Four New York University faculty have been awarded fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Danique Jeurissen, an assistant professor of neural science, and Marvin Parasram, an assistant professor of chemistry, as well as Florian Schäfer and Joseph Tassarotti, assistant professors in NYU’s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) developed a hybrid signal processing method that integrates an annealing-based quantum computer with classical computing for next-generation mobile communication systems. By implementing this method into a base station, simultaneous communications with 10 devices were successfully demonstrated through outdoor experiments, addressing the massive connectivity requirements anticipated for the 6G era. The proposed approach utilizes quantum annealing to efficiently solve the combinatorial optimization problem arising in signal detection under multi-antenna and multi-carrier transmission. This result represents a significant step toward realizing large-scale machine-to-machine communications in future 6G networks, including applications involving drones, robots, and XR devices.

This work was presented on January 9, 2026, at the international conference IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC) 2026.

Research from The University of Osaka highlights a new model of a gyroscopic wave energy converter. The device was shown to be capable of absorbing up to half of incoming wave energy across a wide range of frequencies, meaning it could achieve the theoretical maximum efficiency. These results provide important design insights for more efficient and adaptable wave energy technologies.

The race to develop a virtual scientist — an AI creation that conducts every stage of research, from idea to publication — has consumed researchers, start-up founders, and tech juggernauts alike.

It has also illuminated fundamental philosophical questions about the process of doing science. Is the scientific method really the best approach to learning about the world?

A new paper in Collective Intelligence applies the scientific method to itself, finding that some common strategies that scientists consider gold standards for designing experiments perform worse than random choice. In other words: random exploration may produce better theories than carefully-planned experiments.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a six-year, nearly $2 million grant to The University of Texas at Arlington to provide scholarships for qualified undergraduate mathematics students.

Loneliness has a critical impact on the mental health of citizens, particularly among the elderly. Robots capable of perceiving and responding to human emotions can serve as heart-warming companions to help lift the spirits. A research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has discovered that the combined power of music and empathetic speech in robots with artificial intelligence (AI) could foster a stronger bond between humans and machines. These findings underscore the importance of a multimodal approach in designing empathetic robots, offering significant implications for their application in health support, elder care, education and beyond.

In a must-see topical lecture called “From Discovery to Impact: A Framework for Research That Strengthens Communities,” Morton draws on Arizona State University’s pioneering model of use-inspired research — where excellence is measured by the overall economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities ASU serves.