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When ������Ƶ University Provost sits down with faculty to learn something new, her classroom isn’t a lecture hall or research lab—it’s the podcast studio. After photo shoots, topic briefs, pronunciation checks and run-throughs, the conversations begin.

Now in its second season, the Quantum Potential podcast provides a glimpse into the university’s ingenuity. With more than 13,000 all-time listens, audiences are discovering how bold ideas and radical collaborations at the Tier 1 research institution are shaping the world in real time.

Take, for instance, two professors from vastly different disciplines whose research into AI-driven propaganda led to a congressional briefing.

Or the law professor who, alongside her co-investigator and students, combed through a labyrinth of court data to reimagine a more accessible judicial system.

There’s the pollster and political science professor making the case for transparency and public polling literacy.

Then the biomedical engineer who uses augmented reality to assist with cochlear implant microsurgeries, helping people hear the world around them more clearly.

In episode after episode of Quantum Potential, the deeply curious Raver peels back the layers of a research ecosystem backed by intellectual rigor and innovation.

TAKING RESEARCH TO THE AIRWAVES

Before Raver ever sat down in the host’s chair, the idea for Quantum Potential took shape in ’s head.

The Distinguished ������Ƶ Professor of Communication of Science and Technology asked two not-so-simple questions: Why does higher education matter? And why is research important?

His search for answers to those questions became a called Quantum Potential, released in October 2023, that spotlighted the work and personal stories of ������Ƶ faculty.

“I spent the first year that I was at ������Ƶ just meeting people, and initially it was a lot of meetings with faculty,” Abumrad says. “I kept meeting these incredible people who are doing amazing work across the university—like these two dudes who were experimenting with how to solve traffic jams—and I thought, if you really want to tell the story of higher ed, you need to tell the story of the people who work there and might literally change the world tomorrow!”

Raver saw podcast potential in Abumrad’s films. Recognizing ������Ƶ’s grit, tenacity and collaborative spirit in each conversation, Raver took Quantum Potential to the airwaves.

“Once we started recording these conversations, it was clear they deserved a wider audience: anyone curious about how great ideas shape the world,” Raver says. “The podcast format lets us go deeper, move faster and bring listeners right into the heart of the unscripted, energizing conversations that spark discovery.”

COMBATING AN AI-DRIVEN THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

At ������Ƶ, bold ideas are tested, shaped by cross-disciplinary perspectives and, ultimately, refined into real-world impact. That’s how and found themselves briefing experts and lawmakers on the potential threats posed by AI-driven misinformation and political propaganda.

In a , Goldstein, a research professor and former Pentagon official who leads the at the ������Ƶ University Institute of National Security, and Benson, associate professor of political science and a faculty affiliate at the Institute of National Security, tell Raver about the moment they realized exactly what was contained in a 400-page document that had been leaked to Goldstein.

In a text from a fellow researcher, Goldstein had received a link to a dump of roughly 400 PDFs.

“I started to comb through it,” Goldstein says. “It was mostly in Mandarin but included technical specs—pictures of U.S. congresspeople—and I knew something wasn’t right. I did the basic research and said, ‘There’s something super interesting here, so I better call my friend Brett [Benson].’” Benson, who researches Chinese politics and East Asian relations, can translate Mandarin. What he saw in those PDFs took him through a whole gamut of emotions.

“I just thought ‘There’s no way that this is what it purports to be,’ but I was pretty blown away,” Benson says. “I had that surge of … excitement—but also dread.”

The duo had uncovered a meticulously researched proof of concept to use artificial intelligence to manipulate public opinion. The plan? Scrape massive amounts of open-source data—content from social media accounts, Spotify playlists and anything public online—and build highly personalized “personas” to interact with people for the sole purpose of political persuasion over a period of time.

The documents revealed that the AI personas and their messaging would be so tailored to the recipients that realizing they were engaging with AI could prove difficult. On top of that, there were plans for the personas to evade detection altogether.

The document leak was the handiwork of a disgruntled GoLaxy employee.

GoLaxy is a Chinese data analysis company that positions itself as a tool for marketing; it helps clients gather information on public sentiment using AI-driven big data collection.

In the documents that Goldstein and Benson discovered, however, GoLaxy claimed to be a product of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the government’s top research academy, and run by the State Council, the government’s premier decision-making body.

The duo’s next steps? Get ahead of the problem.

“Discovery ������Ƶ encourages this radical collaboration so that this happened at a speed that we don’t often see in academia.” — Brett Goldstein

They were able to move quickly with funding from Discovery ������Ƶ, an initiative that supports scholars’ research efforts through investment.

“Discovery ������Ƶ encourages this radical collaboration so that this happened at a speed that we don’t often see in academia,” Goldstein says.

“I got a link and made it safe, realized we had something and pulled in Benson. We surged and got through 399 pages and got it out to The New York Times. And this all happened in a few months. Next, we’re briefing Congress, we’re working on a longer journal piece, and then a body of research on how we actually get at the problem.”

“I don’t think that Goldstein and I would have met had it not been for the opportunities provided [at ������Ƶ], because we live in two different worlds,” Benson adds, referring to his experience in political science versus Goldstein’s in computer science. “But the collaboration has been pretty exciting.”

HEARING WITH AI-ASSISTED PRECISION

For , artificial intelligence poses a different kind of possibility: Can advanced computers help a cochlear implant user hear well enough to compose a symphony?

The assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering sat down with Raver during Quantum Potential’s second season to discuss .

“Cochlear implants are generally a remarkable technology,” Noble says. “They work well for so many people, but there’s a lot of variability in outcomes. This variability has been a problem since cochlear implants were first developed in the 1980s.”

In addition to outdated technology, the procedure to implant cochlear devices is challenging, to say the least.

“In surgery—we call it a microsurgery because everything is at a microscopic level, and the surgeon is actually looking through a surgical microscope while performing this whole procedure—the surgeon has to gain access to the inner ear,” Noble says.

“The inner ear is composed of several intracochlear tubes and intracochlear cavities, each of which is probably no more than about a millimeter wide. There are a number of other structures that are really critical, but they’re all hidden behind bone, where it’s very difficult to visually identify them.”

Noble believes there’s a better way to perform cochlear implant surgeries.

“This is a perfect scenario for an augmented reality system,” Noble says. “Can we enable the surgeon to flip a button and then be able to see all of the anatomy that’s really of interest hiding behind that bone? I’m working closely with a handful of surgeons to try to design this system so that surgeons will be excited to use it.”

Using machine learning and augmented reality tools, he is working to help surgeons place cochlear implants with greater accuracy, which should give more patients the ability to experience clearer, more nuanced hearing. As it stands, only 5 percent of people who would benefit from the surgery receive it.

“This is a perfect scenario for an augmented reality system.” — Jack Noble

Given the cost of early research and development, Noble notes, the go-to-market path for this technology will be challenging. But he finds encouragement in the waves he can make right now, thanks to the ������Ƶ ecosystem—particularly the ������Ƶ Institute for Surgery and Engineering.

“It’s such a great opportunity to innovate in medical fields,” Noble says.

The institute includes a shared research space at ������Ƶ University Medical Center where labs across the School of Engineering and the medical center can work on projects together.

“There’s a mock operating room where we can do experiments with novel image-guided procedures, which is just a fantastic resource. There aren’t many places like it anywhere else in the world,” Noble says.

BUILDING A PEOPLE-CENTERED JUDICIAL SYSTEM

As Noble works to improve outcomes in the operating room, focuses on improving outcomes in the courtroom.

The law professor and director of ������Ƶ’s Access to Justice program joined Raver during season one of the podcast to by operating in the ways that they actually navigate the system.

“Courts are meant to serve people, ultimately, and so in some ways, I don’t think that should be a particularly radical concept,” Sudeall says. “They’re meant to help people resolve disputes—things that come up in everyday lives, things relating to your housing, to your family, to your job.

“And yet, the way in which courts are designed is, for the most part, by lawyers and for lawyers. And the reality is that most people navigating the legal system today don’t have a lawyer.”

Sudeall is curious about what happens when people navigate courts without counsel. She spent one year, alongside her colleague Charlotte Alexander, poring over criminal court case data in Fulton County, Atlanta, to map individuals’ experiences.

Her findings show that while the court system is neatly divided—criminal court, civil court, family court and so on—resolving disputes isn’t as clean-cut.

“The reality is that most people navigating the legal system today don’t have a lawyer.” — Lauren Sudeall

“One incident can touch many different contexts,” Sudeall says. “I think domestic violence is a good example of that—one incident of violence could lead to criminal charges for one person. It might require that somebody else get an order of protection, which is a civil matter. It may involve needing to relocate, in terms of housing. It may involve a lot of family law issues—divorce, custody.”

Sudeall suggests that rather than focusing on communicating to lawyers, courts should adapt to the realities of the people living in their jurisdiction by making sure that forms aren’t saturated with confusing legal terms, by replacing one-size-fits-all procedural justice with policies shaped by local norms and by recognizing that although courts are siloed, people’s lives aren’t.

Sudeall’s people-first court philosophy has made a good impression on her students.

“I teach a few different classes at the Law School in this vein, and I think students have found all of them to be pretty interesting,” Sudeall says. “I teach one class called Access to Justice, appropriately enough, and the main purpose of the class is to really get students to, first, understand what it feels like and looks like to navigate these systems as someone who has very little to no legal experience.”

Next, Sudeall asks students to come up with creative solutions.

“In law school, we spend a lot of time critiquing. It’s very easy to pick apart. It’s a lot harder to actually come up with solutions,” Sudeall says. “So, part of what [students] do is also think about things like legal literacy, and they’re tasked with coming up with a discrete reform. Not these big, lofty policy goals, like suggesting the whole system is underfunded, but rather something that they can create that a court could implement next week, or a legal aid organization.”

The project results in a presentation to their fellow classmates, judges and representatives from legal aid organizations, who all provide feedback. “To me, that’s a huge win,” Sudeall says. “Not only did the students learn, but they actually did something that’s going to benefit.”

UNCOVERING THE GRAY AREA IN POLLING DATA

People are also at the center of ’s research. He focuses on measuring and accurately depicting public opinion.

The Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and professor of political science studies elections, political institutions and lawmaking, and he uses the data to understand how attitudes form, and shift, about all of it.

Clinton, who is a co-director of the and an NBC News senior election analyst, dropped by the Quantum Potential studio in season one to —and what it might take to rebuild public trust in polling numbers.

“One thing about the data that is really important, and a lot of people have cited this, is the absolute humility that you need when you work with data,” Clinton says. “When you do polling, you will be wrong more often than right. There is an unescapable error, even if you do things perfectly.”

“You’ve got this weird disjunction where you can quantify something and it feels really, really certain and really, really precise, but then you can take that [data] and over-interpret what it means, and we do that all the time as human beings—have certainty about something without having the humility of understanding.”

Polling numbers are the end result of a myriad of processes. To conduct a typical state poll (800 respondents), a pollster needs to contact at least 40,000 people. As the nation’s discourse becomes more polarized, Clinton anticipates growing barriers to gathering accurate data.

“One thing about the data that is really important is the absolute humility that you need when you work with data.” — Josh Clinton

“Right off the bat, you know you got a problem because the 800 you talked to are abnormal relative to the 39,200 who did not, right? They’re willing to talk, which is great if you’re a pollster,” Clinton says.

“But then also, you’re trying to capture the electorate, and given the nature of our political discourse, some of the electorate may not want to talk to pollsters. You need to start making decisions about how you make those 800 people look like what you think the electorate’s going to look like…which you don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet!”

Clinton argues that polling transparency and increasing the public’s understanding of statistics—including an awareness of their limitations—can counter Americans’ mounting distrust in polling. It’s also his teaching philosophy.

In the classroom, his students learn not what to think, but how to think: how to question evidence, interpret uncertainty and update conclusions when new information appears.

“How we understand the numbers—where they come from, the type of biases that might be there, and who’s trying to tell you those numbers—is a critically important skill to understand where the world is, what it looks like descriptively and also how we make our way as citizens of the world,” Clinton says. “I teach students how to navigate the numbers so when they’re future leaders, and leaders now, frankly, they get data they need to make decisions.”

THE FUTURE OF DISCOVERY

With every conversation, Quantum Potential does two things—spotlights the innovation originating on campus and offers clear insight on how and where to support researchers and students in their pursuit of breaking boundaries.

“Every episode reveals why ������Ƶ is committed to transformative research,” Raver says. “My hope is that Quantum Potential reminds our community—students, faculty, alumni and partners—what becomes possible when scholars challenge assumptions and collaborate across boundaries.”

— Porsha Thomas

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