"When you open Microsoft Excel to review quarterly results or check Waze to optimize your route to the office, you're tapping into technologies born not in corporate boardrooms, but in university labs. Thinking of innovation, our minds often jump to the titans of tech: Jobs, Musk, Altman, Gates, Bezos. But behind everyday tech innovations and healthcare breakthroughs are academic researchers whose work catalyzed billion-dollar industries."
"Google Maps has over 2.2 billion monthly active users, and 71% of U.S. smartphone users rely on it weekly. At the root of this technology is the global positioning system (GPS), whose origins trace back to 1957. When Sputnik launched, two young physicists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)-William Guier and George Weiffenbach-driven by the national urgency of the Cold War and scientific curiosity, used the Doppler shift"
Academic researchers in university laboratories produced foundational technologies that now power everyday tools, logistics systems, and medical advances. Curiosity-driven experiments and Cold War–era investigations yielded breakthroughs such as GPS, which originated when Johns Hopkins APL physicists used Sputnik's Doppler shifts to deduce orbit and apply that knowledge to navigation. Many academics remain unrecognized despite their formative contributions to civic, commercial, and medical products. The World Changing Ideas Summit on November 19 in Washington, DC, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University, highlights how university research seeded innovations that quietly reshaped technology, transportation, and healthcare.
Read at Fast Company
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