Questions
A deliberately incomplete list of questions I keep circling. These are hooks for collaborators, future notes, and research programs.
Open loops
Current questions
What evidence should a new physical process carry before anyone believes it can scale?
Scale-up is often a translation and evidence problem, not only an invention problem.
Which biological measurements are actually predictive across reactor scales?
Small systems are only useful when they preserve the right constraints.
How cheap can closed-loop measurement become before it changes what experiments people attempt?
Better instruments can alter the search process, not just the data quality.
What would make programmable materials feel more like an engineering substrate than a lab curiosity?
The gap is often synthesis, characterization, and process reliability.
Where should automation end and scientific judgment begin?
The useful boundary depends on feedback quality, failure modes, and how much theory is available.
Which manufacturing bottlenecks are civilizationally important but too unglamorous to attract talent?
Some of the highest-leverage work looks like standards, fixtures, validation, and process boringness.