IEEE Spectrum

A practical guide to designing log-periodic dipole array fed parabolic reflector antennas using advanced 3D MoM simulation — from parametric modeling to electrically large structures.What Attendees will LearnHow to set design requirements for LPDA-fed reflector antennas — Understand the key specifications including bandwidth ratio, gain targets, and VSWR matching constraints across the full operating range from 100 MHz to 1 GHz.Why advanced 3D EM solvers enable simulation of electrically large multiscale structures — Learn how higher order basis functions, quadrilateral meshing, geometrical symmetry, and CPU/GPU parallelization extend MoM simulation capability by an order of magnitude.How to apply a systematic three-step design strategy with proven workflow starting with first optimizing the stand-alone LPDA for VSWR and gain, then integrating the reflector, and finally tuning parameters to satisfy all performance requests including gain and impedance matching.How parametric CAD modeling accelerates LPDA design — Discover how self-scaling geometry, automated wire-to-solid conversion, and multiple-copy-with-scaling features enable fully parametrized antenna models that streamline optimization across dozens of design variants.Download this free whitepaper now!

Roughly 90 percent of hard tech startups fail due to funding constraints, longer R&D timelines for developing hardware, and the complexity of manufacturing their products, according to a number of studies.Generally, these startups require up to 50 percent more investor financing than software ones, according to a Medium article. Typically, they need at least US $30 million, according to a Lucid article. That’s double the funding needed by software companies on average.To help them connect with investors, IEEE Entrepreneurship in 2024 launched its Hard Tech Venture Summits. The two-day events connect founders with potential investors and other entrepreneurs. Attendees include manufacturers, design engineers, and intellectual property lawyers.“Even though there are a lot of startup investor conferences, it’s hard to find those focused on hard tech,” says Joanne Wong, who helped initiate the program and is now the chair. She is a general partner at Redds Capital, a California-based venture capital firm that invests in global early-stage IT startups.The IEEE member is also an entrepreneur. She founded SciosHub in 2020. The company’s software-as-a-service and informatics platform automates the data-management process for biomedical research labs.“Many investors are focused on AI software—which is good,” she says. “But for hard tech companies, it is still hard to find support.”The summit also includes a workshop to help founders navigate manufacturing processes and regulatory compliance. The event is open to IEEE members and others.IEEE is a natural fit for the program, Wong says, because hard tech is synonymous with electrical engineering.“Some of the domains we’re covering are robotics, semiconductors, and aerospace technology. IEEE has societies for all these fields,” she says. “Because of that, there are many resources within the organizations for startups, whether it be mentors or guides on how to commercialize products.”There are several venture summits planned for this year. Two are scheduled in collaboration with the IEEE Systems Council: this month in Menlo Park, Calif., and in October in Toronto.On 10 and 11 June, a third summit is scheduled to take place in Boston at the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society’s International Microwave Symposium.More events are being planned for next year in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.Networking and a pitch competitionEach summit includes keynote speakers, followed by networking roundtables. Each table is composed of people from three to five startups, one or two investors, and a service provider.That arrangement helps founders build relationships, which is the summit organizers’ priority, Wong says. Investors at past events have included i3 Ventures, Monozukuri Ventures, and TSV Capital.“The connection with the community was fantastic, especially investors and founders in robotics.” —Mark Boysen, founder of NawareStartups present their pitch, which a number of investors evaluate before ranking the business plan and product. The top 10 startups pitch their business to all the investors.On the second day, the startup founders participate in a half-day engineering design–to–manufacturing workshop, at which manufacturing engineers teach them how to navigate the process and meet regulations.In an exhibition area, participants can see demonstrations from the startups and connect with service providers. The 2025 event’s half-day engineering design–to–manufacturing workshop was led by Liz Taylor, president of DOER Marine. The company manufactures marine equipment.Larissa Abi Nakhle/IEEEPositive feedback from attendeesIn a survey of past summit attendees, startup founders said the event connected them not only with investors but also with other entrepreneurs having similar struggles.“The connection with the community was fantastic, especially investors and founders in robotics,” said Mark Boysen, who founded Naware. The company, based in Edina, Minn., developed a robot that uses AI to detect and remove weeds from golf courses, parks, and lawns.“I loved getting the investors’ perspectives and understanding what they’re looking for,” Boysen said.Jeffrey Cook, who attended a summit in 2024, said he met “a lot of great contacts and saw what the hard tech venture climate is like.” Attendees of the Hard Tech Venture Summit spend the first day networking and presenting their pitch to investors. IEEE Entrepreneurship “Those in the community would benefit from coming to the summit,” said Cook, who founded Gigantor Technologies in Melbourne Beach, Fla. It develops hardware systems for AI-powered devices.More than 90 percent of attendees at the 2025 event in San Francisco said they would highly recommend the summit to others, according to a survey.Investors and service providers also have found the events successful.Ji Ke, a partner and the chief technology officer of deep tech VC firm SOSV, attended the 2025 summit.“I met a lot of young entrepreneurs tackling some big challenges,” he said. “This is one of the best events to meet some very-early-stage companies.”Making important connections in hard techStartup founders who want to attend a summit must apply. Applications for this year’s events are open. Participants must be founders of preseed, seed, or Series A startups.Preseed founders are seeking small investments to get their businesses off the ground. Those in the seed stage have already secured funding from their first investor. Series A startups have obtained funding and are developing their product.Applicants are reviewed by a committee of investors to ensure the startups would be a good fit. Those who are approved are matched with investors and service providers based on their specialty.“The journey for a hard tech startup is very long and arduous,” Wong says. “Founders need to meet as many investors as possible and other people who support hard tech systems so that they’re able to reach out to them for advice or help.”Those interested in learning more about an upcoming event can send a request to entrepreneurship@ieee.org.

On 8 January 2026, the Iranian government imposed a near-total communications shutdown. It was the country’s first full information blackout: For weeks, the internet was off across all provinces while services including the government-run intranet, VPNs, text messaging, mobile calls, and even landlines were severely throttled. It was an unprecedented lockdown that left more than 90 million people cut off not only from the world, but from one another.Since then, connectivity has never fully returned. Following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in late February, Iran again imposed near-total restrictions, and people inside the country again saw global information flows dry up.The original January shutdown came amid nationwide protests over the deepening economic crisis and political repression, in which millions of people chanted antigovernment slogans in the streets. While Iranian protests have become frequent in recent years, this was one of the most significant uprisings since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The government responded quickly and brutally. One report put the death toll at more than 7,000 confirmed deaths and more than 11,000 under investigation. Many sources believe the death toll could exceed 30,000.Thirteen days into the January shutdown, we at NetFreedom Pioneers (NFP) turned to a system we had built for exactly this kind of moment—one that sends files over ordinary satellite TV signals. During the national information vacuum, our technology, called Toosheh, delivered real-time updates into Iran, offering a lifeline to millions starved of trusted information.How Iran Censors the InternetI joined NetFreedom Pioneers, a nonprofit focused on anticensorship technology, in 2014. Censorship in Iran was a defining feature of my youth in the 1990s. After the Islamic Revolution, most Iranians began to lead double lives—one at home, where they could drink, dance, and choose their clothing, and another in public, where everyone had to comply with stifling government laws. Iran’s internet infrastructure is more centralized than in other parts of the world, making it easier for the government to restrict the flow of information. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesMy first experience with secret communications was when I was five and living in the small city of Fasa in southern Iran. My uncle brought home a satellite dish—dangerously illegal at the time—that allowed us to tune into 12 satellite channels. My favorite was Cartoon Network. Then, during my teenage years, this same uncle introduced me to the internet through dial-up modems. I remember using Yahoo Mail with its 4 megabytes of storage, reading news from around the world, and learning about the Chandra X-ray telescope from NASA’s website. That openness didn’t last. As internet use spread in the early 2000s, the Iranian government began reshaping the network itself. Unlike the highly distributed networks in the United States or Europe, where thousands of providers exchange traffic across many independent routes, Iran’s connection to the global internet is relatively centralized. Most international traffic passes through a small number of gateways controlled by state-linked telecom operators. That architecture gives authorities unusual leverage: By restricting or withdrawing those connections, they can sharply reduce the country’s access to the outside world.Over the past decade, Iran has expanded this control through what it calls the National Information Network, a domestically routed system designed to keep data inside the country whenever possible. Many government services, banking systems, and local platforms are hosted on this internal network. During periods of unrest, access to the global internet can be throttled or cut off while portions of this domestic network continue to function.The government began its censorship campaign by redirecting or blocking websites. As internet use grew, it adopted more sophisticated approaches. For example, the Telecommunication Company of Iran uses a technique called deep packet inspection to analyze the content of data packets in real time. This method enables it to identify and block specific types of traffic, such as VPN connections, messaging apps, social media platforms, and banned websites.The Stealth of Satellite TransmissionsToosheh’s communication workaround builds on a history of satellite TV adoption in Middle Eastern and North African countries. By the early 2000s, satellite dishes were common in Iran; today the majority of households in Iran have access to satellite TV despite its official prohibition.Unlike subscription services such as DirecTV and Dish Network, “free-to-air” satellite TV broadcasts are unencrypted and can be received by anyone with a dish and receiver—no subscription required. Because the signals are open, users can also capture and store the data they carry, rather than simply watching it live. Tech-savvy people learned that they could use a digital video broadcasting (DVB) card—a piece of hardware that connects to a computer and tunes into satellite frequencies—to transform a personal computer into a satellite receiver. This way, they could watch and store media locally as well as download data from dedicated channels. Many Iranian citizens have free-to-air satellite dishes, like the ones on this apartment building in Tehran, and can thus download Toosheh transmissions, giving them a lifeline during internet blackouts.Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesToosheh, a Persian word that translates to “knapsack,” is the brainchild of Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian-American technologist and entrepreneur. Yahyanejad cofounded NetFreedom Pioneers in 2012. He proposed that the satellite-computer connections enabled by a DVB card could be re-created in software, eliminating the need for specialized hardware. He added a simple digital interface to the software to make it easy for anyone to use. The next breakthrough came when the NFP team developed a new transfer protocol that tricks ordinary satellite receivers into downloading data alongside audio and video content. Thus, Toosheh was born.Satellite TV uses a file system called an MPEG transport stream that allows multiple audio, video, or data layers to be packaged into a single stream file. When you tune in to a satellite channel and select an audio option or closed captions, you’re accessing data stored in different parts of this stream. The NFP team’s insight was that, by piggybacking on one of these layers, Toosheh could send an MPEG stream that included documents, videos, and more. HOW TOOSHEH WORKS: At NetFreedom Pioneers, content curators pull together files—news articles, videos, audio, and software [1]. Toosheh’s encoder software [2] compresses the files into a bundle, in .ts format, creating an MPEG transport stream [3]. From there, it’s uploaded to a server for transmission [4] via a free-to-air TV channel on a Yahsat satellite that’s positioned over the Middle East to provide regional coverage [5]. Satellite receivers [6] directly capture the data streams, which are downloaded to computers, smartphones, and other devices, and decoded by Toosheh software [8].Chris PhilpotA satellite receiver can’t tell the difference between our data and normal satellite audio and video data since it only “sees” the MPEG streams, not what’s encoded on them. This means the data can be downloaded and read, watched, and saved on local devices such as computers, smartphones, or storage devices. What’s more, the system is entirely private: No one can detect whether someone has received data through Toosheh; there are no traceable logs of user activity.Toosheh doesn’t provide internet access, but rather delivers curated data through satellite technology. The fundamental distinction lies in the way users interact with the system. Unlike traditional internet services, where you type a request into your browser and receive data in response, Toosheh operates more like a combination of radio and television, presenting information in a magazine-like format. Users don’t make requests; instead, they receive 1 to 5 gigabytes of prepackaged, carefully selected data.Access to information is not only about news or politics, but about exposure to possibilities. During this year’s internet blackout, we distributed official statements from Iranian opposition leader Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and the U.S. government. We provided first-aid tutorials for medics and injured protesters. We sent uncensored news reports from BBC Persian, Iran International, IranWire, VOA Farsi, and others. We also shared critical software packages including anticensorship and antisurveillance tools, along with how-to guides to help people securely connect to Starlink satellite terminals, allowing them to stay protected and anonymous as they sent their own communications.How to Combat Signal InterferenceBecause Toosheh relies on one-way satellite broadcasts, it evades the usual tactics governments use to block internet access. However, it remains vulnerable to satellite signal jamming.The Iranian government is notorious for deploying signal jamming, especially in larger cities. In 2009, the government used uplink interference, which attacks the satellite in orbit by beaming strong noise in the frequency of the satellite’s receiver. This makes it impossible for the satellite to distinguish the information it’s supposed to receive. However, because this type of attack temporarily disables the entire satellite, Iran was threatened with international sanctions and in 2012 stopped using the method . A graph of network connectivity in Iran shows that on 9 January 2026, internet access dropped from nearly 100 percent to 0. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesThe current method, called terrestrial jamming, uses antennas installed at higher elevations than the surrounding buildings to beam strong noise over a specific area in the frequency range of household receivers. This attack is effective in keeping some of the packets from arriving and damaging others, effectively jamming the transmission. But it’s short-range and requires significant power, so it’s impossible to implement nationwide. There are always people somewhere who can still watch TV, download from Toosheh, or tune into a satellite radio despite the jamming. Even so, we wanted a workaround that would keep our transmissions broadly accessible.NFP’s solution was to add redundancy, similar in principle to a data-storage technique called RAID (redundant array of independent disks). Instead of sending each piece of data once, we send extra information that allows missing or corrupted packets to be reconstructed. Under normal circumstances, we often use 5 percent of our bandwidth for this redundancy. During periods of active jamming, we increase that to as much as 25 to 30 percent, improving the chances that users can recover complete files despite interference.From Crisis Response to Public AccessToosheh initially came online in 2015 in Iran and Afghanistan. Its full potential, however, was first realized during the 2019 protests in Iran, which saw the most widespread internet shutdown prior to the blackout this year. Wired called the 2019 shutdown “the most severe disconnection” tracked by NetBlocks in any country in terms of its “technical complexity and breadth.” Our technology helped thousands of people stay informed. We sent crucial local updates, legal-aid guides, digital security tools, and independent news to satellite receivers all over the country, seeing a sixfold increase in our user base.When that wave of protests subsided, the government allowed some communication services to return. People were again able to access the free internet using VPNs and other antifilter software that allowed them to bypass restrictions. Toosheh then became a public access point for news, educational material, and entertainment beyond government filtering.Toosheh’s impact is often personal. A traveling teacher in western Iran told NFP that he regularly distributed Toosheh files to students in remote villages. One package included footage of female athletes competing in the Olympic Games, something never broadcast in Iran. For one young girl, it was the first time she realized women could compete professionally in sports. That moment underscores a broader truth: Access to information is not only about news or politics, but about exposure to possibilities.The Cost of TooshehUnlike internet-based systems, Toosheh’s operational cost remains constant regardless of the number of users. A single TV satellite in geostationary earth orbit, deployed and maintained by an international company such as Eutelsat, can broadcast to an entire continent with no increase in cost to audiences. What’s more, the startup cost for users isn’t high: A satellite dish and receiver in Iran costs less than US $50, which is affordable to many. And it costs nothing for people to use Toosheh’s service and receive its files.We aim not just to build a tool for censorship circumvention, but to redefine access itself. However, operating the service is costly: NetFreedom Pioneers pays tens of thousands of dollars a month for satellite bandwidth. We had received funding from the U.S. State Department, but in August of 2025, that funding ended, forcing us to suspend services in Iran.Then the December protests happened, and broadcasting to Iran became an urgent priority. To turn Toosheh back on, we needed roughly $50,000 a month. With the support of a handful of private donors, we were able to meet these costs and sustain operations in Iran for a few months, though our future there and elsewhere is uncertain.Satellites Against CensorshipToosheh’s revival in Iran came alongside NFP’s ongoing support for deployments of Starlink, a satellite internet service that allows users to connect directly to satellites rather than relying on domestic networks, which the government can shut down. Unlike Toosheh’s one-way broadcasts, Starlink provides full two-way internet access, enabling users to send messages, upload videos, and communicate with the outside world.In 2022, we started gathering donations to buy Starlink terminals for Iran. We have delivered more than 300 of the roughly 50,000 there, enabling citizens to send encrypted updates and videos to us from inside the country. Because the technology is banned by the government, access remains limited and carries risk; Iranian authorities have recently arrested Starlink users and sellers. And unlike Toosheh’s receive-only broadcasts, Starlink terminals transmit signals back to orbit, creating a radio footprint that can potentially be detected. The internet shutdown in Iran continued after the attacks by Israel and the United States began in late February, preventing Iranians from communicating with the outside world and with one another.Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty ImagesLooking ahead, we envision Toosheh becoming a foundational part of global digital resilience. It is uncensored, untraceable, and resistant to government shutdowns. Because Toosheh is downlink only, it can sometimes feel hard to explain the value of this technology to those living in the free world, those accustomed to open internet access. Yet, people living under censorship have few other choices when there’s a digital blackout.Currently, NFP is developing new features like intelligent content curation and automatically prioritizing data packages based on geographic or situational needs. And we’re experimenting with local sharing tools that allow users who receive Toosheh broadcasts to redistribute those files via Wi-Fi hotspots or other offline networks, which could extend the system’s reach to disaster zones, conflict areas, and climate-impacted regions where infrastructure may be destroyed.We’re also looking at other use cases. Following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, NetFreedom Pioneers designed a satellite-based system to deliver educational materials. Our goal is to enable private, large-scale distribution of coursework to anyone—including the girls who are banned from Afghanistan’s schools. The system is technically ready but has yet to secure funding for deployment.We aim not just to build a tool for censorship circumvention, but to redefine access itself. Whether in an Iranian city under surveillance, a Guatemalan village without internet, or a refugee camp in East Africa, Toosheh offers a powerful and practical model for delivering vital information without relying on vulnerable or expensive networks.Toosheh is a reminder that innovation doesn’t have to mean complexity. Sometimes, the most transformative ideas are the simplest, like delivering data through the sky, quietly and affordably, into the hands of those who need it most.

The race to transition online security protocols to ones that can’t be cracked by a quantum computer is already on. The algorithms that are commonly used today to protect data online—RSA and elliptic curve cryptography—are uncrackable by supercomputers, but a large enough quantum computer would make quick work of them. There are algorithms secure enough to be out of reach for both classical and future quantum machines, called post-quantum cryptography, but transitioning to these is a work in progress. Late last month, the team at Google Quantum AI published a whitepaper that added significant urgency to this race. In it, the team showed that the size of a quantum computer that would pose a cryptographic threat is approximately 20 times smaller than previously thought. This is still far from accessible to the quantum computers that exist today: The largest machines currently consist of approximately 1,000 quantum bits, or qubits, and the whitepaper estimated that about 500 times as much is needed. Nonetheless, this shortens the timeline to switch over to post-quantum algorithms. The news had a surprising beneficiary: Obscure cryptocurrency Algorand jumped 44% in price in response. The whitepaper called out Algorand specifically for implementing post-quantum cryptography on their blockchain. We caught up with Algorand’s chief scientific officer and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, Chris Peikert, to understand how this announcement is impacting cryptography, why cryptocurrencies are feeling the effects, and what the future might hold. Peikert’s early work on a particular type of algorithm known as lattice cryptography underlies most post-quantum security today.IEEE Spectrum: What is the significance of this Google Quantum AI whitepaper?Peikert: The upshot of this paper is that it shows that a quantum computer would be able to break some of the cryptography that is most widely used, especially in blockchains and cryptocurrencies, with much, much fewer resources than had previously been established. Those resources include the time that it would take to do so and the number of qubits (or quantum bits) that it would have to use.This cryptography is very central to not just cryptocurrencies, but more broadly to cryptography on the internet. It is also used for secure web connections between web browsers and web servers. Versions of elliptic curve cryptography are used in national security systems and military encryption. It’s very prevalent and pervasive in all modern networks and protocols.And not only was this paper improving the algorithms, but there was also a concurrent paper showing that the hardware itself was substantially improved. The claim here was that the number of physical qubits needed to achieve a certain kind of logical qubit was also greatly reduced. These two kinds of improvements are compounding upon each other. It’s a kind of a win-win situation from the quantum computing perspective, but a lose-lose situation for cryptography.IEEE Spectrum: What do Google AI’s findings mean for cryptocurrencies and the broader cybersecurity ecosystem?Peikert: There’s always been this looming threat in the distance of quantum computers breaking a large fraction of the cryptography that’s used throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem. And I think what this paper did was really the loudest alarm yet that these kinds of quantum attacks might not be as far off as some have suspected, or hoped, in recent years. It’s caused a reevaluation across the industry, and a moving up of the timeline for when quantum computers might be capable of breaking this cryptography.When we think about the timelines and when it’s important to have completed these transitions [to post-quantum cryptography], we also need to factor in the unknown improvements that we should expect to see in the coming years. The science of quantum computing will not stay static, and there will be these further breakthroughs. We can’t say exactly what they will be or when they will come, but you can bet that they will be coming.IEEE Spectrum: What is your guess on if or when quantum computers will be able to break cryptography in the real world?Peikert: Instead of thinking about a specific date when we expect them to come, we have to think about the probabilities and the risks as time goes on. There have been huge breakthrough developments, including not only this paper, but also some last year. But even with these, I think that the chance of a cryptographic attack by quantum computers being successful in the next three years is extremely low, maybe less than a percent. But then, as you get out to several years, like five, six, or 10 years, one has to seriously consider a probability, maybe 5 percent or 10 percent or more. So it’s still rather small, but significant enough that we have to worry about the risk, because the value that is protected by this kind of cryptography is really enormous. The U.S. government has put 2035 as its target for migrating all of the national security systems to post-quantum cryptography. That seems like a prudent date, given the timelines that it takes to upgrade cryptography. It’s a slow process. It has to be done very deliberately and carefully to make sure that you’re not introducing new vulnerabilities, that you’re not making mistakes, that everything still works properly. So, you know, given the outlook for quantum computers on the horizon, it’s really important that we prepare now, or ideally, yesterday, or a few years ago, for that kind of transition.IEEE Spectrum: Are there significant roadblocks you see to industrial adoption of post-quantum cryptography going forward?Peikert: Cryptography is very hard to change. We’ve only had one or maybe two major transitions in cryptography since the early 1980s or late 1970s, when the field first was invented. We don’t really have a systematic way of transitioning cryptography. An additional challenge is that the performance trade-offs are very different in post-quantum cryptography than they are in the legacy systems. Keys and cipher texts and digital signatures are all significantly larger in post-quantum cryptography, but the computations are actually faster, typically. People have optimized cryptography for speed in the past, and we have very good fast speeds now for post-quantum cryptography, but the sizes of the keys are a challenge. Especially in blockchain applications, like cryptocurrencies, space on the blockchain is at a premium. So it calls for a reevaluation in many applications of how we integrate the cryptography into the system, and that work is ongoing. And, the blockchain ecosystem uses a lot of advanced cryptography, exotic things like zero-knowledge proofs. In many cases, we have rudimentary constructions of these fancy cryptography tools from post-quantum-type mathematics, but they’re not nearly as mature and industry-ready as the legacy systems that have been deployed. It continues to be an important technical challenge to develop post-quantum versions of these very fancy cryptographic schemes that are used in cutting-edge applications.IEEE Spectrum: As an academic cryptography researcher, what attracted you to work with a cryptocurrency, and Algorand in particular?Peikert: My former Ph.D. advisor is Silvio Micali, the inventor of Algorand. The system is very elegant. It is a very high-performing blockchain system, and it uses very little energy, has fast transaction finalization, and a number of other great features. And Silvio appreciated that this quantum threat was real and was coming, and the team approached me about helping to improve the Algorand protocol at the basic levels to become more post-quantum secure in 2021. That was a very exciting opportunity, because it was a difficult engineering and scientific challenge to integrate post-quantum cryptography into all the different technical and cryptographic mechanisms that were underlying the protocol.IEEE Spectrum: What is the current status of post-quantum cryptography in Algorand, and blockchains in general? Peikert: We’ve identified some of the most pressing issues and worked our way through some of them, but it’s a many-faceted problem overall. We started with the integrity of the chain itself, which is the transaction history that everybody has to agree upon. Our first major project was developing a system that would add post-quantum security to the history of the chain. We developed a system called state proofs for that, which is a mixture of ordinary post-quantum cryptography and also some more fancy cryptography: It’s a way of taking a large number of signatures and digesting them down into a much smaller number of signatures, while still being confident that these large number of signatures actually exist and are properly formed. We also followed it with other papers and projects that are about adding post-quantum cryptography and security to other aspects of the blockchain in the Algorand ecosystem. It’s not a complete project yet. We don’t claim to be fully post-quantum secure. That’s a very challenging target to hit, and there are aspects that we will continue to work on into the near future.IEEE Spectrum: In your view, will we adopt post-quantum cryptography before the risks actually catch up with us? Peikert: I tend to be an optimist about these things. I think that it’s a very good thing that more people in decision-making roles are recognizing that this is an important topic, and that these kinds of migrations have to be done. I think that we can’t be complacent about it, and we can’t kick the can down the road much longer. But I do see that the focus is being put on this important problem, so I’m optimistic that most important systems will eventually have good either mitigations or full migrations in place. But it’s also a point on the horizon that we don’t know exactly when it will come. So, there is the possibility that there is a huge breakthrough, and we have many fewer years than we might have hoped for, and that we don’t get all the systems upgraded that we would like to have fixed by the time quantum computers arrive.

Like many engineers, Sarang Gupta spent his childhood tinkering with everyday items around the house. From a young age he gravitated to projects that could make a difference in someone’s everyday life.When the family’s microwave plug broke, Gupta and his father figured out how to fix it. When a drawer handle started jiggling annoyingly, the youngster made sure it didn’t do so for long.Sarang GuptaEmployerOpenAI in San FranciscoJobData science staff memberMember gradeSenior memberAlma maters The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; ColumbiaBy age 11, his interest expanded from nuts and bolts to software. He learned programming languages such as Basic and Logo and designed simple programs including one that helped a local restaurant automate online ordering and billing.Gupta, an IEEE senior member, brings his mix of curiosity, hands-on problem-solving, and a desire to make things work better to his role as member of the data science staff at OpenAI in San Francisco. He works with the go-to-market (GTM) team to help businesses adopt ChatGPT and other products. He builds data-driven models and systems that support the sales and marketing divisions.Gupta says he tries to ensure his work has an impact. When making decisions about his career, he says, he thinks about what AI solutions he can unlock to improve people’s lives.“If I were to sum up my overall goal in one sentence,” he says, “it’s that I want AI’s benefits to reach as many people as possible.”Pursuing engineering through a business lensGupta’s early interest in tinkering and programming led him to choose physics, chemistry, and math as his higher-level subjects at Chinmaya International Residential School, in Tamil Nadu, India. As part of the high school’s International Baccalaureate chapter, students select three subjects in which to specialize.“I was interested in engineering, including the theoretical part of it,” Gupta says, “But I was always more interested in the applications: how to sell that technology or how it ties to the real world.”After graduating in 2012, he moved overseas to attend the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The university offered a dual bachelor’s program that allowed him to earn one degree in industrial engineering and another in business management in just four years.In his spare time, Gupta built a smartphone app that let students upload their class schedules and find classmates to eat lunch with. The app didn’t take off, he says, but he enjoyed developing it. He also launched Pulp Ads, a business that printed advertisements for student groups on tissues and paper napkins, which were distributed in the school’s cafeterias. He made some money, he says, but shuttered the business after about a year.After graduating from the university in 2016, he decided to work in Hong Kong’s financial hub and joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the bank’s operations division.From finance to process optimization at scaleAfter two parties agree on securities transactions, the bank’s operations division ensures that the trade details are recorded correctly, the securities and payments are ready to transfer, and the transaction settles accurately and on time.As an analyst, Gupta’s task was to find bottlenecks in the bank’s workflows and fix them. He identified an opportunity to automate trade reconciliation: when analysts would manually compare data across spreadsheets and systems to make sure a transaction’s details were consistent. The process helped ensure financial transactions were recorded accurately and settled correctly.Gupta built internal automation tools that pulled trade data from different systems, ran validation checks, and generated reports highlighting any discrepancies.“Instead of analysts manually checking large datasets, the tools automatically flagged only the cases that required investigation,” he says. “This helped the team spend less time on repetitive verification tasks and more time resolving complex issues. It was also my first real exposure to how software and data systems could dramatically improve operational workflows.”“Whether it’s helping a person improve a trait like that or driving efficiencies at a business, AI just has so much potential to help. I’m excited to be a little part of that.”The experience made him realize he wanted to work more deeply in technology and data-driven systems, he says. He decided to return to school in 2018 to study data science and AI, when the fields were just beginning to surge into broader awareness.He discovered that Columbia offered a dedicated master’s degree program in data science with a focus on AI. After being accepted in 2019, he moved to New York City.Throughout the program, he gravitated to the applied side of machine learning, taking courses in applied deep learning and neural networks.One of his major academic highlights, he says, was a project he did in 2019 with the Brown Institute, a joint research lab between Columbia and Stanford focused on using technology to improve journalism. The team worked with The Philadelphia Inquirer to help the newsroom staff better understand their coverage from a geographic and social standpoint. The project highlighted “news deserts”—underserved communities for which the newspaper was not providing much coverage—so the publication could redirect its reporting resources.To identify those areas, Gupta and his team built tools that extracted locations such as street names and neighborhoods from news articles and mapped them to visualize where most of the coverage was concentrated. The Inquirer implemented the tool in several ways including a new web page that aggregated stories about COVID-19 by county. “Journalism was an interesting problem set for me, because I really like to read the news every day,” Gupta says. “It was an opportunity to work with a real newsroom on a problem that felt really impactful for both the business and the local community.”The GenAI inflection pointAfter earning his master’s degree in 2020, Gupta moved to San Francisco to join Asana, the company that developed the work management platform by the same name. He was drawn to the opportunity to work for a relatively small company where he could have end-to-end ownership of projects. He joined the organization as a product data scientist, focusing on A/B testing for new platform features.Two years later, a new opportunity emerged: He was asked to lead the launch of Asana Intelligence, an internal machine learning team building AI-powered features into the company’s products.“I felt I didn’t have enough experience to be the founding data scientist,” he says. “But I was also really interested in the space, and spinning up a whole machine learning program was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.”The Asana Intelligence team was given six months to build several machine learning–powered features to help customers work more efficiently. They included automatic summaries of project updates, insights about potential risks or delays, and recommendations for next steps.The team met that goal and launched several other features including Smart Status, an AI tool that analyzes a project’s tasks, deadlines, and activity, then generates a status update.“When you finally launch the thing you’ve been working on, and you see the usage go up, it’s exhilarating,” he says. “You feel like that’s what you were building toward: users actually seeing and benefiting from what you made.”Gupta and his team also translated that first wave of work into reusable frameworks and documentation to make it easier to create machine learning features at Asana. He and his colleagues filed several U.S. patents.At the time he took on that role, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. The mainstreaming of generative AI and large language models shifted much of his work at Asana from model development to assessing LLMs.OpenAI captured the attention of people around the world, including Gupta. In September 2025 he left Asana to join OpenAI’s data science team.The transition has been both energizing and humbling, he says. At OpenAI, he works closely with the marketing team to help guide strategic decisions. His work focuses on developing models to understand the efficiency of different marketing channels, to measure what’s driving impact, and to help the company better reach and serve its customers.“The pace is very different from my previous work. Things move quickly,” he says. “The industry is extremely competitive, and there’s a strong expectation to deliver fast. It’s been a great learning experience.”Gupta says he plans to stay in the AI space. With technology evolving so rapidly, he says, he sees enormous potential for task automation across industries. AI has already transformed his core software engineering work, he says, and it’s helped him enhance areas that aren’t natural strengths.“I’m not a good writer, and AI has been huge in helping me frame my words better and present my work more clearly,” he says. “Whether it’s helping a person improve a trait like that or driving efficiencies at a business, AI just has so much potential to help. I’m excited to be a little part of that.”Exploring IEEE publications and connectionsGupta has been an IEEE member since 2024, and he values the organization as both a technical resource and a professional network.He regularly turns to IEEE publications and the IEEE Xplore Digital Library to read articles that keep him abreast of the evolution of AI, data science, and the engineering profession.IEEE’s member directory tools are another valuable resource that he uses often, he says.“It’s been a great way to connect with other engineers in the same or similar fields,” he says. “I love sharing and hearing about what folks are working on. It brings me outside of what I’m doing day to day.“It inspires me, and it’s something I really enjoy and cherish.”