"It is about how all things can be made better. And the way to do that is to do new things. It is written in Latin because I believe there is a lot that can be learned from history."
For an object to be useful, two things must go right: the cost to manufacture, and the cost to maintain. Today, we build "widgets." If you cut your hand, it heals. If you cut a smartphone, it breaks.
We are obsessed with bridging the gap between prototype and mass production, and unlocking a new kind of maintenance: Self-Healing.
"Imagine entire buildings, trains, bridges being alive, maintaining themselves. Apartment complexes that build themselves... using materials we use like wood, cement, glass to build these 'animals'."
We are moving beyond software that simply "runs." We are building systems that possess a lifecycle.
We have synthetic brains (Deep Learning), but we are far from complex objects that can self-replicate given simpler input. I can have a kid, and the machine that makes a kid is no bigger than the mature kid itself. This is not true for anything we build.
Active Research Goal
"The goal is to work on things other people are not working on well. If a problem is being solved... we move on."
Active earthquake cancellation. Using arrays of ground actuators (speakers/bombs) to cancel out high-amplitude shaking to save cities. We should be actively managing these systems, rather than being poorly reactive.
Tor gives anonymity. Torrent gives availability. But we lack efficiency. We are designing algorithms that provide a sound communication backbone for the most challenging authoritarian regimes.
How come our eyes are only this good? We aim to leverage biological mutations on demand. Expanding the visual spectrum to see underwater, or designing systems that unlock the hard work nature has already put in.