Creative Machines Lab Columbia University

ABOUT US At the Creative Machines Lab we are interested in robots that create and are creative. We explore novel autonomous systems that can design and make other machines – automatically. Our work is inspired from biology, as we seek new biological concepts for engineering and new engineering insights into biology WHO WE ARE The Creative Machines Lab comprises researchers from the various disciplines of engineering, computer science, physics, math and biology. We look at self-organization and evolutionary phenomena, and their application to both engineering design automation and understanding the emergence of complexity in natural systems. We develop abstract models and applications in various domains as well as build working systems to test new ideas. There are still many open questions, but if these processes can be understood and harnessed, this will be the future of engineering. OUR HISTORY The Creative Machines Lab was founded in July 2001 at Cornell University in Ithaca NY. Its original name was "Computational Synthesis Lab". In 2010 the lab was renamed to "Creative Machines Lab", and in summer 2015 the lab moved to Columbia University in NYC. To date the lab has graduated over 50 graduate students, a dozen Postdocs and numerous undergraduate researchers. Some of our alumni are faculty at other universities; some have founded their own companies, and others hold leadership positions in industry and government. If you are a former lab member, be sure to join our Alumni Group. Picture