Princeton EQuad News Spring 2025

Dean's Note: Art and Engineering

The Dean emphasizes the power of interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between engineering and the arts, to foster creativity and innovation. These partnerships lead to outcomes greater than the sum of their parts and provide new perspectives for those involved. The Dean also announces her departure to become the president of Stony Brook University, reflecting on how such cross-field collaboration has been crucial to Princeton Engineering's growth in areas like bioengineering, AI, and robotics.

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Recent Highlights

• Andlinger Center Conference Unpacks AI's Double-Edged Role in the Clean Energy Transition: A conference at the Andlinger Center explored how Artificial Intelligence presents both challenges, due to its energy consumption, and opportunities, through its data processing capabilities, for the clean energy transition. Experts discussed the need for a systems approach to manage AI's impact and leverage its potential to accelerate clean energy solutions.
  
  
• AI Slashes Cost and Time for Chip Design, but That's Not All: Researchers have utilized AI to significantly reduce the time and expense involved in designing specialized wireless microchips. The AI system not only speeds up the process but also generates novel, unintuitive circuit designs that can offer improved performance and energy efficiency.
  
  
• Initiative Aims to Make Princeton a Leader in AI Accelerated Engineering: Princeton University has launched "AI for Accelerating Invention," an initiative designed to drive breakthroughs across various engineering fields by leveraging artificial intelligence. This is one of three research initiatives under the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence (AI Lab).
  
  
• More Checks Make AI Fairer: Research from Princeton Engineering suggests that evaluating AI fairness using a single metric is insufficient and could lead to societal harm. Instead, a multidimensional approach with a suite of tests is proposed to assess fairness based on the specific context of the AI application.
  
  
• Bird Wings Inspire New Approach to Flight Safety: Inspired by bird feathers, Princeton engineers have demonstrated that adding rows of small, passive flaps to an aircraft's wings can improve flight performance and help prevent stalling. This inexpensive, lightweight solution mimics covert feathers and works by favorably altering airflow around the wing.

Art + Engineering

• The Magic of Collaboration: This section introduces the theme of collaborations between artists and engineers at Princeton. It highlights the creativeX consortium, founded in 2016, which fosters such interdisciplinary projects and courses like "Transformations in Engineering and the Arts."
  
  
• Stretching Boundaries, Literally and Figuratively: This piece describes "Noli Timere," an aerial dance performance featuring performers on a monumental net sculpture. The project is a collaboration between dance professor Rebecca Lazier, engineering professor Sigrid Adriaenssens, and visual artist Janet Echelman, exploring structural designs, collective motion, and the interconnectedness of systems.
  
  
• International Venue Showcases Collaboration and Innovation: Engineering professor Sigrid Adriaenssens has presented multiple exhibits at the Venice Biennale, showcasing work that combines traditional craft techniques with modern technology. Her projects include a self-supporting masonry vault created with augmented reality and kirigami-based urban canopies and floor patterns.
  
  
• Rhythm Bots Explore Human-Machine Interface Through Dance: "Rhythm Bots" is an interactive installation featuring tall, slender robots that respond to their environment and human presence with rhythmic rotations. The project, a collaboration led by engineering professor Naomi Ehrich Leonard and dance professor Susan Marshall, explores collective behavior, feedback dynamics, and human-machine interaction.
  
  
• A da Vinci-Inspired 'Deluge' of Collaborative Experimentation: Architecture graduate student Lauren Dreier, working with engineering professors, created an art piece called "Rope Piece (deluge)" using polymers that transition between liquid and solid states. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's studies of fluid dynamics, the piece explores the blurry boundary between liquid and solid.
  
  
• 'Bridges' Course Embraces Beauty as Part of the Engineering Equation: Professor Maria Garlock's course, "Structures and the Urban Environment" (informally "Bridges"), encourages students to consider the aesthetic qualities and social context of engineered structures alongside their technical performance.
  
  
• Students Combine Disciplines to Discover New Passions: The undergraduate course "Transformations in Engineering and the Arts" allows students to integrate engineering principles with artistic approaches to various media. Students develop projects that transform concepts across disciplines, such as creating prints using platinum-cure silicone rubber, learning about its material properties in the process.
  
  
• Modern Engineering Hidden in Ancient Stone: The interdisciplinary seminar "Historical Structures," co-taught by engineering and art/archaeology professors, explores ancient engineering breakthroughs. Students analyzed ancient Greek cantilevered beams and discovered why builders abandoned this technique in favor of flat arches for spanning long distances with stone.
  
  
• In Engineering, Beauty Does Not Determine Functionality, but It Can Improve It: The "Swarm Garden" project features an installation of robotic flowers designed as an adaptive shading system for building facades. The collaboration aims to improve building functionality not just through light and temperature maintenance but also by being aesthetically pleasing, which can enhance user adoption and engagement with technology.
  
  
• Art and Engineering Fold into Inspiration: Audrey Zhang, an art and archaeology major, collaborated with engineering professor Glaucio Paulino to incorporate origami folding patterns into her artwork. She created an "Origami Memory Dress" representing a quantum memory drive and designed "StarSail," a conceptual interstellar bioship with Miura-ori solar sails, showcasing how art and engineering can inspire each other.