Neil Gershenfeld Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Laboratory Neil Gershenfeld leads the Media Lab's Physics and Media group and directs the Things That Think research consortium. His laboratory investigates the relationship between the content of information and its physical representation, from developing molecular computers (which led to an experimental demonstration of quantum computation), to smart furniture (seen in the Museum of Modern Art and used in automobile safety systems), to virtuosic musical instruments (including a hypercello for Yo-Yo Ma), to new types of power sources. He is the author of When Things Start to Think (1999), The Nature of Mathematical Modeling (1999) and The Physics of Information Technology (2000). He holds a BA in physics with high honors from Swarthmore College, a PhD from Cornell University, and was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. Prior to coming to the Media Lab, he was a member of the research staff at Bell Labs. Back to the Full Schedule.