Innovation - Printed Inorganic Chips
Cheap— really cheap— chips. This innovation allows computer chips— integrated circuits— to be printed on a piece of plastic so easily and inexpensively that it could be done with a desktop computer. Manufactured chips, by contrast, require three weeks to fabricate, and they're expensive. Among countless uses, printed chips could make electronic paper possible (how about wallpaper that can be changed as easily as you change the desktop pattern on your computer?), and allow for radio frequency IDs to be printed on every item imaginable (thus enabling a manufacturer's computer to take inventory every day automatically).
Biography
Joseph M. Jacobson is Associate Professor at MIT's Media Lab. There he is responsible for leading the Molecular Machine Group, which has pioneered research in new types of logic developed from inorganic and biologic molecules. In 1997 Dr. Jacobson co-founded the E Ink Corporation, which further developed electronic ink display technology. His work with E Ink has been written about in such publications as USA Today, "ABC Nightly News," The New York Times, and Newsweek. Overall, Dr. Jacobson's work has been noted in over 150 newspaper and magazine articles worldwide.
In 1999, Dr. Jacobson was named a Technology Review TR100 recipient and was the winner of the 2000 Gutenberg Prize and the 2000 Inventors Award from the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Jacobson holds a PhD in Physics from MIT and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Nonlinear Quantum Structures at Stanford University.
