As 2025 ends, engineering stands at the forefront of an AI-driven revolution. Over the past year, AI has reshaped every corner of the discipline — from generative design and co-pilot tools that accelerate product design and development, to AI-powered simulations, AI-driven automation, and intelligent robotics redefining what’s possible. No aspect of engineering has remained untouched by this transformative wave.
Beyond AI, aerospace breakthroughs and next-generation battery technologies as well as the charging infrastructure to power EVs captured the attention of our readers. The battery industry is overdue for a jolt as old chemistries can’t keep pace with the demands of modern EVs or extreme environments. Fortunately, some research labs and companies are developing potentially groundbreaking ideas.
As engineering continues to shape society and drive innovation, we have curated a list of the most-read engineering stories on our website this year.
Read this year’s top 10 articles below.
10. New AI Algorithm Could Lead to Truly Autonomous AI
Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney have developed a new AI algorithm, called Torque Clustering, that is much closer to natural intelligence than current methods. It significantly improves how AI systems learn and uncover patterns in data independently, without human guidance. This article delves into how the Torque Clustering algorithm outperforms traditional unsupervised learning methods, offering a potential paradigm shift.
9. How AI Can Protect the Electric Grid
The electric grid powers everything from traffic lights to pharmacy fridges. However, it regularly faces threats from severe storms and advanced attackers. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed brain-inspired AI algorithms that detect physical problems, cyberattacks, and both at the same time within the grid. And this neural-network AI can run on inexpensive single-board computers or existing smart grid devices.
8. New Liquid Hydrogen Storage and Delivery System Brings Us Closer to Zero-Emission Aviation
Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering have engineered a practical liquid hydrogen storage and delivery system that brings zero-emission aviation significantly closer to reality. Their innovative design addresses multiple engineering challenges simultaneously, enabling hydrogen to serve as both a clean fuel and an integrated cooling medium for critical power systems in next-generation electric aircraft.
7. My Opinion: Here Comes Agriculture 4.0
As the world population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, farmers must find new solutions to produce more food and improve quality to meet this growing demand. Traditional farming methods alone will not suffice. Agriculture fulfills the most fundamental of all human needs, so why wouldn’t we want to use the most advanced technology for it? Associate Editor Ed Brown discusses the benefits of real-time data, predictive analytics, and automation.
6. Magnetic Breakthrough Aims to Enhance AI
The rapid rise in AI applications has placed increasingly heavy demands on our energy infrastructure. All the more reason to find energy-saving solutions for AI hardware. One promising idea is the use of so-called spin waves to process information. A team from the Universities of Münster and Heidelberg has now developed a new way to produce waveguides in which the spin waves can propagate particularly far. They have thus created the largest spin waveguide network to date.
5. Transporting Electricity Through Air via Ultrasonic Waves
Electric sparks are used for welding, powering electronics, killing germs or for igniting the fuel in some car engines. Despite their usefulness, they are hard to control in open space, they split into chaotic branches that tend to go towards the closest metallic objects. A recent study at Public University of Navarre uncovers a way of transporting electricity through air by ultrasonic waves. The level of control of the electric sparks allows to guide the spark around obstacles, or to make it hit specific spots, even into non-conductive materials.
4. Dust-Powered 3D Printing
A planetary construction technology is making large-scale 3D printing more accessible on Earth. After 3D printing a habitat designed for Mars and working with NASA on print material made from synthetic Moon dust, AI SpaceFactory Inc. has commercialized two separate 3D printers. The Secaucus, NJ-based company’s latest offering, Starforge, is a large-capacity 3D printer that uses innovative print material inspired by SpaceFactory’s work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida under an Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity agreement.
3. Light-Propelled Flying Structures Aim to Study Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
Between 30-60 miles above Earth’s surface lies a largely unstudied stretch of the atmosphere, called the mesosphere. It’s too high for airplanes and weather balloons, too low for satellites, and nearly impossible to monitor with existing technology. But understanding this layer of the atmosphere could improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate models. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Chicago, and others have introduced a novel way to reach this unexplored near-space zone: lightweight flying structures that can float using nothing but sunlight.
2. How Compressed Air Led to a Battery Breakthrough
Breakthroughs can start from simple curiosities. An exciting battery breakthrough at the University of California San Diego, for example, started when a graduate student wondered about those little cans of compressed air that are used for dusting off keyboards. But these kinds of initial ideas have little chance of becoming gamechangers without a university ecosystem that offers support, resources and freedom to explore. Thankfully, with such agency, the compressed-air curiosity turned into a promising new battery technology that could expand battery performance, safety, and versatility.
1. Using Street Lamps as EV Chargers
For people who live in multi-unit dwellings or in urban areas, access to charging infrastructure may be particularly limited, which in turn limits EV adoption. To address this issue, a team of researchers at Penn State created a scalable framework to develop, analyze, and evaluate using streetlights as a low-cost, equitable EV charging option. They then installed 23 streetlight charging units in Kansas City, MO, and tested their framework. The researchers found that streetlight charging stations, compared to traditional EV charging stations, were more cost- and time-effective, had fewer negative environmental impacts, and were more convenient and accessible.
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This article was written by Chitra Sethi, Director, Editorial and Digital Content, SAE Media Group.
