This award supports a joint US?India workshop, to be held August 2009 in Pune, on distributed development of the principles and applications of digital fabrication. Professor Neil Gershenfeld, Director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms is the lead investigator and co-organizer of the workshop with Indian host, Dr. Debabrata Goswami, Department of Chemistry & Centre for Laser Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K).
The study of digital fabrication is analogous to the earlier digitization of communication and computation, bringing the programmability of the digital world to the physical world through programmed assembly of functional systems. The intersection of digital computing, communications, and fabrication, in turn means that large numbers of small labs can collectively tackle research problems that were once limited to fewer elite institutions. This workshop will seek to develop research proposals for grand-challenge projects that can be addressed in this way, possibly offering broader participation, better local integration, and greater efficiency. Prospective topics include the printing of functional systems, analytical instrumentation for healthcare and the environment, community IT infrastructure, assistive medical technologies, energy conversion, remote sensing, and educational infrastructure.
The workshop will be held in conjunction with FAB5, the Fifth International Fab Lab Forum and Symposium on Digital Fabrication, in Pune, India, August 17-21. This is a global gathering of both research and community participants in the fab lab network, which grew from an NSF-supported outreach program of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.
