Time for a quick update on what I’ve been working on over the past year. Along with some part-time teaching and launching a reporting and research site focused on the U.S. rural broadband build-out (a project I’ve since put on hold), I’ve continued working with clients on a wide range of scientific and technical topics. With the academic year wrapping up in May, the pace has picked up considerably. Here are a few highlights:

• Ever since I first encountered photonics some 25 years ago, I’ve welcomed opportunities to write more about the field. One such recent project introduced me to an innovative approach to programmable photonic waveguides.
• If you think the AI market is moving quickly, consider the research community. The 2025 Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference—widely regarded as one of the top three annual AI and machine learning conferences—accepted more than 5,000 papers from roughly four times as many submissions. I found myself following about a dozen interesting research threads.
• On the applied AI front, I wrote about AI in supply chain operations and explored design principles for agentic AI systems.
• As AI advances and quantum computing draws closer, cybersecurity continues to evolve. Along with renewing my ISC² Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) credential, I’ve recently written about privacy-enhancing technologies within zero trust architectures and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) recommendations for post-quantum cryptography.
• Other assignments took me into topics ranging from investment in basic medical research to the role of business incubators in commercializing advanced cryptographic research.
• Most recently, I’ve been re-engaging with clients in broadband, telecommunications and cloud computing, helping tell the story of open-source broadband Wi-Fi gateways and deployments, reviewing the cable industry’s access network strategies, and brushing up on AWS cloud fundamentals.

It’s been a rewarding year of exploring new technologies, revisiting familiar ones, and helping clients communicate complex ideas with clarity. Plus a couple of interesting and I’m looking forward to tackling more challenging writing and research projects in the second half of 2026.