UCSD - University of California - San Diego

06/22/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/22/2026 14:42

The Next Breakthrough Doesn’t Have a Name Yet

Published Date

June 22, 2026

Article Content

The technologies that will define the second half of this century don't have names yet. That was a central proposition that Sethuraman Panchanathan, former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), brought to the opening session of this year's annual Future in Review (FiRe) conference at UC San Diego's Qualcomm Institute (QI) - a reminder that AI, for all the attention it commands, is a known quantity. The unknowns could matter more.

For three days, researchers, entrepreneurs and public-sector leaders gathered at QI to grapple with both.

Panchanathan grounded his argument in history. In 1994, he noted, two graduate students came to the NSF with a proposal for a digital library. The agency funded it. Five years later, they reported back that they had founded a company called Google. "The rest," Panchanathan said, "is a trillion-dollar history."

The lessons reflect the nature of public investment in basic research: the returns are real, delayed and impossible to predict. Another example he pointed to is the smart phone, which contains the results of tens of thousands of NSF projects.

The same logic, Panchanathan argued, applies now. Today's AI rests on decades of sustained investment - including during "AI winters," when enthusiasm for the field collapsed and the work continued anyway. The next defining technologies are now in work whose implications no one can fully see.

"There's no future without acknowledging history," Panchanathan said. "Let's not be so risk averse. Let's not be worried about whether [federal funding] is going to produce something tomorrow or whether it's going to be of relevance to industry. All of that is important, but not sufficient."

AI meets the university

If Panchanathan placed today's AI moment in the long arc of public research, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla brought the conversation back to campus.

"AI is impacting higher education, but it's not going to put higher education out of business," says UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. (Photo courtesy of UC San Diego)

Khosla, who earned his Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, pushed back against the idea that AI will make universities obsolete. Higher education has been declared ripe for disruption before, he noted - by the printing press, television, the internet, Silicon Valley and massive open online courses. Each time, universities changed. They did not disappear.

"In my mind, AI is no different," Khosla said. "Every time there's been new technology, higher education has changed. We changed our curriculum. AI is impacting higher education, but it's not going to put higher education out of business."

At UC San Diego, he said, that change is not coming through a single top-down directive, but through robust faculty innovation across disciplines. Clinicians are using AI to help guide diagnosis and treatment. Scholars in fields from law to history are exploring how AI can support research, writing and analysis.

As evidence of the "amazing amount of work happening in AI" across campus, Khosla pointed to a recent daylong gathering of UC San Diego faculty. Some 300 ideas were submitted, and about 40 were selected for presentation, presenting new approaches to education, grading, writing, research and classroom instruction.

"I see AI amplifying each and every one of us," said Khosla, who co-chairs a new UC AI steering committee.

Patterns beneath the noise

In a session that broadened the lens on where we are going, speakers looked across fields and named emerging patterns.

"I see a lot of acceleration of disruption, but I also see a huge amount of opportunity," says FiRe Head of Programs Evan Anderson (second right). Also on the Patterns that Matter panel are Berit Anderson (left); Mark Anderson (second left), chair of FiRe, CEO of Strategic News Service and founding CEO of Pattern Computer Inc.; and Ramesh Rao, director of QI. (Photo Credit: Future in Review / Liz Ornitz 2026)

One was speed itself. "We are living in a world that is extremely accelerated," said Mark Anderson, chair of FiRe, CEO of Strategic News Service and founding CEO of startup Pattern Computer Inc. "Underneath that umbrella is the idea of an increase in information or misinformation all around us… It's really hard to manage through the noise - even if it's good noise, even if it's real information. Identifying what's what and then acting on it in a timely way is much harder now than it was a year ago."

Ramesh Rao, director of QI - an interdisciplinary institute built around the idea that technology can jumpstart innovation for the public good - pointed to a hopeful observation: a new model of academic entrepreneurship. He described a new generation of faculty members and students who are turning classrooms, research groups and university networks into launchpads for companies; the shift is changing the way ideas move from universities into the world.

But he also noted a more uneasy movement: growing public resistance to the infrastructure that makes the AI era possible. Data centers, energy use and environmental concerns have become flashpoints. To Rao, the answer is not to turn away from the technology, but to design better systems - more efficient architectures, smarter algorithms and ways to use energy when and where it is available.

Berit Anderson, FiRe COO, pointed to other major emerging concerns: rising national interest in technological sovereignty, new pressures on food systems, the warming ocean's impact on climate and agriculture, and the spread of disease into new territories with climate change.

While acknowledging the serious challenges, Evan Anderson, head of programs for FiRe, voiced his optimism.

"Every one of these [problems] is the exact type of thing that the people in this room and many places around the world were born for," he said. "I see a lot of acceleration of disruption, but I also see a huge amount of opportunity - opportunity to help people, save lives and invent new solutions, new systems, new policies."

Conference participants take in some of the most detailed images ever captured of the cosmos, thanks to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory that leverages advanced technology. (Photo Credit: Future in Review / Liz Ornitz 2026)

The range of problems and opportunities was reflected in the conference itself. One session, led by Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (a consortium that QI belongs to) and distinguished professor emeritus at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, treated the microbiome as a frontier where medicine, food, genomics and data collide, with speakers including UC San Diego School of Medicine gastroenterologist Amir Zarrinpar.

Other sessions moved from AI agents and digital identity to quantum security, autonomous robotics at sea, astronomy, human trafficking, conservation and critical infrastructure - a reminder that FiRe does not aspire to be a single-topic conference, but rather a collision chamber for ideas.

From future signals to startups

Those larger questions found concrete form in the startup presentations that followed, where founders - several with roots in QI's own innovation ecosystem - took the stage not to debate the future but to demonstrate it.

Sonia Trigueros, CEO and co-founder of NIVD, emphasizes the need for early detection of medical issues to save lives. (Photo Credit: Future in Review / Liz Ornitz 2026)

The companies ranged widely, but several themes emerged. One was earlier detection: finding disease before symptoms appear, identifying cognitive decline before it advances and reading biological data before clinical crisis. Sonia Trigueros, CEO and co-founder of NIVD, framed the challenge bluntly, pointing to sepsis, cardiovascular disease and cancer as areas where decades of research have not yet translated into enough lives saved. The missing piece, she suggested, is faster, cheaper and more sensitive detection.

Another theme was materials that move across markets. George Boyajian, CEO of Mussel Polymers, described the company's sticky, self-healing catechol-based material with potential uses in underwater repair, coral restoration, dental care, medical adhesives and implants, illustrating how a single platform technology can open many doors when it solves a fundamental physical problem.

For Virbela, a company incubated at QI, the focus was human behavior. Founder and CEO Alex Howland described a long-running effort to build what he called a "flight simulation for human behavior" - a safe place to practice difficult conversations before the stakes are real. With large language models now able to power realistic AI characters, Virbela is using simulations, coaching and assessment to help people build the muscle memory needed for leadership, conflict and high-pressure decisions.

Han Cao, co-founder of Dimension Genomics, which is located in the QI Innovation Space, speaks about the company's work in cancer detection and precision prognosis. (Photo Credit: Future in Review / Liz Ornitz 2026)

Dimension Genomics, a company currently residing in the QI Innovation Space, brought the startup story back to biology and computation. Co-founder Han Cao described the company's work in cancer detection and precision prognosis, while also reflecting on the urgency behind it.

Other presentations pointed toward solutions for energy resilience, aging and other aspects of health. Together, the pitches showed that the future was not only being debated from the stage. It was being prototyped by entrepreneurs aiming to fill pressing needs and turn emerging science into systems people can use.

This is the kind of activation that gives Mark Anderson hope for our future. "Innovation is on a streak," he said. "There's never been a time in the history of humankind where there were more new good ideas - everything from medicine to rockets. It's the most exciting time to be alive."

Next year's FiRe conference will return to QI on May 16 - 19, 2027. For more information and tickets, see https://www.futureinreview.com.

Learn more about research and education at UC San Diego in: Artificial Intelligence

UCSD - University of California - San Diego published this content on June 22, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 22, 2026 at 20:42 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]