A new course offered this spring quarter at Cal Poly introduced upper-division undergraduates to the fundamentals of building synthetic cells while collaborating on innovative projects. The cutting-edge course titled “Engineering Synthetic Cells,” taught by Javin Oza, a Cal Poly biochemistry associate professor, involves a partnership with the San Francisco-based company b.next, an open-source synthetic cell platform Nucleus, and an international science network.

Researchers have developed a new magnetic memory material whose information can be rewritten using light instead of electric current. The advance could enable memory devices that are about 1,000 times faster and far more energy efficient, offering a potential path to reducing electricity use in AI systems, data centers and next-generation information infrastructure.

Luxembourg AI Factory released an open-source tool, the AI Assessment Sandbox Configurator, on 10 June 2026. Developed by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), the tool lets any organisation build a customised environment for testing if an artificial intelligence system is trustworthy and compliant. This tool lays the groundwork for a shared European infrastructure for AI assessment.

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have achieved two major breakthroughs in interfacial polymerization, a key technique for preparing advanced functional materials. By integrating quantum mechanics with machine learning, the team has elucidated the mechanism by which water molecules facilitate reactions at the molecular level. At the same time, they have transformed microcapsule design from a traditional trial-and-error approach into a predictive science.

Open-source artificial intelligence is advancing faster than the world can govern it. In a new comment published in Nature Communications, an international team of researchers warns that without coordinated action, open-source AI could increase environmental pressures, deepen technological inequalities, and facilitate the spread of misinformation.

A new AI model has become so good at predicting how molecules evolve over time that, in the future, it could speed up the costly and time-consuming process of testing new drugs. In the long term, this technology could facilitate the development of medicines and new treatments, as promising drug candidates are able to be identified more quickly and with greater accuracy. The findings are being presented in a new Swedish study published in Science Advances.