At the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab we explore biologically-inspired computational and physical processes that allow complex high-level systems to arise from low-level building blocks - automatically. We seek new biological concepts for engineering and new engineering insights into biology.

The Computational Synthesis Lab comprises researchers from various disciplines of engineering, computer science, physics, math and biology. We are looking at self-organization and evolutionary phenomena, and their application both to engineering design automation and understanding of the emergence of complexity in natural systems. We are developing both abstract models and applications in various domains, and 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.

• Research in the field of robotics
• Robotics research: Manipulation tool
• Research: Rapid prototyping
• Robotics research: Mobile robotics
• Robotics research: Biologically inspired robotics
• Robotics research: Machine consciousness
• Robotics research: Autonomous robots
• Robotics research: Evolutionary robotics
• Robotics research: Emergent self models
• Robotics research: Evolutionary Ornithopters
• Robotics research: Pneumatic robot
• Robotics research: Physical artificial life
• Robotics research: Modular robotics and self assembly
• Robotics research: Self-organizing stochastic robotics
• Robotics research: Self-replication phenomena
• Robotics research: Fluidic microassembly
• Robotics research: Lightweight deployable machines
• Research: Evolutionary computation
• Research: Reverse engineering dynamical systems