The Scion:
A Hero In Motion

Spring 2020-Present
Seeking Representation

A superhero graphic novel targeted toward preteens, teens and young college students.

 
Description: The Scion teaches in-depth scientific concepts while telling an exciting and compelling story.  Students get to read engrossing, character-driven science fiction in a richly designed world - but, in order to truly understand the story, readers will need to understand the science that drives it.  The Scion covers topics in-depth in a pedagogical fashion, and concepts build upon each other as they are revisited throughout the novel.

Textbook on Computational Robot Design

Fall 2022-Present
Seeking Representation

A pedagogical approach to computational design of robots and other cyberphysical systems.

 
Description: Covering topics on differentiable computing, simulation, heuristic optimization, gradient-based design optimization, machine learning for design, digital and analog manufacturing, HCI for design, and designing for human  users.

Time Crystal

In Nature Futures.

(Edited by Colin Sullivan. 
  Artwork by Jacey.)

I Am Diffusing In A Room

Summer 2023-Present

Submission to NeurIPS
2023 Creative AI Track
(Currently Iterating)

 
Description: “I Am Sitting In A Room” by Alvin Lucier is experimental art in the truest sense, in that it is both scientific experiment and art, demonstrating the effects of compression and discretization when applied repeatedly ad nauseam while simultaneously crafting an interesting aural experience.  This work plays upon that seminal piece, demonstrating the effects of recursive application of a biased model.  Beginning with a prompt describing a group of scientists, ambiguous in their composition, and an image of a diverse crowd, the image is continually diffused until it approaches a stable point, typically, a cluster of white, old, men.  As the speech loses its texture in the original work, so does the image here, converging toward a biased mean.  We, as scientists, are more than a stereotype, and should strive to approach a representative snapshot of society.  We present the application at different settings, showing “ablations” to quality settings, modifications to the textual prompt (showing how the bias changes when “scientist” is changed to other professions and certain aspects of the prompt are removed), and different seeds.