Author | Lightnews

Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · 13d

A thoughtful leadership exchange and common purpose.

The @raeng.org.uk, the @qeprize.bsky.social, and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering united in shared commitment to advance #engineering that improves lives, strengthens the profession, and celebrates the excellence that defines it.

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · 27d

🤖 WHEN AI DIES ⚰️

✨ In my latest column for the National Academy of Engineering’s Bridge magazine, prompted by the recent events around TikTok, I explore how we’ve built AI into a dazzling yet deficient genius, machines of vast memory but no legacy. 🚨

🔗 Read here: www.nae.edu/340912/Invis...

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Sep 24

🙏🏼 Tremendously honored—and honoured—to be elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering. #RAEngFellows

www.nae.edu/340727/Guru-...

Royal Academy of Engineering @raeng.org.uk · Sep 24

We’re pleased to announce the 74 leading figures from the world of engineering and technology elected to our Fellowship at yesterday’s AGM. Meet them all now: https://raeng.org.uk/news/royal-academy-of-engineering-welcomes-74-new-fellows/
#RAEngFellows

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jul 30

⚖️ We don’t need another umbrella term. We need sharper language that makes responsibility visible. Technical work has always carried moral weight. Our words should help us name it, reckon with it, and act accordingly, as the ancients knew it.

Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jul 30

📊 Teleconferencing tools, streaming platforms, and chip makers all trade under the same “technology” banner despite vastly different models. Convenient shorthand, yes, but it blurs risks and erases intent. What begins as casual speech hardens into billion-dollar policy and trillion-dollar markets.

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jul 30

💡TECHNOLOGY. What do we really mean when we use that word?

☢️ In a Financial Times column, I argue “technology” now covers everything from nuclear warheads to noise cancelling headphones, stents to social media, and hair dryers to the Hoover Dam.

(💲) www.ft.com/content/a48c...
(📄) PDF images 👇

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Reposted by Guru Madhavan

EngineerTeen @engineerteen.bsky.social · Jul 1

We're EngineerTeen, a new program from the National Academy of Engineering and a sibling site to @engineergirlnae.bsky.social which builds on that community to help youth chart their path to become the technical leaders of tomorrow. We're excited to get started! Visit us at engineerteen.org 🙂

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jul 1

Why engineers are diving into deeper questions, how ingenuity should meet responsibility, what #engineering has taught Roma about life and Baked Alaska, and my own near-misses—how I almost took up mocha and monkhood.

👏🏽 Produced by Saskia Cookson, Jack Howson Peanut & Crumb

Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jul 1

🌍 Engineering is peer-reviewed by reality.

🎙️In the season finale of the @qeprize.bsky.social "Create the Future" #podcast, my cohost and fellow engineer Roma Agrawal and I roam through all sorts of topics.

🎧 Listen here: shows.acast.com/createthefut...

Guru & Roma reflect | Create the Future

shows.acast.com

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jun 11

Together, we’ve mapped how #engineering makes life possible, livable, and meaningful.

👏🏽 Produced by Tess Davidson, Eva Krysiak, Jack Howson, Peanut & Crumb.

👏🏽 Hayaatun Sillem, Jonathan Narbett, Jane Sutton, Dr. Sarah Rhodes, Suzanne Kanca.

🌟🌟Coming soon: Season Finale ! 🌟🌟

Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jun 11

🚀Charlie Bolden and Dava Newman pulled us outward—to space, to possibility, and to purpose (qeprize.org/podcasts/the...).

☕Tonya Kuhl and Jonathan Morris reminded us that coffee is really about connection (qeprize.org/podcasts/the...).

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jun 11

🗳️ Charles Phelps and Eswaran Subrahmanian showed how democracy depends on what most voters never see (qeprize.org/podcasts/the...).

♿Ashley Shew and Rory Cooper flipped our assumptions about disability and design (qeprize.org/podcasts/eng...).

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jun 11

🔥Luke Bisby and Jose Torero unpacked how we’ll face fire, now and ahead (qeprize.org/podcasts/the...).

🚇Pam Elardo and Andy Russell took us underground to meet the overlooked engines of public health (qeprize.org/podcasts/the...).

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Jun 11

🎧 Fire. Space. Coffee. Disability. Elections. Sanitation.
Six conversations. Six dimensions. All engineering.

From the everyday to the extraordinary, I’ve had the fortune to explore how #engineering runs through everything—seen and unseen—for the @qeprize.bsky.social podcast “Create the Future.”

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 18

🌀 Garba raas dancers mastered what the best teams still chase: synchrony with spontaneity, precision with presence, and unity without uniformity, all achieved without a single ping from Teams or Slack.

🌏 International Museum Day 2025. #IMD2025

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 18

...Excellence emerges when we move as one system while preserving individual contributions, recognizing, honing, and building upon each person's unique strengths.

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 18

...This traditional form predates today's Bollywood beats and reveals something fundamental about human coordination.

🎶 The best #engineering and #design teams too develop a clarity, working rhythm, and mutual awareness that sustains momentum, one that doesn’t need constant articulation...

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 18

✨ Centuries of dance offer what even our most advanced organizations still chase.

🥁 At the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art's "Delighting Krishna" exhibit, I was drawn to a mid-19th-century painting of garba raas, showing women dancing in a circle with synchronized, alternating claps...

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Reposted by Guru Madhavan

Randolph Nesse @randynesse.bsky.social · May 2

An engineer, an educator, and an evolutionary biologist walk into a bar...(well, actually, we talked at @evmed.bsky.social meetings); today, 3 years later, our plans for a new bridge between engineering and medicine are published in @pnasnexus.org!

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 1

⚙️ We challenge the “body-as-machine” metaphor which oversimplifies organic complexity. We reflect on broader and bolder pathways for collaboration: engineers learning from biological adaptation while medicine adopting engineering’s failure analyses. 🧬

#Medicine #Evolution

Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 1

While #engineering juggles performance and cost for product improvements, evolution bets on gene transmission, often sacrificing #health.

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 1

✈️ Consider the Boeing 737 Max 8: a single sensor oversight, driven by market pressures, led to catastrophic crashes. Contrast this with scurvy, where a random mutation disabled vitamin C synthesis, a biological flaw evolution couldn’t rewind. 🍋

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 1

🦚 The narrow human birth canal and peacock’s impractical tail both represent evolutionary failures but for reasons utterly different from why bridges collapse or software crashes. 🌉

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · May 1

⚠️ Explanations for failures in designed and evolved systems. 🚫
🔓Read here in @pnasnexus.org : academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
🔍 @randynesse.bsky.social, Jay Labov, and I compare body and machine vulnerabilities such as design deficiencies, corrupted plans, assembly variations, and trade-offs. ⚖️

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Guru Madhavan @bioengineergm.bsky.social · Apr 21

🔄 True #resilience isn’t about bouncing back—it’s about bouncing forward. In my recent #TEDx talk, I challenge what #resilience really means—with help from warships, a pointy-nosed engineer, a childhood memory and a goat-footed god! 🐐

📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5r3...

#engineering