Time for an update on what I’ve been doing over the past year. Two projects were new adventures: some part-time teaching and a website focused on the U.S. rural broadband (a project I’ve put on hold). I also continued working with clients on a range of scientific and technical topics. Here are a few highlights:

• Ever since I encountered photonics some 25 years ago, I’ve welcomed any chance to write more about that field. One recent project introduced me to an innovative approach to programmable photonic waveguides.
• If you think the AI market is busy, consider the research community. The 2025 Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference accepted more than 5,000 papers from 4x as many submissions. (NeurIPS is one of the top three annual AI and machine learning conferences.) For one client, I tracked about a dozen accepted papers.
• On the applied AI front, I wrote about AI in supply chain operations and explored design principles for agentic AI.
• As AI advances and quantum computing draws closer, cybersecurity is evolving in turn. I wrote on several related topics. First, privacy-enhancing technologies poised against new AI threats. And second, U.S. government recommendations on post-quantum cryptography.
• In other assignments, I looked at basic research from funding and market-incubation angles.
• Most recently, I’ve been re-engaging with clients in broadband, telecom and cloud computing. I’ve told the story of some broadband gateways, reviewed access network strategies, and brushed up on AWS cloud fundamentals.

It was a rewarding twelve months. I experimented, explored new and familiar technologies and helped clients communicate with clarity. I’m looking forward to more writing and research projects in the second half of 2026.