in the coming

For a different perspective on AI companions, see our Q&A with Jaime Banks: How Do You Define an AI Companion?Novel technology is often a double-edged sword. New capabilities come with new risks, and artificial intelligence is certainly no exception.AI used for human companionship, for instance, promises an ever-present digital friend in an increasingly lonely world. Chatbots dedicated to providing social support have grown to host millions of users, and they’re now being embodied in physical companions. Researchers are just beginning to understand the nature of these interactions, but one essential question has already emerged: Do AI

For a different perspective on AI companions, see our Q&A with Brad Knox: How Can AI Companions Be Helpful, not Harmful?AI models intended to provide companionship for humans are on the rise. People are already frequently developing relationships with chatbots, seeking not just a personal assistant but a source of emotional support.In response, apps dedicated to providing companionship (such as Character.ai or Replika) have recently grown to host millions of users. Some companies are now putting AI into

If it feels these days as if everything in technology is about AI, that’s because it is. And nowhere is that more true than in the market for computer memory. Demand, and profitability, for the type of DRAM used to feed GPUs and other accelerators in AI data centers is so huge that it’s diverting away supply of memory for other uses and causing prices to skyrocket. According to Counterpoint Research, DRAM prices have risen 80-90 precent so far this quarter.The largest AI hardware companies say they have secured their chips out as far as 2028, but that leaves everybody else—makers of PCs, consumer gizmos, and everything else that needs to temporarily

Meet the recipients of the 2026 IEEE Medals—the organization’s highest-level honors. Presented on behalf of the IEEE Board of Directors, these medals recognize innovators whose work has shaped modern technology across disciplines including AI, education, and semiconductors.The medals will be presented at the IEEE Honors Ceremony in April in New York City. View the full list of 2026 recipients on the