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Estonia has a reputation as one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, thanks to its efficient digital platforms for government services and its startup-friendly culture. Its citizens’ digital prowess is largely due to the government’s decades-long campaign to bring technology into schools. Now, the government is launching AI Leap 2025, which will bring AI tools to an initial cohort of 20,000 high school students in September. Siim Sikkut, a former member of the Estonian government and part of the launch team, says the AI Leap program goes beyond just providing access to new technology. Its goal is to give students the skills they need to use it both ethically and effectively.Slim SikkutSiim Sikkut served as the Estonian government’s chief information officer from 2017 to 2022, a role in which he created policies regarding digital government operations, cybersecurity, and connectivity. He is currently a managing partner at Digital Nation, an Estonian consulting firm that works with governments around the world.What was the Tiger Leap program, and how is it the model for what you’re doing now?Siim Sikkut: Tiger Leap was a program in the ’90s to bring computers and Internet and basic digital skills to all the schools in Estonia. I myself got exposed to all things Internet, because at that time, we didn’t have a chance to use them at home. These guys and girls became the founders of industry and of digital government, so it allowed us to make a leap in building a digital society in Estonia. How does the AI Leap program follow that model?Sikkut: Our thinking is now we have to do the same sort of leap and expose our younger generations to this next wave [of technology]. There are differences between the programs. Then it was, We’ll give you the access and the tools to do with what you like. Now, with AI tools, we feel it has to be a bit more curated. You need to learn to use them as opposed to just getting an easier way out of your homework. So it’s more of a skilling effort than just an access effort.What will this look like in practice? What tools will the students have access to?Sikkut: We are still negotiating with the partners and […]

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship. Since its inception, the prestigious US $10,000 award has been given annually to one exceptional high school student participating in the Regeneron (formerly Intel) International Science and Engineering Fair. The ISEF is the world’s largest international STEM research competition for high school students.Finalists for the scholarship are selected by a team of IEEE volunteer judges. The scholarship is funded by the IEEE Foundation and administered by IEEE Educational Activities.To commemorate the scholarship’s anniversary, I asked past winners how the award impacted their life and career, and what they are doing today.Harvard educator and a film producer Elena Glassman received the scholarship in 2004 for her Brain-Computer Interface for the Muscularly Disabled project.Elena GlassmanElena Glassman received the scholarship in 2004 for her Brain-Computer Interface for the Muscularly Disabled project. She wrote code to collect EEG wavelets that predicted her own right or left arm movement with an accuracy rate of 73 percent.Today Glassman is an assistant professor of computer science at Harvard, where she teaches human-computer interaction. She is also a new mother. The scholarship supported her education at MIT, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. She says the scholarship was among the most memorable awards she received.“When your project is being evaluated by IEEE judges who understand the work,” she says, “that’s what was so meaningful about receiving the award.” With encouragement from her father, a lifelong IEEE member, she submitted a paper about her project to IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, which published it.In her current work, she says, she enjoys focusing on the “human side of programming.” She adds that her electrical engineering background is useful in tackling all sorts of projects.Adam Sidman received the 2005 scholarship for Camera Stabilization: Take Two. His project centered around the development of a handheld servo-based device. The film and TV producer in Los Angeles says his invention is a “go-to everyday […]

As foundational AI models grow in power and reach, they also expose new attack surfaces, vulnerabilities, and ethical risks. This white paper by the Secure Systems Research Center (SSRC) at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) outlines a comprehensive framework to ensure security, resilience, and safety in large-scale AI models. By applying Zero-Trust principles, the framework addresses threats across training, deployment, inference, and post-deployment monitoring. It also considers geopolitical risks, model misuse, and data poisoning, offering strategies such as secure compute environments, verifiable datasets, continuous validation, and runtime assurance. The paper proposes a roadmap for governments, enterprises, and developers to collaboratively build trustworthy AI systems for critical applications.Download this free whitepaper now!

More and more satellites are being added to low Earth orbit (LEO) every month. As that number continues to increase, so do the risks of that critical area surrounding Earth becoming impassable, trapping us on the planet for the foreseeable future. Ideas from different labs have presented potential solutions to this problem, but one of the most promising, electrodynamic tethers (EDTs), have only now begun to be tested in space. A new CubeSat called the Spacecraft for Advanced Research and Cooperative Studies (SPARCS) mission from researchers at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran hopes to contribute to that effort by testing an EDT and intersatellite communication system as well as collecting real-time data on the radiation environment of its orbital path.aspect_ratioSPARCS actually consists of two separate CubeSats. SPARCS-A is a 1U CubeSat primarily designed as a communications platform, with the mission design requiring it to talk to SPARCS-B, which is a 2U CubeSat that, in addition to the communication system, contains a EDT. That EDT, which can measure up to 12 meters in length, is deployed via a servomotor, with a camera watching to ensure proper deployment.EDTs are essentially giant poles with electric current running through them. They use this current, and the tiny magnetic field it produces, to push off of the Earth’s natural magnetic sphere using a property called the Lorentz force. This allows the satellite to adjust its orbit without the use of fuel, simply by orienting its EDT in a specific direction (which the EDT itself can assist with) and then using the Lorentz force to either push it up into a higher orbit, or—more significant for the purposes for technology demonstration—to slow the CubeSat down to a point where it can make a controlled entry into the atmosphere.Why Are EDTs Important for Satellites?That controlled-entry feature is why EDTs have garnered so much attention. Previous missions, such as KITE from JAXA and MiTEE from the University of Michigan, have already attempted to use EDTs to change their orbits. Unfortunately neither of those missions successfully utilized their EDT, though a follow-up mission called MiTEE-2 […]

This is a sponsored article brought to you by POWER Engineers, Member of WSP.Digital transformation is reshaping industries across the globe, and the power delivery sector is no exception. As demand for reliable and efficient energy supply continues to grow, the need to modernize and optimize operations becomes increasingly critical. By leveraging digital tools and technologies, utilities are unlocking unprecedented opportunities to enhance precision, efficiency and resilience throughout the power delivery value chain—from generation to distribution.However, while digitalization offers transformative potential, the power delivery industry continues to grapple with substantial technical and operational challenges. Many utilities still operate with legacy or manual security protocols that rely on reactive rather than proactive strategies. The slow pace of technology adoption further compounds these issues, increasing the vulnerability of critical assets to inefficiencies, downtime and physical threats. Overcoming these obstacles requires a strategic shift toward innovative solutions that drive measurable improvements in safety, reliability and operational optimization. Meerkat takes the guesswork out of substation security by integrating high-fidelity data with real-time 3D mitigation modeling. This sophisticated approach identifies all line-of-sight vulnerabilities, and delivers robust protection for critical infrastructure in an increasingly complex threat landscape.Video: POWER Engineers, Member of WSPThe Need for Digital Transformation in Physical SecurityPhysical attacks on substations are becoming increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. As technology evolves, so do the bad actors that are trying to take down the grid. Many mitigation methods are no longer sufficient against modern methods of attack. These facilities, which are crucial to keeping the grid operational, must be able to comprehensively assess and adapt to new threats. Digital transformation is the key to this goal. Physical breach events, defined here as physical attacks, vandalism, theft and suspicious activity, accounted for more than half of all electric disturbance events reported to […]