Would love to see a more in-depth article on BVH construction itself! I'm decently familiar with the main concepts but have no clue what the current SOTA looks like (is that even public info?).

BVH construction is my favorite question to ask in interviews because there's no single best solution and it mostly relies on mathy heuristics to get a decent tree. You can also always devote more time to making a more optimal tree but there's a tradeoff where it'll eventually take more time than it saves in raytracing.