We designed and developed the ASPI Critical Technology Tracker – a tool filling the global gap, comparing which nations are leading in critical technologies such as AI, biotechnology, and robotics.

The website compares which countries are contributing the most research, and the flow of researchers between countries at various career stages—undergraduate, postgraduate and employment—identifying brain drains and brain gains in each technology area. The website is designed to facilitate informed public debate and policy-making around critical technology research.

The website visualises data based on an analysis of the top 10% most-cited papers in each area of research, published between 2018 and 2022 – a total of 2.2 million papers. The Critical Technology Tracker shows that, for most technologies, all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the US).

12k
Users visited the tech tracker within the first week.: 42k
Page views were generated, averaging 3.5 per user.: 60%
Of visitors were from the US, UK, Australia, India, France, Russia and Germany.

media coverage

The report and interactive website shared across multi-national news channels, sparking discussions from twitter to reddit

ideation

deep diving low-fidelity ideas to explore how to best help the user navigate the data

design system & style

Establishing a design style, and building a comprehensive system outwards from the most granular components

Visualising which world powers are leading the critical tech race

We designed and developed the ASPI Critical Technology Tracker – a tool filling the global gap, comparing which nations are leading in critical technologies such as AI, biotechnology, and robotics.