The event is designed to connect students and professionals with key employers, alongside providing industry insights and upskilling opportunities.

This coming Saturday (25 April), the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) will hold the 12th annual Careers in Biopharma event. 

Taking place in the O’Reilly Hall at University College Dublin (UCD), the event is an opportunity for students, graduates and jobseekers to expand their knowledge of the biopharma sector. Attendees can meet with key industry employers, sit in on lectures, engage with upskilling opportunities and expand their networks. 

Registration for the event is free and those interested in attending can register in advance. The following is a list of some of the STEM organisations and institutions that will be in attendance. 

AbbVie

US pharmaceutical company Abbvie was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Chicago. The organisation has more than 80 global locations, including in Cork, Dublin, Sligo and Mayo. AbbVie focuses primarily on discovering, developing and delivering therapies and treatments for serious illnesses, in areas such as immunology, oncology and neuroscience. 

Alexion

Established in 1992 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexion has been operating in Ireland since 2013, when it opened its first Irish location in Blanchardstown. Between the Dublin and Athlone locations, Alexion employs more than 1300 people in Ireland. Acquired by AstraZeneca in 2020, Alexion focuses on creating therapies and solutions for complex and rare diseases. 

Amgen

Biopharmaceutical company Amgen was first established in 1980 and has its primary location in Thousand Oaks California. There are two locations in Dublin and the organisation’s mission involves discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative medicines to fight some of the world’s most serious conditions, such as heart disease, obesity-related conditions, rare illnesses, inflammatory conditions and cancer. In January of this year, Amgen announced the acquisition of cancer drug discovery platform Dark Blue Therapeutics in a deal valued at up to $840m. 

Bristol Myers Squibb

Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) has been active in Ireland for 52 years, beginning operations in 1964 with an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Plant in Swords, Dublin. Currently, in Ireland, BMS runs a biologics drug-substance manufacturing facility in Cruiserath and external manufacturing divisions in Blanchardstown and Shannon. Roughly 1,000 people in Ireland are currently employed by BMS. 

Eli Lilly

US pharma giant Eli Lilly manufacturers treatments in areas such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes. The company has been operating in Ireland since 1978 and employs more than 3,700 people across three sites, in Limerick and Cork. In 2024, the multinational announced plans to invest $1bn into the expansion of its manufacturing site in Limerick, bringing total investment in the build to $2bn. Development on the site continues. 

Grifols

Established in Spain in 1909 global healthcare company Grifols has a premises in Dublin, where it offers a range of biopharma products and services. The Dublin location serves as the management center for Grifols Biopharma overseeing the treasury, risk management, supply and demand planning, regulatory, R&D and commercial functions. It is also a hub for labelling, packing, final conditioning, and distribution of finished plasma products. The organisation employs more than 25,000 across the globe, with a presence in more than 30 countries and regions. 

ISPE

Established in 1980 and headquartered in Maryland, the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) is a large non-profit that focuses on scientific, technical and regulatory advancements in the pharmaceutical lifecycle. The organisation has more than 23,000 employees who are involved in building solutions in the development and manufacturing of safe and effective pharmaceutical and biologic medicines and medical delivery devices. Members are dispersed across more than 90 countries around the world. 

Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine

Healthcare company Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine will also be in attendance at NIBRT’s event. The company employs roughly 140,000 people globally and aims to tackle complex diseases via prevention, treatments and cures. The organisation is particularly focused on the areas of oncology, immunology, cardiopulmonary and neuroscience. Johnson & Johnson’s connection with Ireland began in 1935, with more than 6,000 Irish people employed across its 10 locations in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Mayo.

MSD

US multinational pharmaceutical company MSD has a strong presence in Ireland, with facilities in Dublin, Carlow, Cork, Louth, Meath and Tipperary. MSD carries out research and creates medicines and vaccines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including cancer, HIV, Ebola, emerging animal diseases and recently Covid-19.

OmniSpirant Therapeutics

Galway’s OmniSpirant Therapeutics was founded in 2016 by Gerry McCauley. It is an early stage therapeutics company working on the development of a novel technology that uses inhaled stem cell exosomes to treat cancer and respiratory diseases. 

Pfizer

Global pharmaceutical company Pfizer is a well-established name worldwide. Currently the organisation employs around 3,700 people across six sites in Ireland. The first Irish location was established in 1969 and since then, Pfizer has invested $8bn. In March Pfizer announced the launch of its 2026 Apprenticeship Programme which is open to both school leavers and those looking for a new career or educational achievement. The programme is available across Pfizer’s sites in Grange Castle, Dublin; Newbridge, Kildare; and Ringaskiddy, Cork.

ProPharma

Established in 2001, North Carolina headquartered ProPharma helps pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies bring new therapies to the market. Their work covers the early development stages, all the way through to the clinical, regulatory approval and commercialisation phases. The organisation has a strong global presence across Europe, the US and the AsiaPacific reason. 

Sanofi

Paris-based pharmaceutical manufacturing company Sanofi produces drugs across a wide range of therapeutic disciplines, treating illnesses such as MS and diabetes. The R&D driven, AI-powered biopharma has a presence in more than 60 countries and currently has two Irish sites in Waterford and Dublin. 

Veolia 

Headquartered in France, Veolia employs more than 700 employees across Ireland. The organisation works with customers to manage scarce resources through their expertise in operations, engineering and technology. The aim is to reduce the environmental impact of public, business and industrial activities. This is achieved via a focus on three key areas, decarbonisation, reducing pollution and maximising resource efficiency.

WuXi Biologics

Headquartered in China, WuXi Biologics is an open-access biologics technology platform that offers end-to-end services in order to accelerate the development and manufacturing of biologics. WuXi employs more than 13,000 employees across China, the US, Ireland, Germany, and Singapore. A global team that includes experts and scientists in biologics R&D and manufacturing, technology innovation, and operations. Located on a 26-hectare site, WuXi has a location midway between Dublin and Belfast, in Dundalk, Louth. The site is one of the largest in the world utilising single-use bioreactor technology.

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Over 10,000 Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) instances exposed online are vulnerable to ongoing attacks exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) security flaw, according to nonprofit security organization Shadowserver.

Zimbra is a popular email and collaboration software suite used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including hundreds of government agencies and thousands of businesses.

The vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-48700) affects ZCS 8.8.15, 9.0, 10.0, and 10.1 and can allow unauthenticated attackers to access sensitive information after executing arbitrary JavaScript within the user’s session​​.

Synacor released security patches to address the flaw in June 2025, when it warned that CVE-2025-48700 exploits require no user interaction and can be triggered when a user views a maliciously crafted email message in the Zimbra Classic UI.

On Monday, CISA flagged CVE-2025-48700 as being abused in the wild and added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

The U.S. cybersecurity agency also ordered Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to secure their Zimbra servers within three days, by April 23.

On Friday, Internet security watchdog Shadowserver also warned that over 10,500 Zimbra servers exposed online remain unpatched, most of them in Asia (3,794) and Europe (3,793).

While CISA didn’t share any details about CVE-2025-48700 attacks, another XSS vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-66376 and patched in early November) was exploited by the state-backed APT28 (a.k.a. Fancy Bear, Strontium) military hackers in phishing attacks targeting Ukrainian government entities starting in January.

This phishing campaign (codenamed Operation GhostMail by security researchers at Seqrite Labs) also targeted the Ukrainian State Hydrology Agency (a critical infrastructure entity under the Ministry of Infrastructure that provides navigational, maritime, and hydrographic support) and delivered an obfuscated JavaScript payload when recipients opened the malicious emails in vulnerable Zimbra webmail sessions.

“The phishing email has no malicious attachments, no suspicious links, no macros. The entire attack chain lives inside the HTML body of a single email, there are no malicious attachments,” Seqrite Labs said at the time.

Zimbra flaws are frequently exploited in attacks and have been used to breach thousands of vulnerable email servers in recent years.

For instance, Russian Winter Vivern cyberespies used another reflected XSS exploit to breach Zimbra webmail portals in February 2023 and steal emails sent and received by NATO-aligned organizations and individuals, including military personnel, government officials, and diplomats.

More recently, in October 2024, U.S. and U.K. cyber agencies warned that APT29 (a.k.a. Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard) hackers linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) were targeting vulnerable Zimbra servers “at a mass scale,” exploiting a security issue that had been previously abused to steal email account credentials.

AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.

At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.

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Dummy units of the iPhone 18 Pro series and a super-sleek new foldable Ultra model have leaked, giving people a good idea of what Apple has in store for the September debut. Case makers received these prototypes based on the final CAD files, thus they are quite similar to the production hardware in terms of shapes, sizes, layout, and so on. Owners of current phones will notice some little but important changes rather than a complete redesign, with one exception that stands out.

Starting with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, both retain the general look and feel of their predecessors, as well as the elegant titanium frames and flat edges. The Pro version is slightly larger in two dimensions, 0.36 mm taller and 0.39 mm broader than the iPhone 17 Pro, but the thickness remains same. Old cases will still fit nicely, however rubber ones may feel a little loose. The Pro Max follows a similar path, but adds extra bulk where it counts most. The camera area is now 11.54 mm thick, up from 11.23 mm on the previous Max, and the total thickness including those lenses is 13.77 mm, compared to 12.92 mm previously. That extra stuff adds 7 grams to the weight, bringing it to 240 grams, and users who use their phones for extended periods of time will notice the difference in their hands.

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Every single extra millimeter is driven by camera hardware. The rear lenses on the Pro models are noticeably larger than those on the iPhone 17 series, all lined up in the same old square configuration but raised somewhat to accommodate the larger glass pieces. The camera island on the Pro Max appears to be a little more hefty from the side, but this is a purposeful choice to give us a sneak peak at better optics without affecting the phone’s overall design. Buttons and ports are where you’d expect them to be, and the front display notch has dropped in width, allowing for more screen real estate. These dummy models show no substantial changes in materials or colors, so we get the same polished titanium look and glass back.

All eyes are now on the iPhone Ultra mockup, which is Apple’s first attempt at a foldable phone, with a book-style design that folds up like a small little notebook. When closed, it is only 11 mm thick, which is quite slim and feels solid in the hand. The outer screen is about 5.5 inches, which isn’t bad for something that’s supposed to be incredibly portable, and the interior display is 7.8 inches with an aspect ratio similar to a tiny tablet. When folded up, it’s a slim 71 mm tall, with a width roughly equal to an iPhone 17 Pro Max turned on its side, which is really cool given the new hinge.

Material choices are consistent with the Pro series, with polished titanium on the frame, while the Ultra takes a different approach. The typical unibody construction has been abandoned in favor of the fold. A raised part on the back panel holds the two rear cameras, which are perfectly arranged to keep the design from feeling cluttered or unbalanced. On the right side, you’ll find a power button that also serves as a Touch ID sensor for secure, one-touch unlocking, as well as a dedicated camera button that has been intelligently placed so that you can easily access it with one hand. The volume controls are located at the top edge, same as they are on smaller tablets. Wireless charging is still a possibility, but you must purchase a case that supports it because there isn’t enough space inside for the standard built-in magnets.
[Source]

Amazon just scored a major coup with Meta thanks, once again, to Amazon’s own homegrown chips. Meta has signed a deal to use millions of AWS Graviton chips to power its growing AI needs, Amazon announced Friday.

Note that the AWS Graviton is an ARM-based CPU, (a central processing unit, the chip that handles general computing tasks) not a GPU (a graphical processing unit).

While GPUs remain the chip of choice for training large models, once those models are trained, AI agents built on top of them are causing a shift in the type of chip is needed. Agents create compute-intensive workloads like real-time reasoning, writing code, search, and the the coordination involved in managing agents through multi-step tasks. AWS’s latest version of Graviton was designed specifically to handle AI-related compute needs, the company says.

This deal brings more of Meta’s cash back to AWS instead of competitors like Google Cloud. Last August, Meta signed a six year, $10 billion deal with Google Cloud, though Meta had, until then, primarily been an AWS customer that also used Microsoft Azure.

We couldn’t help but notice that AWS timed the announcement of this deal right as the Google Cloud Next conference wrapped up, like a virtual smirk at its cloud rival. Google, of course, also makes its own custom AI chips and announced new versions of them at the show.

True, Amazon makes its own AI GPU as well: the Trainium, which, despite its name, is used for both training and inference — the stage that happens after a model is trained, when it’s actively processing prompts.

But Anthropic had already swooped in with a deal announced earlier this month that commandeered many of those chips for years to come. The Claude maker agreed to spend $100 billion over 10 years to run its workloads on AWS — with a particular focus on Trainium — while Amazon agreed to invest another $5 billion (bringing its total to $13 billion of investment) into Anthropic in return.

Ultimately, the Meta deal is allowing Amazon to showcase a huge AI customer as a proving point for its homegrown CPUs. These are chips that compete with Nvidia’s new Vera CPU, which is also ARM-based and designed to handle AI agentic workloads. The difference, of course, is that Nvidia sells its chips and AI systems to enterprises and cloud providers (including AWS). AWS only sells access to its chips through its cloud service.

Earlier this month Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took aim at Nvidia and Intel in his annual shareholder letter, saying that enterprises want better price-performance ratios for AI, and that he intends to win deals on that basis. This also means the pressure couldn’t be higher on Amazon’s internal chip building team to deliver, a team that we visited last month in an exclusive tour of their lab.

JP Morgan & Chase, BlackRock, DST Global and Arch Venture Partners have reportedly invested in the lab.

Jeff Bezos’s physical AI lab Project Prometheus has closed a $10bn funding round at a valuation of around $38bn, Bloomberg has confirmed.

A sources has told the publication that JP Morgan & Chase, BlackRock, DST Global and Arch Venture Partners are among those participating in the round. Speculation around the closure of the round was reported earlier this week by the Financial Times (FT).

News of Bezos’s AI venture first surfaced last November. Bezos founded Project Prometheus – a codename for the company – alongside former Google Life Sciences executive Vik Bajaj.

The company builds AI that assists engineering and manufacturing in a number of sectors, including in computers, aerospace and automobiles.

The lab reportedly amassed an initial $6.2bn in November, partly from Bezos himself. Although demand has further extended the raise, FT reported.

The co-founders are also reportedly leading efforts to raise “tens of billions of dollars or more” for a holding company to acquire parts of other companies likely to be disrupted by AI.

Meanwhile, Prometheus also held talks with sovereign investment funds, including from Singapore and Gulf nations. Additionally, it plans to collect stakes in companies across its target sectors for AI training data.

Prometheus had already hired around 100 employees across San Francisco, London and Zurich by November last year, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta. FT sources said that the company is hiring people with experience “building out massive infrastructure projects”.

Earlier this month, it was reported that xAI co-founder Kyle Kosic has left his role at OpenAI to join Project Prometheus. According to his LinkedIn profile, Kosic is currently employed as a builder at a stealth start-up.

Kosic worked as xAI’s infrastructure lead and as a member of the technical staff at OpenAI.

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What About the Dyson PencilVac?

I’m separating the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones (yes, that’s the full name) because, while it’s still a stick vacuum, its design is so different that it stands apart from any other stick vacuum I’ve tried.

The primary difference is that the motor, dustbin, and battery are all contained in the slim handle. No more bulky, top-heavy build that these cordless vacuums are known for. The body and feel remind me of using a Swiffer, but it’s a vacuum instead of just a slapdash mop. The PencilVac uses Dyson’s Hyperdymium motor—the same one that’s usually in the brand’s hair tools—and has a tiny 0.08-liter dustbin, but compacts the debris to make that small amount of space last. It also has a short battery life of only 30 minutes.

It has much lower power than the other vacuums in Dyson’s lineup and can only be used on hard floors. It has four fluffy rollers, aptly named Fluffycones, on the cleaner head, and they’re designed to keep hair from getting tangled. It works, but instead of getting tangled, the vacuum sometimes balled up my hair and spat it back out instead of sending it into the dustbin. It was great for quick cleans for things like litter, dust, and cereal, but it’s a high price to pay for something that’s more limited than cheaper vacuums.

Still, I think there’s a use case here, especially from an accessibility perspective. This is a good option for households where someone might not be strong enough or have the mobility to easily push and hold up a top-heavy stick vacuum, and the charging base makes it easy to quickly store and grab without putting it down or bending over. The compact size is also an argument for small homes, and it did fit into smaller crevices better than standard-sized stick vacuums (think the space between the toilet and wall). The Dyson V15 is a better all-around buy, but I think there are people to whom this specific vacuum could really appeal. Dyson also launched the PencilWash last month, a similar design but a wet vac, which I’m testing next.

Honorable Mentions

We haven’t tried a vacuum yet that we absolutely hate. The ones below are solid vacuums and, in some cases, much cheaper than our top picks, but we didn’t like them quite as much.

Bissell IconPet Turbo Edge for $200: Bissell’s OG stick vacuum is a popular model that’s been around for a while. It does a good job picking up hair and cat litter, and easily turns into a handheld vac too. The battery lasts a little longer, but former WIRED reviewer Medea Giordano wasn’t impressed by its Cheerio-gathering skills, and it can’t stand up on its own.

Bissell’s PowerClean FurFinder for $200: This is a great stick vacuum, and it was our previous top pick. It does an all-around good job on all kinds of flooring, comes with a nice range of accessories, and has the FurFinder tool to help with pet hair. It’s still a great vacuum, especially if you have pets, but unless you’re using the FurFinder tool frequently, you can get the slightly cheaper regular Bissell PowerClean for a similar experience.

Bosch Unlimited 10 Cordless Stick Vacuum for $699: This vacuum has six cleaning modes and can bend in the middle, but it didn’t always contain the debris after I was done cleaning. It does have a 10-year warranty on the motor, which is more than other brands offer.

Black & Decker Powerseries Extreme Max for $169: The Black & Decker Powerseries Extreme Max is a great stick vacuum at a lower price than most others. It stands up on its own, has three power levels you can easily control from the handle, and handles well on the different surfaces in my home. I liked this vacuum a lot, but it wasn’t as stable as the Bissell above, and the handle felt a little plasticky compared to it and other vacuums I tested. It did have a larger-capacity dustbin, though.

Dirt Devil Power Swerve Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum for $72: We previously recommended this as a budget pick. It’s a good vacuum for the money, but there were questions about how long the battery lasts and the build quality.

Dyson V12 Detect for $550: The V12 Detect is worth considering if you want something even slightly cheaper and lighter than the V15 (though it’s less powerful and has a smaller bin).

Eufy Robot Vacuum 3-In-1 E20 for $500: WIRED reviewer Adrienne So was stoked to try Eufy’s E20, which is a stick vacuum, handheld vacuum, and robot vacuum all in one. It’s a handy, well-designed device, but it’s only good for light cleaning.

Eureka Stylus Elite for $280: This is a good stick vacuum with a self-emptying bin at a reasonable price. It cleaned up a litter mat especially well, and there are specific settings for carpet and hardwood. However, to suck up larger pieces like Cheerios, I had to lift the vacuum up and place it directly on top of them.

Levoit LVAC-300 for $270: This is a well-rounded stick vacuum that has a good price point (and often on sale). It has an hour of battery life, comes with a couple of accessories, and has similar specs to our favorite Dyson vacuum. The 6.6-pound weight also made it fairly easy to clean the three sets of stairs in WIRED reviewer Luke Larson’s home, and it has HEPA filtration. While it can stand on its own, it easily tips over in the process.

Ryobi 18V One+ HP Advanced Stick Vacuum Kit for $399: This is our runner-up cordless vacuum pick for the best pet hair vacuums. It has powerful suction, cyclonic filtration, a brushless motor, an easily removable roller bar, and lights on the vacuum head to better see pet hair and dander.

Tineco Pure One Station 5 for $459: I love that this vacuum has a self-emptying base station. It’s a solid vacuum overall, but my favorite part about it was the docking station. You don’t need to choose Tineco to get that, though; Shark has a few models now with self-emptying stations, and Dyson has one due out this year.

Worx 20V Cordless Stick Vacuum for $250: This is a fine vacuum, but the dustbin was more difficult to clean out than those of other models I tested.

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