Tufts students turn entrepreneurship class project into ridesharing app CarTrek see FEATURES / PAGE 3
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‘Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu’ honors Andean culture, resistance under colonialism see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 5
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VOLUME LXXVI, ISSUE 36
tuftsdaily.com
Monday, October 29, 2018
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Tufts, U of Ala. duo receive National Science Foundation grant by Daisy Hu
Contributing Writer
Barry Trimmer, a Henry Bromfield Pearson Professor of Natural Sciences in the Tufts biology department, and his colleague Vishesh Vikas, former biology postdoctoral scholar at Tufts and current assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in September for their project, “M3SoRo: Mobility and Morphing using Modular Soft Robots.” The purpose of the grant is “to develop collaborative Modular Soft Robots (MSoRos) that can move in complex terrestrial and climbing environments and change size and shape,” according to the award abstract. The abstract explains that the project, estimated to be completed by August 2021, has been awarded $382,192 in funding. According to a February article published in Materials Research Society Advances, soft robots are elastic, flexible robots that contain all major power and control systems in one body. These differ from hard robots, which are rigid, more complex and built in a way that separates their functions across different components.
NSF gave the grant as part of its National Robotics Initiative, according to Vikas, the principal investigator of the grant. Vikas explained that the goal of the project is to explore the advantages of soft robots and modular robots and come up with models of soft robots which are cheap, versatile and adaptive to complex environments. He added that the field of soft robots and modular robots is under-researched despite applications in precision agriculture, space exploration and disaster relief. According to Vikas, locomotion functions differently in different types of environments. He said that the project uses an environment-centric algorithm that investigates the robot’s interactions with the environment, instead of using the traditional model-centric algorithm that focuses on what humans want the robot to do. Trimmer said that traditional robots are constrained by their working environments. They cannot work near people or carry out tasks in complex environments, while modular soft robots can. According to Anthony Scibelli, a biology Ph.D. candidate working in Trimmer’s lab, soft robots are not designed to resemble humans and perform delicate tasks but to navigate and function in environments that are not suitable for humans.
EVAN SLACK / THE TUFTS DAILY
Barry Trimmer, director of the Neuromechanics and Biomimetic Devices Laboratory, poses for a portrait with one of his robots on Oct. 17. That requires that the robots are able to move on different surfaces and around obstacles. A major goal of the project is to control soft robots, a challenge many researchers are trying to tackle, according to Trimmer. Trimmer, who is also the director of the Neuromechanics and Biomimetic Devices Laboratory at Tufts, said that
studying the brains of soft animals, like caterpillars, can bring the solution to controlling soft robots. “That’s why a neurobiologist like me is involved in robot research, because we think we know some of the tricks that see NSF GRANT, page 2
Protein sequences meet music at interdisciplinary performance of faculty, student compositions by Anton Shenk
Contributing Writer
A unique take on classical music filled Distler Performance Hall in the Granoff Music Center on Friday with the premiere of “New at Noon: Living Patterns,” an interdisciplinary performance of six musical compositions inspired by repetitive protein sequences. The concert, a collaboration between faculty and student composers and Stephen Fuchs, an assistant professor of biology, offered experimental music inspired by Fuchs’ research. Fuchs shared where the idea for this unique event came from and the goals of the collaboration. “[Professor of Music John McDonald] and I have been talking for years about doing some collaboration between music and science,” Fuchs said. “I was trained as a musician as well … [scientists] think creatively too, but not in the same way as musicians.” Fuchs said that one of the goals of the collaboration was to “use other
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mediums to pull out new information and better understand science,” while another goal was to bridge the gap between scientists and non-scientists. “The things we do in our labs — for people who aren’t scientists — is totally unapproachable,” he said. “Maybe we can use music as a conduit to better raise awareness of the science that we do.” In support of these goals, McDonald drew on research by the Department of Biology on RNA and protein sequences to create a musical structure for his composition, using a musical cryptogram to link musical notes with letters representing proteins. He also used repetitions in the RNA sequence and pauses in the music where the repetitions broke down in creating his piece. McDonald also worked with his students to help develop their own interpretations of the protein sequences. When talking about how his students’ approach, he said that they all started in a similar place. “Everyone had their own code, which turned [the sequence] into [a] musical structure,” he said.
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Among the featured works were two vocal pieces, two piano pieces, a bassoon piece and a viola piece. Julia Cavallaro, artist of one of the vocal pieces, said her composition was inspired by the separation of children from their mothers and fathers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The piece, called “Speak to Speak,” drew upon words that were “simple, powerful, and active, evoking sometimes violent imagery,” according to the brochure handed out at the event. “I began to play with possible translations, treating each protein letter as the start of a short, one-syllable English word,” Cavallaro wrote in the brochure. Cavallaro’s composition was not the only vocal piece inspired by the same protein sequence. “Manic Nocturne,” performed by first-year graduate music student Adam Simon, was inspired by Simon’s inability to sleep one night. According to the show’s program, Simon was trying to fall asleep at 2 a.m. when he referred to an email from McDonald about a collection of RNA sequences for his composition. “[I was looking at] the very letters supposedly responsible for why I can’t sleep,”
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Simon wrote, referring to the sequences’ impact on his biological clock. “The sequences on that page were associated with whether or not you are a ‘night’ or a ‘morning’ person.” McDonald also used the concert as an opportunity to raise awareness for all of the current and future collaborations between the music department and other academic disciplines. He said that Fuchs may use the music to help teach his lectures, while highlighting the music engineering minor and the film and media studies program as two existing collaborations. Aaron Wong, a senior who wrote and performed the bassoon piece, “Sequences,” told the Daily in an email the difficulties of composing his piece. “I’d never worked with a text before, let alone protein sequences. It was a challenge to write a piece that was both musically interesting and that conveyed the repetitive patterns in some form,” Wong said. He said that the format worked for all. “All the composers took their own unique approach, and all worked extremely well,” Wong said.
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