The PLOrk Biography

Musical instruments have long been on the cutting edge of technology, often spurring new research and development. At Princeton, we have been exploring ways in which the computer can be integrated into conventional music-making contexts (chamber ensembles, jam sessions, etc…) while also radically transforming those contexts. This has involved developing new speaker [...]

by Hilary Parker
As junior Nick Frey sat in his fluid mechanics course last spring, he was thinking about bicycles — but he wasn’t daydreaming.
Rather, the mechanical and aerospace engineering major was conjuring ways to put his newfound knowledge to work in modifications to his racing bike. The reigning national time-trial champion and co-president of [...]

Posted by Hilary Parker
Mechanical and aerospace engineering major Zhen Xia is accustomed to solving problems that have cut-and-dried solutions, but an internship at IBM this past summer taught him how to approach problems that don’t have one right answer.
As part of a new internship program, Xia spent three months working with senior marketing executives at [...]

Princeton undergraduates who have engineered a self-driving car designed to navigate city streets without human help have been selected as semifinalists in a hotly contested Pentagon competition with top prizes worth $3.5 million.
The Princeton team was among 36 semifinalists named last week by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in its “Urban Challenge” — a [...]

Frontiers of health: Sight for sore eyes
Ultra-short laser pulses may allow easier LASIK
by Hilary Parker
Szymon Suckewer needs eye surgery, but he’s not going under the knife just yet—he’d rather wait until no knife is necessary. Having recently developed an incision-free eye surgery technique, he’s confident that will soon be an option.
 

Szymon Suckewer (center) takes an [...]