On November 20th, the renowned business magazine Fortune released its 2024 Fortune 50 AI Innovators list, highlighting the AI companies leading in the new phase of AI technology applications. Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is proud to be listed. Other honorees include internet giants like Alibaba, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft; leading companies in the chip industry such as AMD and NVIDIA; and AI emerging stars like Hugging Face and OpenAI. 

A novel hydrogen sensor developed by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo offers a promising solution for real-time hydrogen leak detection, addressing safety concerns in industrial applications. This sensor, made with nano-patterned cupric-oxide (CuO) nanowires (NWs) with voids, can detect hydrogen at extremely low concentrations with high response, recovery speed, and precision, significantly improving previous CuO-based sensors. It has the potential to enable safer and more reliable use of hydrogen in clean energy applications.  

Agroforestry systems, which integrate trees and shrubs into farming, are vital to achieving sustainable cocoa production in West Africa where 70 percent of the world cocoa is produced. Climate change induced drought means that it is ever more critical to adapt farming practices and find new approaches. Research led by scientists from the University of Göttingen sheds light on a promising new approach to improve climate resilience in cocoa agroforestry across West Africa; this focuses on the critical role of leaf “phenology” – the seasonal changes in leaf cycles – in trees providing shade in managing climate impacts. The study discovered that the seasonal leaf cycles of shade trees can significantly influence the productivity of cocoa agroforestry systems as well as their resilience to global environmental change. The results were published in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment.

Once again, several researchers from the University of Würzburg are among the “Highly Cited Researchers”. In 2024, four professors make the list. Their work is frequently cited by colleagues worldwide.

Penn Engineers have cooked up a new way to improve mRNA delivery, developing an optimal “recipe” for ionizable lipids — key ingredients in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the molecules behind the COVID-19 vaccines and other innovative therapies. The method, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, mirrors the iterative process of developing a culinary dish and may lead to safer, more effective mRNA vaccines and therapeutics.

Using energy- and resource-saving methods, a research team at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at TU Graz aims to produce high-quality doped silicon layers for the electronics and solar industries.