News

The project responds to Rhode Island’s acute manufacturing workforce shortage by strengthening the talent pipeline while opening access to high-wage, high-demand careers for individuals who have been historically excluded from opportunity.

By standardizing how biological and chemical changes are measured in space, the mission supports recent U.S. policy goals to strengthen leadership in the space sector and opens the door for more reliable, data-driven innovation in areas like pharmaceuticals, climate science, and advanced materials.

Polaris MEP seeks proposals from training providers for job training and support services targeting adults seeking full-time, livable-wage employment in the Advanced Manufacturing, Marine Trades, and Blue Economy sectors.

NIST helps the health care system deliver safer procedures, better diagnoses and more trustworthy data for clinicians and patients alike.

Polaris is a nonprofit dedicated to driving business growth, innovation, and job creation in Rhode Island. It is a new organization created to unify its services under a single, accessible name that signifies its role as a trusted advisor and community partner.

Disasters are low-probability but high-cost events, and that better measurement science — from valuing co-benefits to quantifying risk preferences — can make tough preparedness decisions more data-driven and easier for officials and residents to understand.

AI success is now an operating-model issue, not a technology issue, and calls for leaders to start with the work itself: mapping where rules versus judgment are needed, identifying high-impact failure points and treating AI as a teammate to onboard, not software to install.

All aspects of human driving — instinctive decisions, driver collaborations and interacting with road infrastructure — must be replicated for automated driving. Many experts believe humans still have an edge over today’s technologies, but technology is rapidly improving. Industry, government and other partners are working toward replicating these aspects of human driving for automated vehicles (AVs) and building a supporting infrastructure.

NIST engineers have introduced five new ways to connect precast concrete components that significantly enhance building resilience.

When scientists need even more details about the composition of a plastic, they can use lab techniques that involve dissolving the plastic in a solvent, sometimes while heating. After dissolving a sample, the scientist might examine it using a technique called size exclusion chromatography, which takes advantage of the fact that smaller molecules move more slowly than bigger ones through a column or tube packed with porous beads.

On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, various manufacturers gathered at the Cooley Group’s Pawtucket headquarters for a stimulating conversation on the current state of Rhode Island manufacturing.

In a feature for Material Handling & Logistics, Indrani de Silva of Sphera explains that although many companies now publish ESG commitments, a surprising number still lack the systems and supplier engagement needed to deliver meaningful improvements.

Rhode Island’s manufacturing sector remains a major contributor to the state’s economy. And many of those companies are under tremendous stress, according to a survey conducted in June by R.I. Commerce Corp., the Rhode Island Manufacturers Association and Polaris MEP.

IndustryWeek’s coverage by MIT Professor Wojciech Matusik spotlights artificial intelligence as a transformative force in manufacturing, pushing adoption beyond experimentation to everyday business impact.

New research from NCC Group [link: https://www.nccgroup.com/] highlighted in Material Handling & Logistics News reveals a troubling gap between perception and reality in supply chain cybersecurity preparedness.

In her Manufacturing.net article, “Nuclear in Your Backyard? Tiny Reactors Could One Day Power Towns,” Aditi Verma, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, explores how the next wave of microreactors could reshape the nuclear energy landscape.

NIST researcher Brian Gutierrez is illuminating a breakthrough approach that uses laser light reflections—called caustics—to reveal defects in metal 3D printing in real time.