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05/11/2026

Join us at the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society 2026!

A day of conversations on how technology is shaping our world, and how we can shape it to serve people and society. Hear from changemakers, innovators, and finalists of the Kevin Xu Innovation Challenge as they share ideas for a more equitable future.

📅 Saturday, 7 November 2026
📍 Rhodes House, Oxford, and online

Wherever you are in the world, you’re welcome to join, in person or virtually. Register now via the link in bio, or comment “RHODES FORUM” and we’ll send the registration link straight to your inbox

04/11/2026

When was the last time someone told you that you were wrong, and you thanked them for it? When we disagree, the brain reacts much the way it does to a physical threat. Online, that reaction gets rewarded.

Hameeda, Dridhata and Himanshu have seen versions of disagreements define ideological and relational loyalty. “Our youth movements, our future for rights and our democracies are hinging on our ability to reach across divides,” they say.

Thankfully, neuroscience offers us some clues to navigate it.

Emerging from their lived experience and a decade of available research in the field of computational linguistics, behavioral science and positive psychology, the team has built Together for Tomorrow, a project under the nonprofit Dignity in Difference.

It’s an innovative digital platform where civil society leaders learn the science and philosophy of bridging, practice in simulations and get scored. It separately houses custom bridging models that spot bridging attributes like nuance and reasoning in real time conversations across 1,800+ languages.

“Mere reflections or knowledge is not half the problem here. It’s the practice. We need a safe, rehearsal space to learn this skill.”

Together for Tomorrow is a finalist in the 2026 Kevin Xu Innovation Challenge, part of the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society on 7 November. Join in person at Rhodes House, Oxford, or online.

Join from everywhere around the world! Registration link in bio.

04/11/2026

Some of our alumni have been busy turning ideas into real things, and we couldn’t be prouder.

Congratulations to Hab’il Xol’il on third place at HACKCREA, to Shivang Thakor on third place at the Tulane Innovation Institute Finals, and to Luiz Henrique Cavalcante and Paulo Cavalcante on launching Twin.

Keep building, all of you!

03/11/2026

“The default answer to all that complexity is more people. But skilled trial staff are in short supply, and too much of their time is spent chasing information across systems that don’t talk to each other.”

Daliso Zuze, a Rhodes Scholar from Zambia, spent years building software for a clinical research company, where he watched the people running trials spend their days chasing documents and updates across disconnected systems.

TrialSage is the AI teammate he is building to solve this problem, designed to pull whatever needs attention into one prioritized queue and answer questions about the trial in plain language. Daliso describes it as “like giving every single person their own chief of staff.”

Let the AI do the chasing, so the people on the team can return to the parts of the job only people can do.

TrialSage is a finalist in the 2026 Kevin Xu Innovation Challenge, part of the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society on 7 November. Join in person at Rhodes House, Oxford, or online. Registration link in bio.

Read more at equitechfutures.com/newsroom

02/11/2026

Medical offices everywhere deals with insurance paperwork, but for a small private practice, a stack of rejected claims decides whether the doors stay open.

Yale undergraduate Shaurya Sharma saw this during an M&A internship, where smaller practices were “closing and selling for pennies on the dollar.” His co-founder, Atreya Manaswi, didn’t need an internship to see the problem. His dad runs a clinic.

Auxo Health is the system they are building to solve this problem, meant to cover everything from the minute a patient walks in until a claim is paid. It’s now running in three musculoskeletal clinics.

“When we present them with some of these initial tools, it sort of blows their mind.”

Auxo Health is a finalist in the 2026 Kevin Xu Innovation Challenge, part of the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society on 7 November.

Join in person at Rhodes House, Oxford, or online. Registration link in bio.

Read more at equitechfutures.com/newsroom

30/10/2026

“If I had someone to bring me to the hospital, I could have come earlier.”

As a doctor in Addis Ababa, Melikte Weldetensaye heard this from patients far too often. The goodwill exists. Arranging it is the hard part.

Lend a Hand is a free app that connects people with disabilities with vetted, trained volunteers. A volunteer might give someone a ride to an antenatal appointment, help them at the bank, or walk with them through a market.

“It’s like Strava for goodwill.”

Lend a Hand is a finalist in the 2026 Kevin Xu Innovation Challenge, part of the Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society on 7 November. Register to join in Oxford or online via the link in bio.

Read more at equitechfutures.com/newsroom

InnovationThatMatters

30/10/2026

When we ask AI for Advice, we often assume we’re getting a neutral answer. But what happens when you ask an AI model which AI model is the best?

Rustum Dubash (Applied Data ‘25, India) and his co-authors set out to find it out. They audited models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google across questions on coding, math, science, and general knowledge, and compared their recommendations against real performance benchmarks. The results said: every provider showed some level of self-promotional bias, ranking its own models higher than their performance justified, with OpenAI showing the strongest tendency.

As AI increasingly shapes the decisions people make about technology, research like this raises important questions about transparency and fair competition. We are so proud to see Rustom asking them.

Congratulations Rustom!

28/10/2026

When machines can do more of what once required human effort, what becomes scarce, and what must we choose to cultivate?

Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society 2026 explores Human by Design: Technology, Agency, and the Futures We Choose. There is no single future waiting to arrive. The futures that become possible depend on the choices we make now.

Join scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and changemakers from around the world.

📅 7 November 2026
📍 Rhodes House, Oxford
💻 Attend in person or online

Registration is open to all.

27/10/2026

The United States is undergoing one of the largest infrastructure investments in its history.

Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers to power artificial intelligence, a buildout that rivals the scale of the railroads and the country’s electrification. And it’s happening just as the effects of climate change are becoming impossible to ignore.

Communities across the country are pushing back against new data centers due to rising electricity bills, strained water supplies, and the prospect of more fossil fuel power plants.

How big are these impacts, and what can we do about it?

Join us tomorrow for The Environmental Costs of Building AI, with Dr. Abhilash Mishra, physicist and AI policy researcher at the University of Chicago. He will:

→ Walk through the evidence on AI’s energy and water use, separating well-supported findings from hype
→ Look at the policies and community strategies that could make AI’s growth more sustainable
→ Share what residents can do to shape how it unfolds where they live

📅 October 28, 2026
🕖 11:00 PM UTC (7:00 PM ET)
⏱ 75 minutes | Online | Open to All

Comment ‘Tech in Practice’ to get the registration link in your DMs.
Select “Book as Guest” to receive the Zoom link.

Thank you to our host partners, East Brunswick Friends of the Library and the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission.

Tech in Practice is an initiative of Equitech Futures and the Kevin Xu Initiative at the University of Chicago.

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