Prof. Neil Gershenfeld Director NSF CCR

ProposalProposal

CBA People Cynthia Breazeal (MAS) Bill Butera (MAS) Isaac Chuang (MAS, Physics) Drew Endy (Bio.) Neil Gershenfeld (MAS) Kim Hamad-Schifferli (Mech. E.) Joseph Jacobson (MAS) Tom Knight (CSAIL) Seth Lloyd (Mech. E.) Scott Manalis (MAS, Bio. E.) Bakhtiar Mikhak (MAS) Joe Paradiso (MAS) Pablo Parrilo (EECS) Sandy Pentland (MAS) Mitchel Resnick (MAS) Rahul Sarpeshkar (EECS, RLE) Larry Sass (Arch.) Sebastian Seung (BCS, Physics) Peter Shor (Math) Alex Slocum (Mech. E.) Karen Sollins (EECS, LCS) Timothy M. Swager (Chem.) Shuguang Zhang (Bio. E.) Ruzena Bajcsy Charles Bennett Barrie Gilbert Alan Huang Nathan Myhrvold Greg Papadopoulos John Doyle Sherry Lassiter Susan Murphy-Bottari John Difrancesco Mike Houlihan

Year 0 systems substrates foundations

Year 1 personal fabrication RF biology analog logic silicon biology paintable computing quantum computing nanogate adaptive robotics shape grammar sensate surfaces

Year 2 personal fabrication RF biology analog logic silicon biology paintable computing quantum computing nanogate adaptive robotics shape grammar sensate surfaces it from bit: how can functional description be embodied in physical form? bit from it: how can functional description be abstracted from physical form?

Year 3 it from bit: how can functional description be embodied in physical form? bit from it: how can functional description be abstracted from physical form? building with logic programming with math

Logical Assembly (Saul Griffith)

ThresholdsThresholds noise errors 1940s: Communications (Shannon) 1950s: Computation (Winograd, von Neumann) 2000s: Fabrication

Analog Logic fnfn xjxj xixi fmfm (Ben Vigoda, Andi Loeliger,...)

Programming Distributed Systems problem algorithm program executable protocol messages dynamics

Graphical Message-Passing problem algorithm program executable protocol messages dynamics

KLM NLL

Internet 0 (I0) (Raffi Krikorian, Danny Cohen, Doug Johnson) IP to leaf nodes peers don’t need server physical identity compiled standards open standards big bits end to end modulation IR RF powerline multidrop RFID bar codes mag stripe telephone telegraph IRDA Bluetooth Homeplug RS-485 EPC UPC ANSI/ISO V.92 Morse Code interdevice internetworking 3x10 8 m/s / 100 m = 3x10 6 s -1

CBA Courses MAS.862: The Physics of Information Technology MAS.863: How To Make (Almost) Anything MAS.864: The Nature of Mathematical Modeling MAS.961: How To Make Something That Makes (almost) Anything 6.151: Semiconductor Devices Project Laboratory 6.971: Engineering Simple Biological Systems 7.86, BE.481, MAS.866: Fundamental limits of biological measurement 8.371J, MAS.865J: Quantum Information Science BE.442: Molecular Structure of Biological Materials Cambridge Series on Information and the Natural Sciences Maguire Vigoda

Graduate Study in Design and the Natural Sciences Design and the Natural Sciences is a graduate academic program asking how the resources of natural systems can be used to embody functional designs in physical forms, and conversely how functional descriptions can be abstracted from physical forms. It provides training in the interdisciplinary research areas associated with MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), bringing together faculty from across campus in departments including Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, all working at the interface between logical and physical representations of information. DNS is part of the Media Arts and Sciences (MAS) program, which provides a broader context for studying the social as well as intellectual impact of emerging technologies on human expression. DNS teaches design practice in science, rather than scientific practice in design. Herbert Simon first articulated the goal of a "science of design", in The Sciences of the Artificial. This program sought to create desired artificial systems rather then describe existing natural ones, and was realized in the development of CAD and machine optimization, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life, and ultimately virtual digital worlds. The Sciences of the Artificial was itself a response to the growing dominance of physical science in engineering. The success of science in World War II, including the connection between particle physics and nuclear weapons, and between microwave spectroscopies and radar, was followed by the growth of engineering as a scientific rather than empirical discipline. A scientific approach to design was seen as being needed to counter the rise of experimental studies in new areas such as condensed matter physics, which emphasized observation over problem-solving skills. This split between description and prescription can be traced still further back, to the emergence of the modern notion of literacy in the Renaissance as a mastery of the available means of expression. This comprised the language and rhetoric of the Trivium, and the natural science of the Quadrivium; practical concerns of making things were relegated to the "illiberal arts" as a commerical concern. DNS seeks to correct this accumulated historical division between the artificial and natural. Abstractions that isolate the process of design from underlying physical degrees of freedom are increasingly unsustainable, driven by the demands of fundamental physical scaling limits as well as:

nm mm μm inout FabricationFabrication m

How To Make (almost) Anything

fabrication, instrumentation divides PCB, electromagnetics 3D scan/mill analytical instrumentation electronics India Norway space (  m), time (  s) Boston Ghana, Costa Rica,... Fab Labs