Antonio Bicchi has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2025 Pioneer in Robotics and Automation Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), the leading robotics association worldwide, for his “pioneering fundamental contributions to artificial hands, haptics, and human-robot collaboration, and for their applications in robotics and prosthetics.” The award ceremony took place on May 22nd during the 2025 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Atlanta, USA. Antonio Bicchi is a Senior Researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT - Italian Institute of Technology) and a Professor at the University of Pisa in Italy.

Higher education institutions (HEIs), as non-profit entities, are widely seen as hubs of quality education and pioneering research. While they contribute to sustainability by producing changemakers and offering climate solutions, their operations potentially harm the environment and society due to their scale, land use, and ecological footprint. With 88,071 HEIs globally as of 2018 (UNESCO), their impact is significant. A recent study led by Professor Yong Sik Ok offers insights into HEIs' evolving sustainability practices.

The molecular pathways involved in antiviral defenses and counter-defenses in host-pathogen systems remain unclear. Researchers from Japan have used Neurospora crassa as a model organism to explore how RNA editing influences fungal antiviral responses. They identified two neighboring genes—an RNA-editing enzyme (old) and a transcription factor (zao)—that regulate virus-induced gene expression. Their findings show how the old-zao module controls both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections, providing new insight into conserved antiviral mechanisms in fungi.

A recent experimental breakthrough by researchers at Ningbo University and the University of Science and Technology of China extends Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment by enabling quantum control over both beam splitters in an interferometer. The results reveal richer manifestations of wave-particle duality, offering novel insights into quantum measurement, causality, and the temporal order of observation in quantum mechanics.