CAREER: Computing with Things Small, Wet, and Random - Design Automation for Digital Computation with Nanoscale Technologies and Biological Processes

“这个奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。”这个项目致力于寻找新的和变革性的方法来设计自动化，以物理计算的观点为指导。一个广泛的主题是将数字电路设计这一已有领域的专业知识应用到新的领域，如纳米技术和合成生物学。横跨这些领域的一个特定主题是构建和解构概率行为。在生物领域，该项目将开发合成生化系统的技术，这些生化系统根据特定的概率分布产生蛋白质。这将提供健壮性和灵活性吗？类似于用投资组合进行对冲吗？在生化传感和药物输送方面的应用。在工程领域，该项目将开发设计以概率方式处理0和1的数字电路的技术。这将缓解电路元件缩小到纳米级时出现的噪声和毛刺。电路设计界拥有独特的专业知识，可以用来应对合成生物学中具有挑战性的设计问题。反过来，生物学中的应用又给算法开发带来了大量问题。由于其跨学科的重点，该项目将为这两个领域带来新的视角。该项目的一个重要目标是向广大受众传达跨学科研究的目标和动力。将开发一门新的研究生级课程，名为“电路、计算和生物”。同时，还将撰写一本同名图书，由潘斯坦福出版社出版。此外，还将通过明尼阿波利斯贝尔自然历史博物馆主办的CaféScience fique系列举办公开研讨会。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."This project strives for novel and transformative approaches to design automation guided by physical views of computation. A broad theme is the application of expertise from an established field, digital circuit design, to new fields, such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology. A specific theme that cuts across these domains is constructing and deconstructing probabilistic behavior. In the biological realm, the project will develop techniques for synthesizing biochemical systems that produce proteins according to specified probability distributions. This will provide robustness and flexibility ? akin to hedging with a portfolio of investments ? for applications in biochemical sensing and drug delivery. In the engineering realm, the project will develop techniques for designing digital circuits that process zeros and ones probabilistically. This will mitigate against the noise and glitches that occur as circuit components are scaled down in size to nanometers. The circuit design community has unique expertise that can be brought to bear on the challenging design problems in synthetic biology. Applications in biology, in turn, offer a wealth of problems in algorithmic development. With its cross-disciplinary emphasis, this project will bring new perspectives to both fields. An important goal of the project is to communicate the goals and the impetus for interdisciplinary research to a wide audience. A new graduate-level course will be developed, titled "Circuits, Computation, and Biology". In parallel, a book with the same title will be written, to be published by Pan Stanford Publishing. Also public seminars will be given through the Café Scientifique series hosted by the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis.