After a season dominated by cheating twists, walkouts and “alternative match” chaos, Married at First Sight Australia is heading into its final week — and if the latest episodes are anything to go by, not every couple will survive. It’s going to be brutal. And awesome.

The Final Dinner Party airs Monday, April 6, followed by the Final Vows on April 7 — where the remaining couples must decide whether to stay together or walk away for good.

• Ripple Effect studio audio director Jeff Wilson has discussed the game’s “gritty” soundtrack
• “The campaign has the most amount of music in it because it’s thematic,” he said
• He also explained how the team weaved “musical flavour” into the multiplayer experience

Ripple Effect studio audio director Jeff Wilson has spoken on the creation of the Battlefield 6 soundtrack, which he says was intended to capture the “gritty, authentic, modern soldier experience”.

In a new interview with TechRadar Gaming, the veteran first-person shooter (FPS) developer talked about working on the three “big tentpole experiences” that underpin the game: the premium campaign and multiplayer offering, plus the free-to-play Redsec battle royale mode.

If you’ve spent any time looking at the current crop of smart glasses, you’ll know the industry is currently stuck in a bit of a ‘tech-first, fashion-later’ rut. 

While Meta and Ray-Ban have done a decent job of making smart glasses look like, well, glasses, the rest of the market often makes it feel like we’re wearing miniature computers on our faces with thick, heavy, uninspired frames. 

However, according to recent reports, Nothing – the London-based company known for its transparent tech and glowing LEDs – is finally ready to jump into the ring. And that’s exactly what the AI glasses market really needs right now. 

Most smart glasses don’t look that great

Let’s be honest: most smart glasses are a bit of an eyesore.

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Since they started hitting the market a few years ago, much of the industry has focused more on utility than aesthetics, often resulting in chunky frames and awkward silhouettes that scream early adopter rather than style icon. 

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Even as we move away from the truly hulking first-gen specs toward sleeker AI-driven frames, the designs remain largely utilitarian. You can always tell when someone is wearing a pair of smart glasses – maybe with the exception of Ray-Ban’s Meta Glasses, given the current discourse around filming people when they’re unaware. 

Meta has recently tried to fix this by padding out its collection with more variety, particularly with its Oakley Meta Vanguards, but there’s still a massive gap in the market for something that feels fresh and fashionable. 

Most tech companies are playing it safe, sticking to traditional frame shapes that try to hide the technology within. We haven’t really seen a company embrace the “tech” as a design language in a way that actually looks cool on a night out.

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What the market needs is variety – not just “here’s the same frame in black, slightly-less-black, and prescription”, but different design philosophies entirely. That’s where Nothing’s arrival could be genuinely refreshing.

Nothing is one of few companies that could change that

Nothing’s whole shtick is visual identity, present in both its hardware and software offerings. Transparent elements, intentional shapes, hardware that looks like it belongs in a music video – you know what I mean. You see a Nothing Phone, or even Nothing headphones, and you know exactly what they are.  And in a sea of similar-looking glasses, that’s exactly what we need. 

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Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Nothing is planning AI-powered glasses for the first half of 2027, equipped with cameras, microphones and speakers, and designed to lean on a phone and the cloud for AI processing rather than cramming everything into the frames themselves – very similar to Meta’s popular formula that we already know works. 

However, it’s not the hardware that’s important here – for my argument, anyway – it’s the Nothing vibe that it could bring to the table. If Nothing manages to implement its design DNA in eyewear in a way that still feels wearable (and not like a cosplay prop), it could help smart glasses make the jump from tech accessory to something you’d actually like to wear. 

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No AR glasses, but that’s not surprising

It’s important to note that Nothing is said to be working on AI glasses, not AR glasses like the high-end Meta Display specs – and that’s fine, maybe even preferable for now.

A display changes the entire dynamic of smart glasses design, introducing new cost, battery, heat, and comfort issues to deal with. As we’ve already seen with Meta’s Display specs, even a multi-billion-dollar company can’t shrink the tech down to something that even slightly resembles regularly sized glasses – so Nothing likely wouldn’t be able to either. 

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Instead, the lighter, sleeker AI-powered glasses route seems like the safer bet – especially if, as I expect, Nothing wants to put a particular focus on the look of the smart specs. 

After initial hesitation, they could arrive in 2027

It wasn’t always a sure thing, though. 

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Reports suggest that CEO Carl Pei was initially resistant to the idea of glasses, but has since come around as the Android XR charge – led by Google and Samsung – begins to take shape. Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses are expected to arrive sometime in 2026, but Nothing is reportedly aiming for a 2027 release window.

That might feel like a long way off, but if that extra time allows them to perfect a design that actually looks like high-end eyewear rather than a prototype, it’ll be well worth the wait. 

Your Strava runs might feel private, but a new Strava military data leak shows how easily that information can reveal more than your workout. In the latest case, activity logs have been linked to more than 500 UK military personnel, connecting everyday exercise to sensitive locations.

This goes beyond visible routes. Shared histories and account details can be combined to identify people and map where they live and work. Known locations become more revealing once behavior is layered on top.

A recent incident showed how a single tracked session revealed the position of a naval vessel. Routine posts can carry real consequences. The issue comes down to visibility and how much is left open by default.

Public runs tied to real people

The investigation uncovered shared routes connected to personnel across several UK bases, including Northwood, Faslane, and North Yorkshire. These weren’t abstract traces. Account histories made it possible to link sessions to specific individuals.

Once identified, an account can reveal habits, frequent routes, and social connections through shared features. That expands the scope quickly and makes tracking easier over time.

In one case, a run label hinted the user understood the risk, yet it stayed accessible. That gap between awareness and action is part of the problem. Analysts warn that small fragments of information can still be combined into something far more detailed.

Small details build a bigger picture

The real danger builds over time. Repeated uploads create a trackable footprint that becomes easier to follow with each new entry.

Even if locations aren’t secret, surrounding behavior adds meaning. Movement between sites, timing, and consistency can all be inferred. For an outside observer, that’s enough to map routines and spot patterns.

At a submarine base, shared logs helped identify personnel and even family members through linked accounts. That kind of exposure extends beyond the original user and makes the data more valuable.

One setting can reduce the risk

The fix is already available, but many users skip it. Strava includes privacy controls that limit who can view your sessions and routes. Leaving those settings unchanged keeps your activity visible by default.

Switching activities to private reduces exposure right away. It limits how easily routes can be traced and makes long-term patterns harder to build. Or you can check out other fitness apps.

The bigger takeaway applies to any fitness app that shares location data. If you use Strava, it’s worth checking your settings now and locking down what others can see. A small change can keep your routine from becoming a signal.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!

You might recall the congressional hearing last month that sparked criticism against Waymo over its use of remote assistance workers in the Philippines. We have covered that issue extensively. You can read about the company’s remote assistance and road assistance teams here and here. 

Waymo tends to get the most attention because, well, those robotaxis are now operating commercially in 10 U.S. cities, with more coming soon. But the issue of remote assistance is not a Waymo issue. It’s an autonomous vehicle technology issue. 

A new report from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) makes my point. 

Markey sent letters to seven U.S. companies — Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles relied on input from remote staff. 

They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation. Markey said it was a “stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of remote assistance operators to help guide their AVs.”

You can read senior reporter Sean O’Kane’s article, which digs into the issue and includes the rather mute responses from the companies. (TechCrunch reached out to all of them.) One interesting admission from Tesla: The company said its remote assistance workers are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control (a very different thing than “remote assistance”) as a final escalation maneuver.

But here’s the thing — this is not going away. And silence will not defuse the matter. If anything, Markey seems more motivated than ever to get answers. He is now calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate companies’ use of remote assistance workers and said he is “working on legislation to impose strict guardrails on AV companies’ use of remote operators.”

A little bird

Nothing this week that we have been able to verify. Send us tips! Have one? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Deals!

It seems like just last week I was writing about Uber being everywhere, all at once. And I see it is still a trend, although this time it isn’t directly related to autonomous vehicles. 

Uber said it is buying Berlin-based startup Blacklane, which provides on-demand, black-car chauffeur services, as the ride-hail giant expands deeper into luxury and executive travel services. Blacklane, which was founded in 2011, had raised more than $100 million to date from rental car company Sixt, Mercedes-Benz, and Alfahim, a conglomerate in the UAE.

The timing of the acquisition is notable. It comes just a few weeks after Uber announced the launch of Uber Elite, a chauffeur service that also offers a bunch of luxury offerings like airport meet-and-greets and in-vehicle amenities. 

Other deals that got my attention …

Manna Air Delivery, a consumer drone delivery startup based in Ireland, raised $50 million from ARK Invest, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Schooner Capital, Coca-Cola HBC, and Molten Ventures.

Saronic Technologies, an autonomous military ship developer based in Austin, raised $1.75 billion in a Series D funding round led by Kleiner Perkins. The company is now valued at $9.25 billion. Other investors include Advent International, Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, BAM Elevate, and other new partners and recognizes the continued commitment of its existing investors, including 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Elad Gil, and Franklin Templeton.

Voltify, a startup that has developed a way to retrofit diesel locomotives with battery power, raised $30 million in seed funding co-led by Israeli venture firm Aleph and Australian miner Fortescue.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Also, the micromobility company created inside Rivian that spun out last year, will work with DoorDash to develop autonomous delivery vehicles. As part of the deal, DoorDash took part in Also’s $200 million Series C funding round, which was led by Greenoaks Capital. DoorDash is getting a seat on Also’s board of directors, too.

Baidu robotaxis stalled throughout Wuhan, China, in some cases trapping passengers for up to two hours due to system failure. 

GM is ramping up its efforts to improve its advanced driver-assistance system, Super Cruise. CEO Mary Barra posted on LinkedIn that GM has started supervised testing of its next-gen automated driving system on public highways in California and Michigan.

“Soon, more than 200 supervised and manual test vehicles will be in live traffic, with trained drivers ready to take over at any time. This data will guide future updates to strengthen our autonomous capabilities,” she wrote.

Lucid issued a recall for more than 4,000 Gravity SUVs after discovering a problem with the seat belts.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that traffic deaths fell 6.7% to 36,640 in 2025 from the prior year. This is the second-lowest traffic fatality rate in recorded history at 1,10 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to the NHTSA.

All of those long TSA lines are prompting airlines to catch up and adapt. For instance, United Airlines has updated its mobile app to show TSA wait times at select airports.

The Subaru-Toyota partnership keeps cranking out EVs. At the New York Auto Show, Subaru introduced the all-electric Gateway, a three-row SUV that is essentially a rebadged Toyota Highlander EV. 

Tesla’s Q1 sales figures show its cheaper vehicles aren’t helping it turn around declining sales. (Some legacy automakers have seen EV sales plummet.) That seems to have affected Tesla’s workforce numbers at its Austin, Texas, factory, which dropped 22% in 2025. Meanwhile, I riff on the changing of the guard over at Tesla (and, no, I am not referring to the string of executive departures there, although that is interesting). CEO Elon Musk shared that production of the Tesla Model S and X has ended, a milestone that marks the shift away from building cars designed for people to drive and toward robots and self-driving cars.  

Toyota’s Woven Capital has appointed a new CIO and COO in a push to find the “future of mobility.”

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle company WeRide launched robotaxi operations without a human safety operator in Dubai as part of a broader expansion in the Middle East.

Waymo’s robotaxi service is now live at San Antonio International, its fourth major airport. Meanwhile, Wired looked at Waymo’s school bus problem (meaning the investigation into the illegal behavior of its robotaxis around school buses). The article provides new details on how the Austin School District tried to help Waymo solve the problem. It didn’t work.

One more thing …

My podcast, the Autonocast, spent some time talking with Ashu Rege, DoorDash’s VP of Autonomy. We recorded the episode prior to the Also-DoorDash announcement, which makes his comments about the company’s strategy all the more interesting. Check out the episode here.

Pinball video games have been around for years — I cut my teeth on Space Cadet 3D Pinball, which was pre-loaded on Windows 95. They range from realistic recreations of pinball tables you’ll find at arcades to games that could never exist in real life like 2019’s Demon’s Tilt or older ones like Metroid Prime Pinball for the Nintendo DS or Pokémon Pinball for the Game Boy Color.

I didn’t expect to find a detailed pinball game for the humble and delightful Playdate, but a pair of developers working under the name Amano pulled it off with Devils on the Moon Pinball, which arrived last week. It’s the developer’s third game for the Playdate, and Mario and JP (who make up Amano) pointed directly to Pokemon Pinball as the inspiration for this game. “I think one of my most-played games is Pokemon Pinball,” JP said. “But the idea to make a pinball game came from Mario… he came to me and say ‘JP, I want to make a custom engine for Playdate and we should make a pinball game.’”

I love playing pinball in real life, but owning a full-size table is extremely expensive and takes up a ton of room. But Devils on the Moon completely scratches the itch. The controls are extremely simple: pressing left on the d-pad flips the left fipper, A flips the right flipper, and pressing down on the d-pad launches the ball. Amano also included tilt controls; pressing right or up on the d-pad or the B button shakes the table in a particular direction so you can try and save the ball. Sadly, the crank doesn’t come into play, but I can’t say I have a good idea for how it would be used.

I was impressed with both the physics and table design of Devils on the Moon after playing for just a few minutes. Despite not having analog control, the way the ball reacted when I hit the flippers felt consistent and smooth, and while I was often surprised at some of the bounces it took, it never felt unfair. When I drained a ball, it was almost always something I could have avoided if I knew the game better or had faster reflexes — just like a good, real-life pinball table.

JP and Mario described the game as using “stylized physics” rather than it being fully realistic. “It may not necessarily be accurate to real life,” JP said. “But since the screen is wider than it is tall unlike actual pinball, we needed the ball to feel a little bit floaty and not fall as fast because then it would just zoom straight down the screen.”

The table design feels both grounded in reality while also taking advantage of its virtual nature. There are three vertical “levels,” each with its own set of flippers. The 2D nature of the game means there aren’t any true ramps like you’ll on most pinball tables, but having three separate sections of the game to get used to makes up for that. And provided you complete various modes in the game, you can reach boss battles where you’re tasked with whacking a giant enemy repeatedly to drain away their health bar. Physical pinball tables often have similar encounters, but they have to be worked into the design of the game — in this case, your ball essentially ports to an entirely different space when you battle a boss.

“It’s kind of playing like the old pinball machines where the rules are really simple,” Mario said.”. “You just have a few things to do. In our case, it ended up going beyond our original scope, but it’s still quite simple compared to an actual pinball machine in terms of rules.” He said the design intent was to make the game friendlier to people who might try it out without a lot of pinball experience while still putting enough challenge into it.

The audio and visual presentation is top-notch for a Playdate game, too. Perhaps most crucially for a pinball game, there’s no lag or stuttering. The game also has a distinct visual identity, something that’s always important for pinball to draw you into the world of the playfield as much as possible. The game’s page cheekily promises “ at least (1) songs” and it delivers on that with a solid theme for the main game that serves well as background music that doesn’t get old if you’re playing for a while, and the beeps and boops the table makes as you play feel well-suited to the game. It doesn’t “sound” like a real pinball table — but it isn’t one, so that’s okay.

I haven’t played a video pinball game in a long time, but the Playdate feels like an ideal platform for this. I can bring it with me anywhere and play a round or two (provided there’s decent light) or settle in for a longer play session. The game is challenging enough that you’ll need to practice a lot to get the hang of it, but there’s enough variety to the three-tiered table to keep players interested for the long haul. After all, the fun of pinball isn’t necessarily playing a table for the first time — it’s learning it inside out so you can maximize your score. I’m looking forward to getting to that point with Devils on the Moon.

Mowers I Am Currently Testing

We are just into a new cutting season here, so I haven’t tested these new robot mowers enough to make a full recommendation, but here are my impressions so far.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Mammotion Luba 3 AWD for $2,399: If this robot mower continues to perform as well as it has in its first week, it will earn a spot above. It is pricey, but the Mammotion Luba 3 AWD can handle relatively rough terrain and steep slopes, and it combines three technologies (GPS, LiDAR, and AI vision) to ensure it can cut larger lawns even where there might be tree cover or other awkward spots. It boasts quiet operation, efficient pathfinding, and leaves a lovely finish. The obstacle avoidance is solid, and it does a decent job around the edges. I also appreciate the manual mowing option, enabling you to cut any problem areas with remote app control.

Husqvarna Aspire R6V for £999: I was excited to test this new robot mower from Husqvarna because it is more affordable than many of its range, including our top pick, and it doesn’t require a separate aerial for the satellite connection. It uses a combination of GPS and AI vision with a camera on the front. It was easy to set up and map the lawn in the app, but you will need a good Wi-Fi signal across your yard for it to work effectively. So far, I’ve been a little disappointed in the sensitive obstacle avoidance, as it has been leaving large uncut strips around the edges of my lawn. But I’d like to tinker and test for a bit longer before I deliver a final verdict. This model also seems to be available only in the UK right now. I’m waiting to hear back about a US equivalent.

In my queue, after these two mowers, I have the Mova LiDAX Ultra 1000 and the Anthbot M9.

Other Robot Lawn Mowers We Like

Eufy Robot Lawn Mower E15 for $2,300: This is another wire-free mower, but instead of relying on satellite navigation, it uses a camera system to automatically map lawns and avoid obstacles. It can cover up to 0.2 acres (8,700 square feet), cut from 1 to 3 inches, and handle up to 18-degree slopes. It is also fairly quiet and has GPS tracking, but you must have Wi-Fi coverage in your backyard, or you’ll need a 4G data subscription. I found the setup lengthy due to a firmware download, but the mapping and the first cut were decent. The E15 can only run during the day, and it doesn’t cope very well with inclines. I also found it frequently failed to cut the edges of the lawn and doesn’t perform well if the grass is damp. I wouldn’t recommend it at full price, but it seems to get frequent deep discounts.

Avoid These Mowers

EcoFlow Blade

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Photograph: Simon Hill

EcoFlow Blade for £1,849: While it was easy to set up and cut my lawn nicely without the need for any boundary wire, the EcoFlow Blade (6/10, WIRED Review) sometimes struggled with GPS navigation and ended up stuck in a flower bed. It also left an untouched strip around the edge of my lawn. The object avoidance was solid, and it can be automated in the app, though it occasionally failed to start a scheduled cut for me. EcoFlow seems to have discontinued this model, though it is still on sale in Europe. Probably best to avoid.

Yardcare E400

Photograph: Simon Hill

Yardcare E400 for $370: Curious about the budget end of the robot mower market, I agreed to try the Yardcare E400, but this mower was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. It’s a boundary wire model, so you must run wire around the area you want mowed. Yardcare suggests it can cover up to 4,300 square feet and cut grass between 0.8 and 2.4 inches. The problem is that it gets stuck frequently and struggles to even get on and off its charging station reliably. After trying multiple fixes to no avail and going through customer support, I had to conclude that this model has a serious design flaw.

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SpaceX has reportedly filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering in which the company would raise $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation. And according to CEO Elon Musk, orbital data centers will be a big part of SpaceX’s future.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Musk’s vision, as well as other companies that are pursuing similar goals.

It will take significant tech development and massive capital spending to make orbital data centers a reality, but as Sean noted, with “opposition happening around the country to data centers in general,” executives like Musk and Jeff Bezos may be thinking, “The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here” on Earth.

Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

Sean: This has been a trend — I would say a rapidly forming trend — over the last half year to a year, and we have different examples of it. We have SpaceX; I feel like in some ways, Elon Musk was late on this trend.  And for the moment, let’s set aside the actual mechanics and the viability of data centers in space. We could talk about that in a second if we want, but — 

Kirsten: We have a really good story we’ll link to in the show notes, by the way. One of our most recent hires, Tim Fernholz, is amazing. He writes all about the physics and the constraints of that.

Sean: Yeah, I think it’s a really interesting engineering challenge. It’s a really interesting physics challenge. It’s a really interesting orbital mechanics challenge. But it’s something that clearly a bunch of companies and people are going to try and chase. [There’s] going to be SpaceX doing it, with a kind of variance of what they’re already working on with their Starlink network. 

There’s a startup that had come out of Y Combinator, originally called Starcloud, that was really one of the first ones out there trying to build a huge business around this, that just raised $170 million this week, their valuation [on] that tipped them over into a unicorn status.

Jeff Bezos is trying to go after this as well. This is a next generation version of the competition that we’ve seen happening between Starlink and Amazon’s Leo satellite network, and Blue Origin has its own satellite network coming online as well in the next couple of years.

So there’s going to be a whole bunch of this happening, and it feels like it wasn’t happening a year ago. I know the way that Elon Musk pitches it is — we know he’s allergic to red tape, he’s built a data center in Memphis, too. Maybe now he knows the challenges and the risks you have to take to sidestep that red tape.

There’s a lot of opposition happening around the country to data centers in general. And these people say, “We have access to space, so let’s just try and do it up there.” The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here on our [planet].

Kirsten: And it also creates excitement, right? If a company is about to go [public] and they’re working on data centers in space, this is something that people can have expectations about in a positive way and ignore the constraints. It feels like a company that is working on something that’s not old and outdated, but signals the future. And it’s really a great strategy when you think about it.

Anthony: Not that Elon Musk is the only one who does this, but it seems like he’s incredibly successful at being like, “Don’t judge my companies based on how much money they’re making now, judge them based on these grand visions that I can spin out about what will happen in the future.” 

And going back to a point that Sean was making, I think that part of what’s interesting is to [ask]: How does this fit in with the broader data center rollout? How does it fit in with opposition and the idea that maybe people are not going to be able to build as many data centers as they want to? 

I don’t think any of us are engineers who can really assess the viability of these plans. It does certainly have a tinge of fantasy to it, but even when they do lay out these plans, it feels like just a drop in the bucket in terms of compute capabilities compared to what they want to build out on Earth. So it feels like there’s not a scenario where this replaces a whole bunch of new data centers on Earth. It’s just sort of a […] supplement to it.

Sean: The last two things I’ll point out that are really front and center for me is, one, we’ve seen a backing off in some ways [from] data centers — not just because of opposition, but because maybe we don’t need as much, right? We see a bunch of jockeying from some of the AI labs about, “Well, maybe we don’t need to lease this much from this company,” or whatever. And if that becomes a thing that is more true than it was five months ago, do you all of a sudden lose all that momentum to do something as crazy as putting the data centers in space? Providing that it works, even.

The other thing is that the idea of building these massive data centers in space, with all these satellites that make up the quote unquote “data center,” is business for SpaceX.  And I think this is unique to them compared to these other companies: They are a launch company primarily, even though they generate a bunch of revenue from Starlink. They are the vehicle that gets the data centers to space. They get to book that as revenue for SpaceX. 

And so it becomes this thing where, of course [Musk] wants — whether or not it works, he would eventually have to prove it — but of course he wants to send more and more satellites into space because it’s more revenue for SpaceX. And that makes SpaceX look better as a public company. And then you just kind of tumble down the path until he finds something else to pitch the investors on.

Prof Neil Rowan sits down with SiliconRepublic.com to chat life, work and advice for students.

As he describes it, Prof Neil Rowan was thrust into the world rather prematurely. Coming in at less than a kilogram at birth, Rowan tells me he spent months in an incubator, sure that he wasn’t supposed to make it.

Later, he wonders if that’s what gave him the drive – a sort of “accelerator button” on his life, firmly pressed, “always”.

From breaking regional sprinting records at the local athletic club as a teenager, to being awarded a higher doctorate of science some four decades later, Prof Rowan has achieved more than many – especially for a boy from a middle-class family from Coosan in Athlone.

Among his very large list of accomplishments, Rowan is an expert in medtech, food security, environmental sustainability and bioeconomy, and the inaugural director of the Bioscience Research Institute at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS). He is ranked number one in the world for decontamination research.

He is also on a United Nations panel on the effects of nuclear war, as well as on the new National Science Advisory panel and a new scientific committee for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. He also works closely with the European Commission and Research Ireland on various innovation programmes. I will refrain from adding to this list, lest I overwhelm the reader.

“The funny thing is, I’m colourblind,” Rowan tells me. “I only ever saw green … so I was constantly ‘going’.”

One of five children, Rowan was the first from any generation in his family to have attended university. His parents never finished school, he tells me.

“My dad was 52 years working with the one company [fixing weighing scales],” he says. “Going to college [at the time] would have been very expensive.”

A football scholarship led Rowan to the University of Galway in the 1980s, after which the young academic made his way to the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow on a different scholarship to take the first-ever course at the institution looking at biotechnology.

10 papers and a PhD later, Rowan was appointed as a lecturer – and then a senior lecturer at the University. He was 29 years old.

Rewarded for decades of research

Rowan made headlines earlier this year for being recognised with a higher doctorate of science by the University of Strathclyde – a first for any academic working in TUS.

A higher doctorate of science is above a PhD. It is the highest academic degree in the Irish and UK university systems, awarded to scholars who demonstrate a significant contribution to their field over several decades. Fewer than 10 higher doctorates are awarded per year in Ireland. Rowan describes the degree as a ‘black swan’, a definite rare occurrence.

“Every day is a school day”, according to Rowan, who has published a minimum of six to seven research papers every year for the past 30 years. His higher doctorate thesis comprises 150 peer-reviewed journal papers presented in two volumes, totalling approximately 1,600 pages.

The submission covers his research from 1995 to the present day, delving into his work in advancing the fields of disease prevention and control that cross-cut medtech, food safety and food security globally.

Rowan’s still surprised at his achievements. He tells me that he is “constantly surprised, pleasantly surprised” at any recognition, even after all these years.

Throughout our chat, the professor made several mentions of ‘firsts’ in his various fields of research.

According to Rowan, he created the first-ever toxigenic-mould growth prediction model for the built environment in the early 1990s. It was the first to use computer simulations and algorithms for elucidating biological solutions to inform improvements in sustainable building design that subsequently became a European reference model.

More recently, Neil leads the first ever bio-economy demonstrator facility at scale using freshwater fish in peatlands, now used in Ireland and to be replicated across Europe.

Prof Rowan introduced the first PhDs in biomedical sciences, health and sterilisation science in TUS, and also reported on the first use of several disinfection technologies such as pulsed light, pulsed electric fields and pulsed plasma for disease prevention and food security, including from a underpinning mechanistic perspective.

An educator and an enabler

When asked how he describes his work, Rowan says he’s both an “educator and an enabler”.

“I think I enable people to help themselves,” he explains.

He has supervised around 120 undergraduate projects, as well as around 40 PhDs with industrial applications – such as a new vaporised hydrogen peroxide terminal sterilisation method, or a new classification system for medical device features and cleaning for improved patient safety.

Rowan says he loves to teach and that he resonates with his students. He says his work has a “lasting legacy”, given his students’ creative footprints on society.

Through our chat, the professor highlighted the importance of being an “agile listener”.

“I was always an active listener and prepared to spend considerable time studying to understanding to get to the root of things.”

However, also important is having ambition, he says. “I was always brave and ambitious. I was always not afraid of taking on very grand challenges. I was always trying. I was never not afraid to do things.”

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