Miskin Lab

What can we learn about life by trying to build microorganisms from scratch?  And how would medicine or biology be different if we succeeded?  Nature shows us that small-scale, machines that sense, move, and interact with the world around them are both possible and powerful, but how can humans make something tiny and complex for ourselves?

After 50 years of Moore’s law, a path forward has emerged.  Today, nearly 1 million transistors can fit in the space of a paramecium, enabling microscopic sensors, computers, and power supplies.  Put together the right way, these parts could be used to make synthetic machines that look and act like microorganisms.

My group uses nanofabrication to build tiny robots that can emulate living systems at their most fundamental scale.  By perusing increasingly sophisticated designs, we hope to achieve two goals.  First, we want to develop a physics of living systems that can both describe biology and extend beyond it.  The machines we build are small enough to experience same physics as their biological counterparts, allowing us to draw comparisons.  Yet because our devices are built from the top down, humans can easily design, control, and comprehend their behavior.  Thus, the lessons learned designing and building small machines can help reshape our understanding of living systems, physics, and the relationship between the two.  

Second, we want to use microscopic robots to engineer, control, and manipulate the microworld with precision.  Life shows us the power of shaping the macroworld from the microworld.  By building tiny machines that humans can program and control, we see a path to harnessing biological strategies like coordination, sensing and organization to create new technologies for medicine, materials science, and manufacturing.