What was the agenda of your trip?
Jiří Zemánek: We had planned a presentation of our work for the whole group of the Center for Bits and Atoms, led by Professor Neil Gershenfeld. In addition, we wanted to meet researchers working on topics relevant to us and to revive useful contacts. While I am in occasional contact with some of my colleagues, a face-to-face meeting has a different dimension. Probably the most interesting thing was that we had the opportunity to produce, let's say, a proof of concept, an experimental mechatronic structure equipped with actuators and sensors in local laboratories, which we then tried to make operational. It was an interesting experience for several reasons. It gave Krištof and the Master's students Dominik Fischer and Adam Uchytil who accompanied us a chance to experience the environment of the labs and to get to know the people working there, and last but not least to see their approach to work. I think that this immediate experience, the contacts and the work that we have started is something that we can now build on from a distance.
Years ago you also went on an internship to take Neil Gershenfeld's How to make anything course. You and Krištof Pučejdl introduced a similar course at the FELU in the academic year that ended. Did you talk to Professor Gershenfeld about your course?
Jiří Zemánek: We were wondering what his key to selecting students is, because we are in a similar situation, that more students are applying than the capacity of the course. And we also asked what his approach to student assessment is, because the focus of a non-typical course is on practical work and production, and that is not easily verified by a test or examination. In addition, one has to take into account that everyone comes there with different knowledge. Finding suitable participants is not easy, because there should not be a predominance of beginners, nor advanced, nor technicians, nor artists. There should simply be an optimal mix of people who will work together as a team. In terms of the practicalities, it helped that we met with the local workshop manager and especially Kristof was able to draw him out in terms of running and equipping the workshops, or perhaps questions about how to ensure safety.
Did you find inspiration for your own teaching at MIT in other ways?
Jiri Zemanek: The interesting thing about this course is the great emphasis on having participants document their work continuously on a website that can be viewed not only by the teacher, but by anyone, really. It's also motivating for other students because they see that it can be done well.
If I recall correctly, you yourself brought continuous documentation into your course...
Jiri Zemanek: That's true, but it's not entirely comparable. The course participants at MIT have a much larger time allocation, so they can objectively get more done.
This brings us to the question of comparison, what are students at MIT actually like compared to students at FEL?
Jiří Zemánek: The main difference, based on my previous visit, is that they are more advanced in some ways. As far as the approach to studying is concerned, a typical student usually already knows what he wants, is more motivated and therefore more hardworking. I often encountered that for a Master's there they came either from another school or even from practice. And they come back to school with a clear idea of what they want from school and they can consistently go after it. I don't want to generalize in any way, but my observation has been that they're more quick to take some initiative or responsibility, that they don't wait for someone to ask them to take care of this or that. After coming to the States, I was very impressed that people who arrived plus or minus the same time as I did soon started to take care of a laboratory or suggest what to change and how to change it. I was like, "Man, how long would it take me to do this before I'd have the nerve to move things around and stuff like that?" But it's different there, it's not taken as an impertinence and it can be seen as a cultural difference.
Krištof, how did you perceive the differences from your perspective?
Krištof Pučejdl: I don't have Jirkov's experience of spending a longer time there. However, again, I have perhaps fresher impressions from studying here at FELU and I can therefore stress that there are hardworking students here at our school as well. But often that industriousness translates into honest studying and doing homework without perhaps knowing exactly why. It's still a bit of a high school thing to do, to take a class off a list because it fits your schedule. And then you take the course, but there's no clear link to how and in what ways it moves you forward in real terms. The motivation of students at MIT that I've had the opportunity to meet is more specific. It translates into their attitude, where they make better use of the space and time available to realize themselves and acquire skills that are then useful to them, and it's not just about meeting some prescribed requirements. Some of our students have had that approach and I actually understand that. Our students are younger, specifically 4th semester undergraduates. Some of them are just figuring out that studying isn't about someone setting up a schedule with a bunch of courses without them knowing why they're taking algebra or physics.
Jiří Zemánek: Our students are certainly not lazier or dumber, but one word that I think characterizes the students at MIT is more drive.
Kristof Pučejdl: It's also important to add that they take fewer courses and therefore have more time for them. If you translate that into some sort of credit requirement or endowment, we struggle here with the fact that we often have to cut courses artificially. A frequent complaint from our students, including in our second course, Modeling and Simulation of Dynamical Systems, is that they would like to do more, but the time just isn't there. That's quite possibly a general problem that they don't seem to address to that extent at MIT, and because of that they can go more in-depth and the focus is not as fragmented.
What else impressed me was the initiative of local students to implement their own ideas. For example, there was one who thought it was interesting to do an interactive installation in which screens light up as people walk by. The head of the lab, Neil Gershenfeld, enthusiastically welcomed this and immediately started suggesting where they could put it in the building. So there's a lot of support for such ideas as well, but of course it's assumed that the student will complete their other assignments and responsibilities as well.
The question that comes to mind is, how would your students succeed if you put them in this environment?
Kristof Pučejdl: We certainly have a number of students who would succeed very well. And it wouldn't necessarily be just those who were coming into the course with previous experience in design, electronics, or programming. I would also bet on some students who didn't have that benefit but made tremendous progress during the course. So I could pick about ten students that I could say are really good and would not get lost even in the scope of the MIT course. Of course, it would be challenging for everybody because there are simply more things to get done, and at the same time the level of guidance from the professors is less.
Ten of our students would succeed at MIT, that would be a nice headline for our conversation.
Krištof Pučejdl: I wouldn't get too hung up on that particular number, that was kind of my guess. Anyway, I meant that our students would definitely not lose out at MIT. It's just not that the level would be an order of magnitude different.
How did your stay advance your scientific projects?
Krištof Pučejdl: I was actually quite skeptical before our trip about what we would be able to accomplish in one week and I tried to set my expectations accordingly. But in the end I am pleasantly surprised by what we managed to do. We were there working on a new concept of so-called meta-materials or digital materials, working mainly closely with a local colleague, Alfonso Rubio, who is pushing a new concept of 3D material made of variously bent and folded structures. Such an approach promises various advantages and interesting properties, and we worked with him to produce an active structure driven by the motors we have experience with here. We have tried to demonstrate how our approaches are perhaps more interesting and better than what they have tried so far. And I was really surprised that in one week we managed to design, build, construct, run, measure... Dominik Fischer, who was there with us, included part of the result in his thesis. So it wasn't just about shaking hands, but we did a lot of work every day.
Jiří Zemánek: For me, it was mainly important in that I updated myself on the state of research in the field of digital modular materials and also in that I could see with my own eyes what they are working on at MIT. At the same time, it moved us forward in that, as Krištof mentioned, we got new inspiration on where to go with physical structures. We expanded our existing idea to include a specific fabrication process for folding structures out of flat composite.
And I think it has opened up more space for us to collaborate, by synchronizing what our groups can and do, and identifying a few topics that may be of interest to both groups that we can continue to collaborate on. To be specific, these are dynamic modular robots and active dynamic control of large grid structures, which are then applicable to aircraft wing design, among other things.
Krištof Pučejdl: The key word that Jirka mentioned is just dynamic control and sensing of digital material structures. This is the approach that we demonstrated there within the limited time available and I think it was well received by some of the MIT team.
Anything else you'd like to mention that caught your eye?
Krištof Pučejdl: I was very impressed by the goalkeeping, which was personified especially by Neil Gershenfeld. Every day we would meet with the whole group and he would ask each person what they were working on specifically and what it was for. It was tough in places, but fair and helpful. When a person had nothing to say, Neil would lead them to think about whether their activity was meaningful in the context of the current project. That's something we don't do much of here. Maybe we are too good to ourselves and this approach would push us to be more efficient. So I found this surprising and actually positive.
Jiri Zemanek: I'll follow up on Christopher. The emphasis on the goal is the fundamental thing that we took away. Neil Gershenfeld emphasizes that you have to be aware from the beginning of where your research work is going and what it's going to do. He said, "Okay, so we're going to do this, but when we do it, who cares?" He was literally saying, "When we're done, who cares?" And that kind of question is very useful and sometimes we miss it here. We are sometimes already absorbed by our own narrowed optics given by what our experience is and what people are doing immediately around us and we stop being critical about the subject of our own work. Sometimes it's a good thing to be put in an uncomfortable situation and have to defend your work to outsiders, but actually to yourself.
Interview conducted by Radovan Suk