For a minute, imagine the future– What do you see? Here’s what I see:
I see shapeshifting. I don’t mean aliens or werewolves; I mean smart materials.
These smart materials are no longer science fiction, but they’re here now, and they are interacting with us.
I see us never having to charge a device. I see windows that can store energy and release it when it’s most needed–when it’s the cold of winter. I see plates that can have one shape and turn it into another. (And I made it!) I see clothing that regulates your body temperature. I see space Shuttles impervious to cosmic micrometeorites.
What connects these technologies? They are all designed from smart materials, and smart materials will be the new medium for smart cities and the future as we know it.
So, what are smart materials? They are not just materials that conform to the world around them, but react and adapt by changing their properties after being exposed to stimuli.
My goal is to accelerate the innovation and accessibility of smart materials: I want to go open source! My name is Om Deshmukh, a 10th grader, and today I want to introduce you to one of the most important questions of our generation, which is what will you design?
I would like to speak today about my experience with one of them: a shape memory alloy known as Nitinol, that has the unique property of returning to a set shape when heated above a threshold.
Smart materials will be all around us and I hope that my talk will give you a window into this new world–because they are waiting for you to design something new and something better.
Smart materials are all around us
Do you wear glasses? I do, and the reason that I haven’t broken them yet is because of the nitinol frame that repairs its shape when bent.
And if you have clogged arteries from eating too much fast food? Nitinol and Shape Memory Alloys will be there to save you. Stents that hold open the arteries to enable blood flow from the heart, are now made from smart materials. And they’re there to save your life.
Helicopter blades are now being made with nitinol AND Shape Memory Alloys- to gives the helicopter pilot more control, more precise movements– which leads to safer flights and less accidents.
Do you have a smartphone? If you do you have a screen. Shape Memory Alloys are becoming Screen protectors built untio the screen- Do you drop your phone or throw it? So if you scratch your screen made of SM, the SM will heal it– self healing! So drop it and throw it to your hearts content. If you have an SM screen.
Are you a golfer: One of our speakers Irene Feng, is a golfer for her high school. Nitinol and Shape Memory Alloys are used in golf clubs, for putters and wedges to put spin on the ball so you don’t overshoot the green! (that’s golfing talk!)
Do you have a heating system in your house or at work? Shape Memory Alloys can detect when things become too hot and fire is imminent. But it won’t happen because of a Nitinol fire security protection device that shuts down the system before it reaches the point of no return–
So now let me tell you my story with smart materials:
I’ve interviewed Dr. Ritu Raman, a researcher at MIT, who is developing a smart pill for medicine. This pill enters your body and regulates the flow of medicine as the body needs it.
I’ve been speaking and building as much as possible! I was part of the maker fair at the Princeton New Jersey Barnes + Noble, where I introduced to the public what smart materials could do for their life.
Then I competed and was selected as one of the 80 alumni for LaunchX at MIT 2018, where I spent 4 weeks building on the MIT campus, where I co-founded Falcn, a company that is dedicated to developing nitinol based products, for example, shape changing collapsible cookware that can make all forms of travelling easier, reduce shipping costs, and the ability to help natural disaster refugees get equipment to cook faster. This is just a start and the possibilities are endless.
But I also want to take my smart material entrepreneurship to an open source platform. Together the makers and builders can join forces to revolutionize and accelerate smart materials. Right now, smart material research is locked in a proprietary orbit. But this must change. Because open source, that’s the future of innovation and advancement that can solve many problems on earth–
And I have participated in an open source project to do just this:
Working with a team for MIT Solve 2018, I designed a protocell, (which are chemicals that replicate several properties of cells) to develop an artificial coral reef to solve acidification that is harming the natural world. Our goal was to welcome back the fish that have been migrating and dying due to the death of many coral reefs. These same protocells will be used to create smart cities that will interact with the environment and reduce pollution..
HOW I HOPE TO RESHAPE THE WORLD
We need to start fusing different designs with different materials, and I’ve started to do that. And I hope by sharing this story it will help you connect with the future of design.
Once we start implementing these self healing interactive materials in spaceships or international space stations, to heal them from cosmic debris, we will truly be able to the reach the final frontier.
We have to care about something, and we have to start combining. We cannot solve these things in a vacuum. Not just with chemical, mechanical, or biological engineering. We must merge technologies and the natural world together, becoming friends with nature, or else doom ourselves.
Today, we live in an ever more design-oriented world, and I would like to make the maker’s toolbox better, for all of us. Long gone will be the stagnate materials that year after year degrade from the natural causes of erosion around us, and will be replaced by fluid and self-adaptive engineering. These things will be my contribution, a little part of it all.
My goal is to accelerate the innovation and accessibility of smart materials: I want to go open source!
What will you design? Because our world needs new designs.
And I would love for you to join me.
Thank you.