Professor Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, an interdisciplinary initiative that is broadly exploring how the content of information relates to its physical representation, from atomic nuclei to global networks. CBA's intellectual community and research resources cut across traditional divisions of inquiry by disciplines and length scales in order to bring together the best features of the bits of new digital worlds with the atoms of the physical world. Dr. Gershenfeld has also led the Media Lab's Things That Think industrial research consortium, which pioneered moving computation out of conventional computers and into the rest of the world, and worked with the Media Lab Asia on appropriate advanced technology for global development.

His own laboratory studies fundamental mechanisms for manipulating information (which led to the development of molecular logic used to implement the first complete quantum computation, and to analog circuits that can efficiently perform optimal digital operations), integrates these ideas into everyday objects such as furniture (seen in the New York's Museum of Modern Art and used in automobile safety systems), and applies them in collaborations with partners ranging from developing a computerized cello for Yo-Yo Ma and stage for the Flying Karamazov Brothers to instrumentation used by rural Indian villagers and Sami herders.

Beyond his many publications and patents, Prof. Gershenfeld is the author of the popular books "Fab" and "When Things Start To Think," and the technical texts "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling" and "The Physics of Information Technology." His work has been featured by the White House and Smithsonian Institution in their Millennium celebrations, he has been the subject of print, radio, and TV programs in media including the New York Times, The Economist, CNN, and PBS, and has been selected as one of the top 100 public intellectuals.

Dr. Gershenfeld has a B.A. in Physics with High Honors from Swarthmore College, was a member of the research staff at Bell Labs where he studied laser interactions with atomic and nuclear systems, received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University for experimental tests of order in complex condensed matter systems, and was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows where he ran an international study on prediction techniques.