In the News

In a forthcoming paper to be published in IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics(TAFE), James Reynolds, a postdoctoral research scholar at NC State’s iBionicS Lab and first author of the paper, and fellow researchers at North Carolina State University explored how plant tissue’s impeding of electrical current can be monitored to identify plants under stress with relative immediacy—less than an hour, in some cases.

Superconductors, the other prominent approach to quantum computing, are the focus of North Carolina State University and its partner corporation, IBM. Nicknamed “chandeliers,” IBM’s machines are gold-plated, multi-level apparatuses with a progression of wires and tubes funneling down to single silicon processor chips. While Duke has ion-trap computers in the Triangle, NC State researchers remotely access the chandeliers, which are housed at the IBM facility in Yorktown Heights, New York. “Each technology kind of has its strength,” said Daniel Stancil, executive director of the IBM Quantum Hub at NC State. “I think there have been some significant developments in the hardware in the past year.”

Wearable devices, like nearly every other piece of tech, need energy. Fortunately, though, at wearables’ modest power budgets, energy is effectively everywhere. It’s in the sun’s rays and radio waves, the skin’s sweat and body heat, a person’s motion and their footfalls. And today, technology is maturing to the point that meaningful amounts of these energy giveaways can be harvested to liberate wearables from ever needing a battery. Which seems plenty attractive to a range of companies and researchers.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced the award today of $238 million in “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act” funding for the establishment of eight Microelectronics Commons (Commons) regional innovation hubs. This includes the Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors (CLAWS) Hub, led by NC State University with a $39.4-million award for FY23.

Christina Koch, who grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and graduated from N.C. State University, will be part of the first crew of astronauts to travel around the moon in more than 50 years, NASA announced Monday.

At the FREEDM Systems Research Center, some of the state’s brightest minds are leading the way to improve how we power our lives.

On Friday, President Joe Biden’s top adviser on science and technology visited North Carolina State University to see firsthand how students are creating cleaner and more efficient energy systems.

Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd, a unit of Chicago-based energy provider Exelon Corp), in partnership with North Carolina State University’s FREEDM Systems Center, has been awarded a $200,000 federal research and development grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to help fund a $5m research project focused on improving the efficiency of, and reducing the cost of, extreme fast charging (XFC) for electric vehicles (EVs).

The new law includes $13.2 billion for research and the training of people to work in the development, design and manufacturing of semiconductor wafers and the chips that are built on them. The R&D funding could be a boon to North Carolina’s research universities, especially N.C. State. John Muth, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, said other states dominate in the design and production of silicon-based chips, but N.C. State is at the forefront of developing a new generation of silicon carbide semiconductors that can endure higher temperatures and higher voltages, qualities that will be increasingly needed in electric automobiles, data processing centers and clean energy production. “In general, we need to do more manufacturing, do it cleaner and employ people with better paying jobs and the CHIPS Act helps out with that,” he said.

Governments, businesses and universities worldwide are spending heavily to prepare for quantum. And in the past few years, the three corners of North Carolina’s Research Triangle—Duke University, North Carolina State University, and UNC—have each made distinct contributions to this emerging field, turning the state into a legitimate quantum hot spot.

Students created a set of activities to walk high school students through the entire computer vision pipeline by Jeremy Park and Sanjana Banerjee, who are Graduate Research Assistants and Ph.D. candidates at North Carolina State University, specializing in AI/Machine Learning.

What Will New Tech Look Like, and how will it work? Prepare for a future where you and your doctor track your health markers 24/7, manage chronic conditions in real time, and predict incoming illness with incredible precision – all from tiny sensors you’ll wear on your skin and in your clothing.