Speaker: Yigit Menguc; Independent Mentor, Marble Wit; Adjuct Faculty, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract:

Robotics is a metaphor for science and the relationship between what we know, what we don't know, and what we can't know. Remembering that lets us research and invent robots with a wiser perspective of what our tools can be and can do. 

This seminar is more like an anthropological field report (deeply influenced by the anthropological monograph Lives in Science by J. C. Hermanowicz) where I offer my own life journey out of the Academy into Corporate Science and out again into the wilds as an unaffiliated independent mentor, research community consultant, and now an experiential science systems development symposium initiator. I will share a handful of vignettes deep into the experience of being a biologically-inspired soft roboticist through my projects in gecko-like adhesives, wearable liquid metal sensors, and a star-crossed skunkworks project to invent fully co-evolved (not integrated) soft robots from a single cell into a VR-glove with human-mirroring haptic afferent densities. 

BE WARNED: this seminar aims to invert the typical ratio of stand-and-deliver to audience-questioning, so there will be more conversing than lecturing.

Bio:

Hi, my name is Yigit Menguc. My role in the scientific community now takes the shape of an unaffiliated independent mentor – a term I invented to signify my service to researchers, faculty, and entrepreneurs as a dedicated advisor without the conflicting institutional incentives that come with in-house mentoring from managers or senior colleagues. I used to be a Manager of Research Science at Facebook Reality Labs, an Assistant Professor of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. I found that my love of science's joy of complete submergence into the flow of creativity and curiosity was no longer met by my role in the institutions of the Academy nor the Corporation. So, I began following the Ariadne's threads of thought left by those that sought to include a whole picture of themselves as humans and as parts of an indivisible Universe through systems thinking, intuitive engineering, excellence of hand-craft, art making, and even the spiritual practices of dialogue with Nature – starting with my own direct experience through my body. Since Embodied (Physical) Intelligence is at the heart of the greatest contribution of robotics, these explorations hold the potential seed of contributions to the general culture and society of our tribe of science as well as the specific process of inventing contextually-wise robots.