10:00 am Lecture

GEORGE DYSON, Science Historian Origins of the Digital Universe September 18, 2011 at 10:00 am Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, Perimeter Institute Some numbers mean things, and some numbers do things. Making - and breaking - that distinction was central to renowned mathematician John von Neumann’s implementation of Alan Turing’s Universal Machine in 1945-56. In this lecture, you will learn about the unlikeliest place on earth to build such a device and how this vital 5-kilobyte step in the digital revolution was sparked by a collision of ideas between mathematicians and engineers. Combining soldering guns with science, Von Neumann and his Electronic Computing Instrument tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, network optimization, and the origins of life. In this highly visual and informative presentation, George Dyson will impart the full story - from the people to their processors - and where our digital directions through history may lead us next. Tickets available online beginning on Tuesday, August 30 at 9:00 am.

Speaker Biography and Full Abstract

Bio:
George Dyson is a historian of technology whose interests have included the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986), the evolution of digital computing and telecommunications (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997), and the exploration of space (Project Orion, 2002). Turing’s Cathedral: the origins of the digital universe will be published by Pantheon (USA) and Penguin (UK) in February 2012.

Full Abstract:
Sixty years ago, in Princeton, New Jersey, a digital computer incorporating a 32 x 32 x 40-bit matrix of 24-microsecond random access memory was undergoing initial tests. John von Neumann’s implementation of Alan Turing’s Universal Machine broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, and the world would never be the same. The Institute for Advanced Study (whose founding motto was “the usefulness of useless knowledge”) was the unlikeliest of places to build a machine, yet this key step in the digital revolution was taken by bringing engineers into the den of the mathematicians, rather than by bringing mathematicians into a den of engineers. With 5 kilobytes of storage, von Neumann and colleagues tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, network optimization, and the origins of life. Codes were small enough to be completely debugged, but hardware could not be counted on to perform consistently from one kilocycle to the next. This situation is now reversed, and suggests where computing may be heading next.

12:00 pm Lecture

HOD LIPSON, Cornell University Programmable Matter: The Shape of Things to Come September 18, 2011 at 12:00 pm Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, Perimeter Institute Learn about the future of “3D Printers” – machines that will fabricate arbitrary-shaped parts, layer by layer. Dr. Lipson will share a history of these technologies and preview a future in which we continue to gain unprecedented control over physical matter. If humans distinguish themselves from their evolutionary ancestors by making tools, then how might the ultimate tools – involving additive manufacturing – impact human culture forever? Dr. Lipson explores the science, technology and potential of programmable matter. Tickets available online beginning on Wednesday, August 31 at 9:00 am.

Speaker Biography and Full Abstract

Bio:
Hod Lipson is an Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Computing & Information Science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He directs the Computational Synthesis group, which focuses on novel ways for automatic design, fabrication and adaptation of virtual and physical machines. He has led work in areas such as evolutionary robotics, multi-material functional rapid prototyping, machine self-replication and programmable self-assembly. Lipson received his Ph.D. from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in 1998, and continued to a postdoc at Brandeis University and MIT. His research focuses primarily on biologically-inspired approaches, as they bring new ideas to engineering and new engineering insights into biology. For more information, visit http://www.mae.cornell.edu/lipson.

Full Abstract:
3D Printers – machines that can automatically fabricate arbitrarily-shaped parts, layer by layer, from almost any material – have evolved over the last three decades from limited and expensive prototyping equipment in the hands of few, to small-scale commodity production tools available to almost anyone. It’s been broadly recognized that this burgeoning second industrial revolution will transform every aspect of our lives. Where will this technology go next?

We can look at the evolution of additive manufacturing technologies’ past, present and future as a series of milestone in humans’ increasing control over physical matter. This talk will chronicle this past and future journey.

The first episode of this journey, maturing today, has been the unprecedented control over the shape of objects. 3D-printers today can fabricate objects of almost any material – from nylon to glass, from chocolate to titanium – and with any complex geometry. This ability is transforming many fields to a degree that few inventions ever have, from education to archeology, from bio-printing to food printing. The second episode of this journey, is the control over the composition of matter – going beyond shaping just the external geometry, to shaping the internal structure of materials with unprecedented fidelity. Using multi-material additive manufacturing technologies, we are can make materials within materials, embed and weave multiple materials into complex patterns and co-fabricate entangled components. The third and final episode of this journey, will be the control over behavior. In this episode we will go beyond controlling just the shape of matter; we will go past controlling just its composition; we will now be able to program these materials to function in arbitrary ways – to sense and react, to compute and behave. The ability to manufacture such arbitrary active systems comprising both passive and active substructures will have opened the door to a new space of designs and a new paradigm of engineering, one that is not unlike biology.

If humans distinguished themselves from their evolutionary ancestors by making tools, then additive manufacturing represents the ultimate tool – perhaps changing human culture forever in ways we can hardly anticipate.

2:00 pm Lecture

NATALIA TORO, Perimeter Institute Smash, Bang, Boom: Fundamental Physics at the LHC September 18, 2011 at 2:00 pm Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, Perimeter Institute The world's most ambitious scientific experiment is buried 100 metres underground, straddling Switzerland and France. A billion times every minute, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) slams together protons, while four giant detectors watch closely.    - So how does the Large Hadron Collider work? - Why can slamming tiny particles into each other provide clues about the nature of all space and time? - What mysteries are physicists trying to solve with data from the LHC? - How does the cutting edge of particle physics relate to the world around us, from the patterns of stars in the sky to the fact that they shine at all? Natalia Toro, PI Faculty, works at the intersection of theories and hard data. She will explain how complex collision data from the LHC is being digested and examined right now, and how it may set the course for the science of the future. Tickets available online beginning on Thursday, September 1 at 9:00 am.

Speaker Biography

Bio:
Natalia Toro joined the PI faculty in September 2010. She completed her PhD at Harvard in 2007 under the supervision of Nima Arkani-Hamed, a Distinguished Research Chair at Perimeter Institute, and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University SITP. Dr. Toro's research focuses on finding new ways to test our understanding of the laws of nature.

Toro has pioneered a framework of few-parameter models of new-physics signals at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which is being used by the experimental collaborations and by theorists to understand the consequences of various studies of LHC data. She has worked with members of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment to integrate these techniques into their search program. Her interests also include exploring the properties of dark matter. Dr. Toro has led a program of searches for a short-range fifth force, beyond gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, that could interact strongly with dark matter but very weakly with ordinary matter. Such forces may be most accessible, not in a high-energy collider like the LHC, but in small experiments where a lower-energy particle beam is pointed at a target. She is a spokesperson for the A-Prime Experiment (APEX) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia, which announced its first scientific result in August 2011.

4:00 pm Lecture

JULIE PAYETTE, Canadian Space Agency Perspectives from Space: Research and Diplomacy September 18, 2011 at 4:00 pm Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, Perimeter Institute   Presented by   With a background in computer and systems engineering as well as language processing and automatic speech recognition, Ms. Payette was selected from a pool of 5,330 candidates to become a Canadian astronaut, focusing on technical issues in robotics. Today, following her amazing professional career and numerous life experiences, Ms. Payette is a veteran of two missions to the International Space Station as a crew member and Flight Engineer. She also holds a commercial pilot license; earned military pilot captaincy on the “Snowbird” jets; is a certified deep-sea diving suit operator; is fluent in French and English, and can converse in Spanish, Italian, Russian and German. She has received many awards, holds numerous degrees and, on a personal note, plays the piano and has sung with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Piacere Vocale in Basel, Switzerland, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Drawing from her many firsthand experiences and zest for life, Ms. Payette will share an astronaut’s high level perspective on extraordinarily complex, yet highly collaborative, challenges in space - from both research and international diplomacy points of view. Tickets available online beginning on Friday, September 2 at 9:00 am.

Speaker Biography

Ms. Julie Payette was born October 20, 1963, in Montreal, Quebec. She completed primary and secondary school in Montreal, Quebec. She received an International Baccalaureate (1982) at the United World International College of the Atlantic in South Wales, UK, a Bachelor of Engineering (1986) from McGill University, Montreal and a Master of Applied Science (1990) from the University of Toronto. She received one of six Canadian scholarships to attend the International UWC of the Atlantic in South Wales, UK (1980), a Greville-Smith Scholarship (1982-1986), highest undergraduate award at McGill University, and a McGill Faculty Scholar (1983-1986). She graduated with distinction in 1986. She also received an NSERC post-graduate Scholarship (1988-1990) and a Massey College Fellowship (1988-1990). In November 1994, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers awarded her its 1994 distinction for exceptional achievement by a young engineer. In addition to being the youngest Canadian astronaut in our history, Julie Payette is the eighth Canadian and the second Canadian woman in space, and the first astronaut from this country to board the International Space Station.

More biographical information on Julie Payette can be found at:
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/biopayette.asp