Robotic exoskeletons are the future of helping people with certain disabilities perform daily tasks, but they can be prohibitively difficult and expensive to develop. Mechanical engineering associate professor Zach Lerner, whose research has focused on developing this technology, led a team that created OpenExo, an open-source exoskeleton framework, which will open doors for researchers globally to help speed up life-changing robotic discoveries.

Dr. Liam Duffy (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Dr. Kaira Wagoner (Biology) were each awarded new R&D grants from NCInnovation, a public-private partnership designed to accelerate and commercialize innovative research emerging from North Carolina's universities. Duffy will continue development of new instrument for analyzing chemical isomers, a process with application in a host of fields including pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Wagoner will refine and optimize the UBeeO Assay, a technology she co-developed to measure and improve disease and pest-resistant behavior in honey bee colonies.

ITU-UNICEF initiative establishes new base for bringing every school online and promoting digital development

New research has underlined the surprising extent to which pervasive surveillance of people and their habits is powered by computer vision research – and shone a spotlight on how vulnerable individuals and communities are at risk. Analyses of over 40,000 documents, computer vision (CV) papers and downstream patents spanning four decades has shown a five-fold increase in the number of computer vision papers linked to downstream surveillance patents. The work also highlights the rise of obfuscating language that is used to normalise and even hide the existence of surveillance.