Alison E. Berman
From This Author
Technology Can and Should Be Designed for Emotional Wellness
In an interview at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine in San Diego, Nichol Bradford, co-founder and executive director of Sofia University’s Transformative Technology Lab, explored how new technologies are being designed to enhance emotional wellness and awareness.
Sofia University’s...
The Future of Cancer Treatment Is Personalized and Collaborative
In an interview at Singularity University's Exponential Medicine in San Diego, Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer at the American Cancer Society, discussed how technology has changed cancer care and treatment in recent years.
Just a...
The Technologies We’ll Have Our Eyes on in 2018
It’s that time of year again when our team has a little fun and throws on our futurist glasses to look ahead at some of the technologies and trends we’re most anticipating next year.
Whether...
How Neuroscience Is Beginning to Rewire the Brain From the Inside Out
In an interview at Exponential Medicine in San Diego, Singularity University faculty and speaker Dr. Divya Chander takes a look at how emerging technologies are letting us peer inside the human brain like never before.
As an anesthesiologist...
Here’s a Winter Reading List to Help You Kickstart the Year
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a seasoned executive, the holiday season is an ideal time for professional and personal reflection.
While it’s best to reflect and revisit goals throughout the year, sometimes it just...
Film ‘Unrest’ Is an Intimate Look Into Life With a ‘Disease Medicine Forgot’
In an interview at Exponential Medicine in San Diego, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Brea shared her difficult yet powerful journey with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Brea was a healthy PhD student at Harvard University, about to marry the...
Nurse as Maker: Democratizing Medical Innovation Starts Here
Inventing and improving medical devices can be a long and arduous process. Oftentimes it’s also a process that takes place far from the end user—the patient.
But what if research and development of medical devices...
Virtual Reality Is Reshaping Medical Training and Treatment
Arthur C. Clarke, a British science fiction writer, is well known for once writing, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Consumer virtual reality is going through a rough patch as high expectations and...
Can Technology Mend America’s Divided Healthcare System?
40 million people in the US lack the security of having a guaranteed meal each day. The US also wastes $40 billion dollars of food each year. It’s a harsh contrast.
It seems, however,...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through October 14)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google's Learning Software Learns to Write Learning Software
Tom Simonite | Wired
“In a project called AutoML, Google’s researchers have taught machine-learning software to build machine-learning software. In some instances, what it comes up...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around The Web (Through October 7)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google Has Built Earbuds That Translate 40 Languages in Real Time
Dave Gershgorn | Quartz
“The last part of that process is traditionally done by putting together pre-recorded words or word fragments. However, DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around The Web (Through September 30)
AUGMENTED REALITY
ZED Mini Turns Rift and Vive Into an AR Headset From the Future
Ben Lang | Road to VR
“When attached, the camera provides stereo pass-through video and real-time depth and environment mapping, turning the...
This AI Assistant Helps Demystify Complex Research
In an interview at Singularity University’s Global Summit in San Francisco, Anita Schjøll Brede talked about how artificial intelligence can help make scientific research accessible to anyone working on a complex problem.
Anita Schjøll Brede is the...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through September 2)
AUGMENTED REALITY
Google Unveils ARCore, Its Answer to Apple's ARKit, But It Will Be Hard to Catch Up
Mark Sullivan | Fast Company
“With ARCore, Google says, developers can create AR apps and games that run...
Finish Him! MegaBots’ Giant Robot Duel Is Finally Going Down
It began two years ago when MegaBots co-founders Matt Oehrlein and Gui Cavalcanti donned American flags as capes and challenged Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a giant robot duel in a YouTube video that immediately...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 26)
BIOTECH
Lab-Grown Food Startup Memphis Meats Raises $17 Million From DFJ, Cargill, Bill Gates, Others
Paul Sawers | Venture Beat
“Meat grown in a laboratory is the future, if certain sustainable food advocates have their way,...
This Inspiring Teenager Wants to Save Lives With His Flying Robots
It’s not every day you meet a high school student who’s been building functional robots since age 10. Then again, Mihir Garimella is definitely not your average teenager.
When I sat down to interview him...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 19)
BIOHACKING
Biohackers Encoded Malware in a Strand of DNA
Andy Greenberg | WIRED
"Regardless of any practical reason for the research, however, the notion of building a computer attack—known as an 'exploit'—with nothing but the information stored...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 12)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Blizzard and DeepMind Turn StarCraft II Into an AI Research Lab
Darrell Etherington | TechCrunch
“StarCraft II is such a useful environment for AI research basically because of how complex and varied the games can...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 5)
TRANSPORTATION
A Pod Races Through the Hyperloop for the First Time Ever
Alex Davies | WIRED
“Once loaded into a 1,600-foot-long concrete tube in the Nevada desert, the pod hit 192 mph in about 5 seconds, using...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 29)
AUGMENTED REALITY
$99 Headset Could Be Augmented Reality's First True Chance at a Mass Market
Rachel Metz | MIT Technology Review
“The headset, made by Mira, is like an AR version of Samsung’s Gear VR, which gives users...
The Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 22)
BIOTECH
Verily Robot Will Raise 20 Million Sterile Mosquitoes for Release in California
Emily Mullin | MIT Technology Review
“To help breed and release the mosquitoes, Verily has partnered with Kentucky-based Mosquito Mate and Fresno’s mosquito control...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 15)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
DeepMind's AI Is Teaching Itself Parkour, and the Results Are Adorable
James Vincent | The Verge
"The research explores how reinforcement learning (or RL) can be used to teach a computer to navigate unfamiliar and...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 8)
DIGITAL MEDIA
Make Hollywood-Quality Animations at Low-Budget Prices With This Motion Capture Suit
Sarah Buhr | TechCrunch
"You might be familiar with the industry-standard green man MoCap suit many Hollywood studios use to capture the movement of...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 1)
DRONES
MIT Is Building Autonomous Drones That Can Both Drive and Fly
April Glaser | Recode
"The drones, which were built at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, also include route-planning software that can help calculate...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through June 24)
SPACE
NASA Finds Evidence of 10 New Earth-Sized Planets in Our Corner of the Galaxy
Sean O’Kane | The Verge
"A total of 2,335 of those have been verified as exoplanets, 21 of which are Earth-sized and...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through June 17)
SILICON VALLEY NEWS
Even Uber's Crisis Won't Kill Founder Worship in Tech
Davey Alba | WIRED
"Because of Uber's corporate structure, only Kalanick himself can really decide if he stays or goes. And the Valley has been...
5 Fintech Companies Using AI to Improve Business
Artificial intelligence may be all the craze in Silicon Valley, but on Wall Street, well, there’s a lot of skepticism.
High-powered algorithms are not a new phenomenon in finance, and for this industry, the name...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through June 10)
ROBOTICS
Alphabet Is Selling Its Terrifying Robots to SoftBank
Mike Murphy | Quartz
"It’s unclear what SoftBank paid for Alphabet’s two robotics companies, but perhaps it sees a future where robots are as commonplace in our lives...
Get It While It’s Hot: Why Fintech Is a Goldmine for Investors
It’s 1998 in Silicon Valley, and PayPal is born.
Many argue this was the moment that launched fintech as we know it. Today, fintech is comprised of roughly 15,000 startups globally, all focused on either...
Tune Into the Future of Fintech at Exponential Finance This Week
Singularity University’s Exponential Finance Summit begins today and runs through June 9 in New York, the finance industry’s bustling capital. You can tune into the summit as it happens from anywhere with this livestream.
Singularity...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through June 3)
BIOTECH
These Color-Changing Tattoos Monitor Your Health, No Wearable Needed
Katharine Schwab | Fast Company
"Researchers are getting closer to turning the skin into an interface, while designers imagine what these interfaces might look like. Do they...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through May 27)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google's AlphaGo Continues Dominance With Second Win in China
Cade Metz | WIRED
"The last game of the series is set for Saturday. But before then, on Friday, the machine will play two others: one...
How Reebok Is Breaking the Mold by ‘3D Drawing’ Shoe Soles
You may be surprised to learn that if you walked into a shoe factory today versus forty years ago, a lot of what you’d see would be the same.
At the heart of footwear manufacturing,...
Watch: Where AI Is Today, and Where It’s Going in the Future
2016 was a year of headlines in artificial intelligence. A top-selling holiday gift was the AI-powered Amazon Echo; IBM Watson was used to diagnose cancer; and Google DeepMind’s system AlphaGo cracked the ancient and complex Chinese...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through May 20)
ROBOTICS
San Francisco Considers Ban on Sidewalk Delivery Robots
Steven Musil | CNET
"San Francisco is considering legislation that would put the brakes on delivery robots rolling across the city's sidewalks. The robots, once confined to sci-fi...
Singularity Hub Is Live This Week at Exponential Manufacturing in Boston
Singularity Hub is on the ground this week at Singularity University’s Exponential Manufacturing Summit in Boston.
At the summit, executives, makers, entrepreneurs, and policy leaders across the manufacturing industry will come together to learn how...
Are We About to Unlock the Secrets to Peak Performance?
“How many surf bums who can’t keep a job washing dishes will be up at 5 AM putting on a gritty, sandy wetsuit to paddle out in cold, sharky water for just one shot...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through May 13)
TRANSPORTATION
Have Scientists Discovered the Cure for Potholes?
Angela Chen | The Verge
"Self-healing asphalt has been tested on 12 different roads in the Netherlands, and one of these has been functioning and open to the...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through May 6)
AUTOMATION
Veo Robotics Gives Industrial Robots a Sixth Sense for Safely Working Around People
Devin Coldewey | TechCrunch
"Veo’s system uses a set of four depth-sensing cameras placed around the work space so as to give complete...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 22)
VIRTUAL REALITY
Facebook's Bizarre VR App Is Exactly Why Zuck Bought Oculus
Peter Rubin | WIRED
"When you launch Spaces from within your Oculus Rift headset, though, it logs into your Facebook account. The same one that...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 15)
TRANSPORTATION
Zunum's Hybrid Jet Could Finally Make Electric Flight a Reality
Eric Adams | WIRED
"As crazy as it sounds, the aviation industry finds itself fascinated by electric airplanes, which require less fuel and make less noise...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 8)
SPACE
SpaceX Releases Video of Its Historic Reused Rocket Landing
Andrew Tarantola | Engadget
"This marks the sixth successful landing by the Falcon 9 rocket...SpaceX has since promised to execute launches every two weeks and will reportedly...
Star Trek or Mad Max? Why What Happens in the Future Is Up to Us
Is humanity headed toward a Star Trek-like utopia or a Mad Max-inspired dystopia?
This is one of the big questions Vivek Wadhwa examines in his new book, co-authored with Alex Salkever, The Driver in the...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 1)
ROBOTICS
Meet Iorek, the Robot That Communicates in a Remarkable Way
Matt Simon | WIRED
"The big question now is: How do humans want to communicate with the machines? One idea is to use EEGs to actually...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through March 18)
DRONES
Airbus Swears Its Pod/Car/Drone Is a Serious Idea Definitively
Jack Stewart | WIRED
"Airbus came up with a crazy idea to change all of that with Pop.Up, a conceptual two-passenger pod that clips to a set...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through March 11)
ROBOTICS
Humans Can Now Scold a Robot With Their Minds
Samantha Cole | Vice MOTHERBOARD
"Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), with Boston University, developed a feedback system for humans to mentally change a...
How Google Is Revealing Unmapped Areas of the World in Virtual Reality
Technology companies left and right are developing new gadgets to advance virtual reality as an immersive entertainment and gaming platform. Others however, like VR producer Chris Milk, have hopes that the technology’s potential will...
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through March 4th)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Facebook Is Using Artificial Intelligence to Help Prevent Suicide
Alex Kantrowitz | BuzzFeed
"Today, Facebook is introducing an important piece of that technology—a suicide-prevention feature that uses AI to identify posts indicating suicidal or harmful thoughts....
This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through February 25th)
MACHINE LEARNING
Did You Hear That? Robots Are Learning the Subtle Sounds of Mechanical Breakdown
Steven Melendez | Fast Company
"'We’re developing an expert mechanic’s brain that identifies exactly what is happening to a machine by the way...
