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The percentage of women in the semiconductor industry is stubbornly low. According to a report released in April, 51 percent of companies report having less than 20 percent of their technical roles filled by women. At the same time, fewer of these companies were publicly committed to equal opportunity measures in 2024 than the year prior, the same report found.This lack of support comes at the same time that major workforce shortages are expected, says Andrea Mohamed, COO and co-founder of QuantumBloom, which helps companies attract, retain, and advance early career women in STEM. The company focuses on the transition from higher education to the workforce, a critical point during which many women leave STEM.IEEE Spectrum spoke to Mohamed about supporting women in semiconductor jobs, and why a retreat from these initiatives is at odds with the needs of the industry. Andrea Mohamed on: The current state of the semiconductor industryHow a lack of support for women will impact the industryWhether the industry is regressing in its hiring practicesWhat the semiconductor industry can learn from other industriesTell me about your perspective as a returning veteran of the semiconductor industry.Andrea Mohamed: I worked for a semiconductor startup company over 20 years ago, and it was very male dominated. Now, it’s still very male dominated. Seeing the semiconductor industry with fresh eyes, what I see is an industry that hasn’t evolved as quickly as other STEM-intensive industries. I’ve worked for science and research-oriented organizations, and the progress that’s been made in other sectors just hasn’t been made in this particular sector. Return to topHow might the lack of support for women in the U.S. semiconductor industry create additional problems?Mohamed: On a macro scale, you have an industry that is facing a lot of geopolitical and economic forces that are disrupting the whole supply chain ecosystem around semiconductors, and there’s a push to reshore and onshore. There are a lot of infrastructure gaps in doing that, one of them being the workforce component. It’s not just semiconductors that are poised to be reshored and onshored to the United […]

This article originally appeared on Universe Today.Getting to Mars takes a really long time, about 9 months using today’s rocket technology. This is because regular rocket engines burn fuel and oxygen together (like a car engine), but they’re not very efficient. The fundamental problem is that spacecraft must carry both fuel and oxidizer since there’s no air in space to support combustion. This creates a vicious circle: The more fuel you carry to go faster, the heavier your spacecraft becomes, requiring even more fuel to accelerate that extra weight. To go faster, you’d need massive amounts of fuel, making the rockets incredibly expensive and heavy. Current chemical propulsion systems are just about at their theoretical limits, with little room for improvement in efficiency.RELATED: Rockets for the Red Planetaspect_ratioWhilst NASA funding has been slashed by the Trump administration with no allocation for nuclear thermal propulsion and/or nuclear electric propulsion, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have been studying nuclear propulsion. Here’s how it works: Instead of burning fuel with oxygen, a nuclear reactor heats up a propellant like hydrogen. The super-heated propellant then shoots out of the rocket nozzle, pushing the spacecraft forward. This method is much more efficient than chemical rockets.Revisiting Nuclear Rockets for MarsNuclear rockets offer several key advantages, such as cutting Mars trip times in half—from 9 months to about 4 to 5 months. The efficiency gains come from the fact that nuclear reactors produce far more energy per unit of fuel than chemical reactions. Surprisingly, astronauts would actually receive less harmful radiation on shorter trips, even though the engine itself produces radiation. This happens because space travelers are constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation during their journey, and cutting travel time in half significantly reduces their total exposure. These engines work best for big spacecraft that need to speed up and slow down dramatically, perfect for Moon and Mars missions where rapid velocity changes of at least 25,000 km/h are required.The study, called “Alumni,” prioritized safety […]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTONRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, SOUTH KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZILRO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDSCLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHENCoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOULIEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOULWorld Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPANIROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINAEnjoy today’s videos!Introducing Redwood—1X’s breakthrough AI model capable of doing chores around the home. For the first time, NEO Gamma moves, understands, and interacts autonomously in complex human environments. Built to learn from real-world experiences, Redwood empowers NEO to perform end-to-end mobile manipulation tasks like retrieving objects for users, opening doors, and navigating around the home gracefully, on top of hardware designed for compliance, safety, and resilience. - YouTubewww.youtube.com[ 1X Technology ]Marek Michalowski, who co-created Keepon, has not posted to his YouTube channel in 17 years. Until this week. The new post? It’s about a project from 10 years ago![ Project Sundial ]Helix can now handle a wider variety of packaging approaching human-level dexterity and speed, bringing us closer to fully autonomous package sorting. This rapid progress underscores the scalability of Helix’s learning-based approach to robotics, translating quickly into real-world application.[ Figure ]This is certainly an atypical Video Friday selection, but I saw this Broadway musical called “Maybe Happy Ending” a few months ago because the main characters are deprecated humanoid home service robots. It was utterly […]

Growing up in Taipei, Taiwan, in the 1960s with limited access to television and other forms of entertainment, Kevin Lu amused himself by examining how machines worked. He became fascinated by heavy construction equipment and built miniature versions of the machinery out of scrap materials.“We didn’t have a lot at the time,” Lu recalls. “TV was just becoming available to the average household, and there weren’t many toys. So I made my own.”Kevin LuEmployer: Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J.Title: Teaching Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Electrical & Computer EngineeringMember grade: Life senior memberAlma maters: National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu; Washington University, in St. LouisThat boy would grow up to publish pioneering work on optical networks, have a long career in telecommunications R&D, and teach students about the emerging Internet of Things.Lu, an IEEE Life senior member, also has played a significant role in IEEE’s global standards development program. He was honored last year with the IEEE Standards Board Distinguished Service Award for “superior IEEE SA governance leadership as the IEEE SA Standards Board audit committee chair and as the IEEE SA Industry Connections committee chair.”Now approaching retirement, Lu reflects on his career, which has gracefully threaded together engineering, teaching, and volunteerism, with no signs of slowing down.Switching from an interest in mechanics to electronics Born in Taipei City, Lu was the youngest of four siblings. He says he was influenced by his family and circumstances. His father, a nontechnical administrative staff member at ChungHwa Telecom, the country’s telephone company, kept the home filled with telecom newsletters. Lu says his brother performed bold chemistry experiments that sometimes ended with singed eyebrows or small explosions. Kevin gravitated toward mechanical projects, such as building scale models of cranes, before eventually embracing electronics.“My parents encouraged a career in engineering because they thought it would provide a good living,” he says.He earned a bachelor’s degree […]

As mobile phone use continues to be a leading cause of vehicle accidents, a range of technologies has emerged designed to combat distracted driving. From mobile apps to hardware-integrated systems, these tools aim to limit phone use behind the wheel. But a closer look reveals significant differences in how effectively they prevent distractions—especially in fleet vehicles.While apps like AT&T’s DriveMode and Apple’s built-in Do Not Disturb While Driving offer basic protections, they rely heavily on driver cooperation. Many can be bypassed with a swipe or a second phone, limiting their effectiveness when liability and safety are paramount.“We think technologies that reduce visual-manual interaction with phones are obviously a good thing,” Ian Reagan, a senior research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety told IEEE Spectrum. “But most are opt-in. We’d like to see them as opt-out by default.”“Mobile use while driving is an addiction. We needed a system that prevents distraction without waiting for the driver to choose safety. That’s what we built.” Ori Gilboa, SaverOneNow, a new generation of anti-distraction technology is shifting from soft nudges to hard enforcement. And for companies managing fleets of drivers, the stakes—and the solutions—are getting more serious.The Need for Enforceable Solutions“There’s a difference between tools that monitor and tools that prevent,” says Ori Gilboa, CEO of SaverOne, a Tel Aviv–area startup leading a new wave of hardware-integrated solutions that make driver cooperation a nonissue. “That distinction matters when lives are on the line.”SaverOne’s system uses a passive sensor network to scan the vehicle cabin for phones, identify the driver’s device, and place it into “safe mode”—automatically blocking risky apps while allowing essential functions like navigation and preapproved voice calls. Crucially, the system works even if the driver tries to cheat by disabling Bluetooth or by bringing a second phone.Designed to Be DriverproofThe system consists of four small hidden sensors and a central receiver—about the size of an iPhone—installed inside the […]