Professor Kaitlyn Becker comes home to MIT: Flash Your Punty! Glassblowing, Soft Robotics, Flute, and Dinosaurs - Ep 9

We first met Kait when she was an undergrad with us at MIT, and now she's back home as Professor Becker with the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
We talk about her experiences with the MIT Glass Lab and Pappalardo Lab, her post-graduate research with Rob Wood at Harvard, and her current projects at MIT.

We also chat about music and hatch a plan to roam the infinite corridor in T. Rex costumes.

So happy to have you back as part of the team, Kait!

 https://kaitbecker.com/
https://meche.mit.edu/people/faculty/kait@mit.edu

...and Bill responds to a heartfelt email. 

Podcast specific:
Podcast Instagram: @lockthequill
Comments or questions: lockthequill@mit.edu

The Lab at MIT:
Pappalardo Lab Instagram: @pappalardolab
Comments or questions: pappalardolab@mit.edu
Pappalardo Lab website

Transcript

[music]

Speaker 1: Lock the Quill.

Danny: I sit down with one of mechanical engineering's newest faculty, Assistant Professor Kaitlyn Becker. Kait was an undergrad with us seemingly not too long ago, and the staff here certainly remember her. Coming full circle, Professor Kait is now part of the teaching team for our sophomore mechanical engineering design course. She's the real mens et manus deal with extensive experience in glassblowing, deep sea exploration, rock climbing, classical flute, and soft robotics. You'll hear about her start at the MIT Glass Lab that propelled her hands-on work, her postgraduate experience at Harvard, and her current research at MIT.

We also discussed Waikiki Wednesday, the vulgarities of Spotify's shuffle function, and are treated to a little performance of Eugene Bozza Op. 38.

[music]

Danny: We've got some listener email. Here is the email, the one that stood out.

Bill: All right.

Danny: Dear Lock the Quill, please tell Bill that I'm sorry for breaking his grandfather's #4-40 tap. John R.

Bill: [sighs] I've gotten over that...and a few trips to the cemetery in explanations and forgiveness.

Danny: That was a handmade tap from the whaling Schooner Victoria, down in the South Pacific.

Bill: It was. He was good friends with Jonathan Morse. People might be familiar with the Morse company, Morse taper. Also, Morse cutting tool. It was an original, but it's okay. Everything has a lifespan, including my feelings towards it breaking.

Danny: You're okay?

Bill: I'm okay.

Danny: We're letting John off the hook.

Bill: I think John… I appreciate his apology and I feel it's heartfelt, so therefore it's a clean slate. I hope to see him soon.

[music]

Prof. Kaitlyn: I've been teaching in the Glass Lab since 2.007.

Danny: How did you get started with glassblowing?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I started in glassblowing as a freshman in IAP of 2006. I found out about the Glass Lab because one of my friends, someone living in Simmons Hall had to record a video in Spanish about his favorite class. Now, I don't speak Spanish. I held the camera for him though. Then, afterwards I asked him, "What is this thing that you're talking about? I'm so intrigued." I signed up in IAP of 2006 for the freshman-only lottery. We keep IAP every year just for freshmen. We hopefully get people who are early in their career at MIT. I think it was still probably 300 people there that year. I was lucky enough to get in an IAP.

Danny: How many people did they take of the 300?

Prof. Kaitlyn: At the time, 16. We've since expanded the lab and then was lucky enough, just dumb luck to get in the spring. Then the summer after my freshman year, my mom was actually moving from Maine to Pennsylvania. When we had figured out our moving dates, I called around to studios in Philadelphia and asked if they offered lessons. They're like, "Oh, you're a student from MIT. Would you be interested in internship?" "Why, geez, sure I would." That was a really interesting experience because I both did a little bit of production work. I got a couple of lessons. I worked in their studio. I did a lot of studio monkey work and equipment repair.

We also decommissioned a furnace in that summer and that was a very formative experience because of its failure mode. [chuckles] Being able to talk about the design of the furnace and pester people day after day about their equipment and techniques, even if I wasn't blowing glass I could ask questions. Oh boy did I ask questions. Then also I was not working on the crew, but I was doing set up for another production where they were making ornaments for Anthropologie.

We were making these big glass patties. I was just “gather monkey”. “Gather” is what you do to pull glass out of the furnace, essentially imagine sticking a spoon into honey and twirling it up on the spoon. That's what I did all day, except in front of a 2,100-degree Fahrenheit furnace, great practice. It was a hard skill.

Danny: Wax on, wax off.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Wax on, wax off. Absolutely. It was my first exposure to the radiant heat, but it really made me appreciate radiant heat as you stand in front of a 2000-degree furnace for eight hours of production. I got some non-contact burn blisters through my jeans and on the hand that was closest to the furnace. Now, I respect the fact that I'm a pansy. I need to wear kevlar-sleeves if I'm standing in front of a 2000-degree furnace for eight hours, pansy that I am.

Danny: That gave you a ton of experience.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yeah…That was definitely a disproportionate amount of experience for someone starting at MIT. Actually, one thing that was wildly helpful for me as an engineer and a glassblower, is I started monitoring practice sessions. So, say I'm a practice session instructor - I'm not a full senior instructor, but I'm helping keep people safe and guide them through the process. I started as a practice session instructor I think the same semester that I took 2.007. The connection of mind in hand felt like an explosion that semester.

Being able to say, "Whoaaa, I can take these equations that were writing on the board and actually use them as a superpower to make materials do what I want them to do. When they don't do what I want them to do, figure out why that is and be able to articulate it.

[music]

Danny: That mind-in-hand explosion, it kept going. The following spring, Kait volunteered as an undergraduate assistant in the lab for 2.007 and again for a second tour of duty, her senior spring. The undergraduate assistants were, and remain a critically important part of the class in the learning that takes place in the lab.

[music]

Prof. Kaitlyn: As a junior I UA’d under Dan Frey when Slocum was teaching, and then I was Dan Frey's UA again when he started teaching the class the next year. That was so much fun. It was so helpful, I would say -  not only… then figure out for myself… taking the class, figure out how to harness the power of engineering to build things and build things well, maybe occasionally not build them well, but then understand and learn from that in a productive way. There are no engineers in my family. I was very new to building.

Danny: They're teachers.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, I come from a teaching family. Absolutely. What I was saying is the UA-ing and then teaching glassblowing was a really intense exercise in engineering communication for me. Figuring out how to get into somebody's head or let them get into my head, maybe, when they're trying to ask a question and not just stew on a problem for like two weeks and come to a solution, but have a crash course in whatever they've been stewing on for two weeks and then in five minutes try to be helpful.

Then in glassblowing - sometimes it's not usually so time-pressing from a safety standpoint. Occasionally it is, mentioned this earlier, but it's often time pressing from the standpoint of a piece succeeding or failing in the moment that you are able to articulate something very quickly, efficiently, and simply for somebody. Trying to think of what I would be telling a beginner student. Usually, just keep it on center and flash your punty. [chuckles]

Danny: Nomenclature I find is challenging. When we do the casting stuff, students don't know the language. They'll say things like, "Hand me that thing over there," which isn't [chuckles] really useful.

Prof. Kaitlyn: No. Words are interesting, both jargon for specific techniques like manufacturing techniques, even if you have basically almost the same tools and almost the same processes over different mediums, they often have different names. That's true in different disciplines as well. Going back and forth and manufacturing in different circles, it's really interesting to see how the words change. I've had the opportunity to work with some master glassblowers who don't have an engineering degree, but they will describe things like optic flow, just with different words. It's really interesting to connect the two. It's almost like two different languages and in every field too.

Different words for the same thing or the same word that means different things. I feel like a big sticky wicket is the word “design”. It's very different things to different people. That was a really formative experience, the one-two punch of UAing 2.007 and teaching glassblowing.

[music]

Danny: After you graduated MIT, you went out to work in southern California.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, one year for a subcutaneous defibrillator company as a manufacturing engineer in a clean room.

Danny: Then what brought you back to the east coast?

Prof. Kaitlyn: The nerds.

Danny: The nerds. MIT nerds or Harvard nerds?

Prof. Kaitlyn: The Camberville nerds, I would say. This is a really special and wonderful environment around here. I feel like there's such a richness of nerd culture and people who just want to geek out about things and share something they love deeply for other people.

Danny: Yes, flash your punty.

Prof. Kaitlyn: [laughs] You couldn't go a block without bumping into somebody who makes something, who builds things, who engineers things, and wants to talk about it outside of work.

Danny: San Francisco had that vibe in the '80s and '90s.

Prof. Kaitlyn: It's still there a bit. I came back because I wanted to be around a community where people are just excited and intellectually curious and ready to hang with whatever it is that you want to geek out about as long as you're going to take them on that journey. I think that's so cool that people are interested in such a variety of different things and are excited to share that with other people. I think that's particularly obvious on college campuses. It was wonderful here and it was wonderful at Harvard and it's wonderful here again. I really love it. It's so great.

I was a resident tutor at Harvard for four years and one of my favorite things was the dinnertime conversations. You might get into Scandinavian folklore or I might say something about deep-sea ROVs and have someone who's studying literature or architecture ask me great questions about designing tools for deep-sea ROVs, or we might be debating whether a Pop-Tart is ravioli. Everyone was excited to hang and engage in that conversation and outside of their wheelhouse too, which was really cool.

Danny: It is Nerd Central.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, it's great. It's so good. I was so happy to come back. I would say part of what brought me back was the Glass Lab too. It was like I have my MIT and my glassblowing family here. That was an easy network to want to come back to and to find a job nearby.

Danny: Did you come back to work or did you come back for Harvard?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I came back to work. Actually, I was doing cold-calling of different companies and writing people cover letters. Turns out that doesn't work super well without a connection. I reached out to Martin Culpepper and said, "Hey I'm looking for work. Do you know of anybody who's hiring in the area?" He happened to have a recent PhD student who started working for a George Whitesides startup and put me in contact with them to interview.

I ended up working with them for four years on micro-nano tech R&D and a little bit of water treatment. It was really a fire hose experience, which was I think great preparation for grad school. Just like a sampler platter of different research projects to try to dig into quickly and make some progress on and then pivot to the next thing, whatever they told me to do.

Danny: Then you did end up at Harvard for Grad school.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Then I did end up at Harvard. I applied to both MIT and Harvard and I ended up going to Harvard to work with Rob Wood. He was doing some really cool stuff at the intersection of design and manufacturing and both making manufacturing methods to make novel robots, but then also designing novel robots also. Then he brings in a lot of the bio-inspiration into that as well.

Danny: We know him probably most famously for the little flying robots.

Prof. Kaitlyn: The RoboBees. Those are in, I think there's an exhibit on those in the Museum of Science. They're really cool. You have sub-gram flapping wing vehicles that are electrically powered by these little piezo actuators essentially.

Danny: That's what reminded me of Lalique because when I knew you worked for Rob and I was thinking these small flying things, I thought of the dragonflies and then I thought of the glassblowing.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Fair enough. Rob was great. He gave me a lot of freedom to try stuff. It was a little bit intimidating at first, but I think absolutely wonderful. He's a wonderful human being to work with, both very smart and very kind and very creative.

Danny: He's a subject of some of your artwork.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, yes. Did I tell you about this?

[laughter]

Danny: No, but please share.

Prof. Kaitlyn: For those who can't see me, my face went blank momentarily, so I was like, "What is Danny asking me about?" Every year for Rob's birthday-- Oh, that's coming up. Thank you for the reminder.

Danny: Sure.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Every year for Rob's birthday I would Photoshop him into some movie poster. Have I shown you any of these?

Danny: You have not. I would love to see them.

Prof. Kaitlyn: He's such a good--

Danny: In fact, what we'll do is we'll upload as part of this promotion.

Prof. Kaitlyn: [laughs] Oh, perfect. Maybe I should check with Rob first. He's such a good sport. He has such a good sense of humor. [chuckles] I maybe should have hesitated a couple of times when I did stuff like this to him. I think I pulled the most pranks in lab in grad school and he's got a really good sense of humor. [chuckles]

[music]

[beep]

Danny: How are you doing, Rob? Thanks for calling.

Rob Wood: No problem.

Danny: I heard that Kate does some Photoshop work and she did a whole birthday card tribute to you that just sounded a little wacky.

Rob Wood: Yes, it's been a fun tradition, I guess, that she has carried on for several years.

Danny: Any favorite? She said the Westworld one was creepy.

Rob Wood: Yes, that was a little creepy but good and clever. I think I was Jean Luke Picard at one point. Willy Wonka I think was another one. Star Wars. I hope she has better things to do these days.

Danny: She said it was a good skill to have.

Rob Wood: It's not surprising because the stuff that that we do that she does is in hardware and robotics so it's very visually interesting devices, hopefully, and so it's not surprising that these graphic skills carry over.

[music]

Danny: Talk about grad school, soft robotics.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Soft robotics.

Danny: This is like glassblowing though. When I see you playing with soft stuff and goops and the TPUs, I don't know if this is intentional, but I see soft flowy stuff in both fields and I just wonder if you have a propensity for mushy flowy radiological things.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I didn't figure that connection out until much later in my grad school career. Interesting that you point that out so quickly. You're wiser than I am.

[laugher]

Prof. Kaitlyn: More observant perhaps.

Danny: No. I just encounter more goop.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, boy, yes. Goop’s good. It was not intentional. I think what I figured out at the time of applying for grad school, I realized that the space I really like sitting in is the intersection of design and manufacturing. When you're working with challenging materials or you're doing something new, my favorite phrase is when someone says, "Oh, I don't know how we would do that," or, "I don't know how we would make that." I'm like, "Yes, this is where I would like to play." Really looking at how the material and the manufacturing and the design performance requirements all influence each other.

The glassblowing and soft robotics work play well together because they both undergo large deformations. I would say soft robotics traditionally is not manufacturing-focused. I would like to make it more manufacturing-focused. Just a quick side note is that I think that there's not enough appreciation for manufacturing as an area of research and specifically in soft robotics.

Danny: You say in general.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I would say, in general, it's seen as an engineering exercise, but it's really difficult. I think you can create a lot of good and disruptive change with intelligent and creative manufacturing.

Danny: I think of John Hart as an example of that, but anything outside of that, I do think that people have, not a prejudice, but they have this preconceived notion that we could just outsource it and our processes are well-developed.

Prof. Kaitlyn: When I first told that story and when I had become comfortable with that, that I felt like manufacturing was so important in this design process and innovation process, I was really comfortable with that by the end of grad school and I didn't really care if someone didn't respect that. I was like, "You can have your opinion and it might bite you in the butt when you realize that this isn't manufacturable or that we can lap you when we figure out a different way to manufacture it." I felt seen when I came back to MIT, to be honest.

Normally, I have to spend a lot of time explaining that to people and I just don't hear a lot of people get it, and it's really exciting for me and it's a great community that I feel like I get a lot of support from. In soft robotics, for example, some of the deep sea work that I've done is made possible not by necessarily making a lot of changes to the geometry of a mechanism, but how it's made. That's really important in glassblowing as well.

I think that's where I got some of that influence, is that the process design, the path you take from A to R for a robot has a lot of influence on the end product itself. For example, some of the deep-sea fingers, the squishy robot fingers if you will, that I make, I can quadruple the burst pressure by just changing how it's made. Almost the same exact geometry.

Danny: Same material?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Same material.

Danny: Different process.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Even the molds are the same material. If you really get into the nitty-gritty of how the molds are made and the order of operations in which you make something, you can really improve the performance. I worked with his wonderful engineer, Kevin Galloway when I started on the deep-sea Squishy Robot Fingers project.

Danny: At Harvard.

Prof. Kaitlyn: At Harvard. He had come up with this technique for softcore molding with soft robots. Basically, with a softcore molding, we mold all of this complex geometry in one monolithic chunk of rubber, and the idea being that we eliminate some of the seams, which are a weak point. Now, previously in soft robotics a lot of people would mold one half, mold the second half, and then join them together.

Silicone doesn't bond a silicone very well. Kevin came up with the idea of using a softcore so you can have a really complex internal geometry, and because the core of that mold is flexible and extensible, then you can actually just manhandle it out and have this beautiful continuous geometry on the inside. There were still some pieces of that process that were creating consistent defects and weak points. By really nerding out and digging into the manufacturing, if you start looking at parting lines for the mold that creates the softcore, for example, you can start limiting those very common defects that create trust concentrations or thin points in the wall of that actuator, that balloon, if you will.

Danny: I can see that. Sure.

Prof. Kaitlyn: That was just changing where parting lines were and thinking about the molding process. Then if you look at the additive manufacturing that we were using to make the molds, we're using a multi-jet printer, the Stratasys printers and the support material itself actually inhibits some of the curing of silicone rubbers but on top of that, it actually also affects the surface roughness of the molds and the prints.

If you redesign the molds so they don't need support material, and then you print them in clever orientations, you can eliminate the support material. You change the surface features of that mold, and then again, reduce what's essentially like a crack or a stress concentration point or a thin spot in your actuator. A hill I will die on is that everybody's like, "Oh, you can print anything. 3D printing's amazing. You don't even have to design for it. You can just print whatever you want." I'm like, "Absolutely not." I really don't like when people say that. Every printer is different. Every material is different and a really good designer should take that into account in their designs.

You should be mindful of both the printer you're using and the material you're using. You can then look in your rest state and actuated state of your soft robotic actuators, you can look at what areas are going to see highest drain and in particular, what areas are going to be of loaded intention. If you're going to have a crack plan it for a spot that doesn't matter as much but to bring more awareness of that to soft robotics and a healthier respect for the importance of manufacturing and how the processing of a material affects its behavior just as much as the geometry itself. Really what we're talking about is essentially defects, defect formation.

Danny: You have a paper where you talk about dip molding.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh yes, there's a paper that talks about dip molding, and then there's a paper that makes a noodle monster from the dip molding.

Danny: The noodle monster.

Prof. Kaitlyn: No, it's the entanglement or filament Gripper.

Danny: Entanglement.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Entanglement gripper or filament gripper are the two names that we've been using for that. There's one paper that's basically four flavors of mechanical programming for dip molding. That's not what the actual title is but essentially dip molding is what you would use to make doctor's, gloves, party balloons, or balloon animals…

Danny: It was the act actuation that struck me as most intriguing in that application.

Prof. Kaitlyn: The actuation, you mean the fact that it's pneumatic or the mechanical programming to have interesting actuation.

Danny: The latter.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, that was the fun part. The dip molding was a nice way to say I see people making these high aspect ratio balloons or actuators and they're making more and more precise molds and more and more expensive molds, but why? Why would you make it more expensive and harder to make when you can actually just play with physics to have gravity and surface tension and the viscosity of the rubber to do most of the work of dimensioning for you but then in doing that, I'm essentially just making these long balloon animal balloons.

Now that's not very interesting, but then I want to mechanically program them. Then I started adding fiber reinforcement, which is not a new thing in soft robotics we do that. Changing though the thickness via either surface tension or electric fields or gravity fields, and then mechanically program them so that instead of just turning into this big thicker balloon, once you inflate it as opposed to a skinnier balloon, then it actually will curl up and you can program with that. You can program the actuation pressure, you can program the pitch of that curly cue that it turns into, and you can essentially tailor the stiffness.

Now, all of them are going to be not super stiff because it's essentially a very long beam. Very long and skinny beams are not stiff. Essentially what I'm doing is g greeting actuators that are purposefully very compliant both in the material that it's used to make them, and also the structure that they're made into. The idea then that I took from the paper of how to make them and what to do with them is it's a way that you can very quickly make lots of these very compliant noodles, if you will, or filaments, and use those to passively adapt to different structures that you're trying to pick up with this concept of entanglement grasping.

Danny: The spaghetti gripper is [crosstalk]--

Prof. Kaitlyn: It's either the entanglement gripper or a filament gripper. Imagine you have a fistful of spaghetti in your hand and it's all limp, but the snap of your fingers, which is basically the flip of a switch for either pneumatic or hydraulic pressure, then all of those spring into a curly state and entangle with each other and entangle with whatever is nearby. Then at the snap of your fingers, you can then return them to their straight state. That's essentially what the gripper is. It's a fistful spaghetti or a handful of spaghetti that's dangling out of your hand, but then can spontaneously go from straight to curled back to straight again.

Danny: Is the application similar to the gripper, is underwater exploration or gripping sensitive or delicate items?

Prof. Kaitlyn: That was the initial inspiration. I came from going digging through some videos from Noah they had kindly shared with us of particularly difficult specimen to pick up. Branched coral or deep-sea sponges that maybe also are very compliant. Things that have a very complex topology or are compliant or maybe are delicate, but then hopefully the idea is that it's not just something that you would use underwater. Still looking for various applications where that would be most useful.

If you're maybe doing crop pollination for some plant study or relocating plants or maybe interacting with people, like helping-- I don't think most people want to be touched by an octopus but if that octopus is then spreading out all those contact points and supporting you while also being very gentle, maybe we can bring people around and convince them that these robotic actor pods are friendly and helpful.

Danny: The analogies to glass just continuously amaze me here-

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, yes?

Danny: -because polymer chemistry or glass blowing, you are talking about long chain molecules that tangle in themselves.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I started going down a rabbit hole of entanglement and topological knot theory and trying to frame what we were doing with that project. That's a very deep rabbit hole that--

Danny: It is.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I was fortunate to have some collaborators that were already digging into that to help frame it.

Danny: You know the art of Dale Chihuly?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I do know the art of Dale Chihuly. He's actually been on campus too.

Danny: Oh really?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes.

Danny: That too reminds me of your spaghetti gripper.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Some of his installations in botanical gardens. Is that what you're thinking of?

Danny: Yes.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, because he has the assembly of those, I forget what he calls them, but it's like the towers that have these curly cues that are all built up into a behemoth of a structure.

Danny: Yes, that's your entanglement, the work.

Prof. Kaitlyn: There you go. I don't know that I'd want to entangle with brittle glass. I'm going to stick with the compliant rubber on that one. [laughs]

[music]

Danny: By 2020, Kate was beginning to wrap up her doctoral work at Harvard. And at the encouragement of her advisor, Rob Wood, was thinking about applying to various faculty positions. 

[music]

Danny: Did you postdoc at Harvard?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I postdoc very briefly. Actually, it was a last-minute decision to apply. I was invited to apply to ECS?

Danny: Here?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, here and I had not been intending to apply. It was COVID and I was working as a resident tutor over at Harvard so I helped 400 students move out of the dorm when we went into lockdown. Then had to figure out how to keep high contact, like in touch, and track of my 3, 5 students in my entryway, and keep track of my advisees all over Zoom and email when everything, all of this was new to us. I was like Rob, "I was thinking of applying this year. I'm trying to finish up this entanglement paper. I feel like I'm behind and I'm tracking a lot with my students at the dorm. I'm not sure this is the right time for me to apply."

He said, "Okay, maybe we'll table it for next year." We're still doing a lot of fun work. We have a lot of things in the pipeline that we want to work on that's fine. Then I got the invitation to apply to ECS, I think with two weeks to the deadline or something.

Danny: That's like a week and a half more notice than most.

Prof. Kaitlyn: [laughs] I think so. I had just figured out I think approximately what my thesis title would be, and the thesis of course you're writing up approximately what you've been doing for the last five or six years. Now, I will also write a proposal for the next 10 years of my work and submit that as an application. Great experience, a little bit intense. I actually ended up getting the offer two days before I defended my thesis. They asked me if I would want to do a postdoc, if I would be amenable to the idea. I'd worked in the industry for five years.

They're like, "Well, you haven't done a postdoc, but you do have industry experience. We wanted to check in with you and propose this idea." I was like, "Yes, absolutely. I would like to do a postdoc." One thing, I wasn't going to have physical space, so it was a way to-- As a hardware lab, physical space is critical for me. There was a way to give some time to be able to have lab space, but then also try to start getting a little bit more diversity into my work.

I actually then took a postdoc with Maha at Harvard which was great because I had started working with him a little bit on the entanglement gripper project. I had worked with him at Mather House at Harvard and so it was a neat way then to also get exposure to a lot of diversity from topological, knot theory, to the collective behavior of ants to the growth of cells and fibers inside of the skin of cells, to I think to textiles. Yes, it's wild. He's so creative. It's a wild ride and lots of fun.

[music]

Danny: Can you talk a little bit about the transition to MIT or coming back to MIT? What's it like being on the other side?

Prof. Kaitlyn: It's wild. It's great. It's definitely wild. I was not super surprised but I was mildly pleasantly surprised by I think how much talk there is about education. I really like that. Coming from a teaching family, the first faculty meeting I attended Sanjay was actually presenting on education and pedagogy. I was like, "This is great. They're so focused on this. I'm so excited to be working with this cohort that really cares about this."

Danny: Tell me about your research group now.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I've got a wonderful bunch of nerds who are all very tolerant of how much I want to talk about the intersection of machine design and manufacturing. Four of them are working on soft robotics at the moment. Nina's working in some bio-inspired soft robotics doing more with that dip molding and expanding that to some exploration of ciliary structures and how we can do some sensing and distributed control in there.

Cat, Qifan, and Charlotte are all working on some teleoperated soft robotics projects related to telemedicine and various forms of both how should we be designing these, treating them as not just soft robots, but essentially soft machines? How do we set up a framework of soft machine design, essentially, and how does that differ from traditional rigid machine design?

Danny: Sure.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Then what are the functional requirements of these soft machines? What are reasonable applications for them? Then, what are some of the challenges we're seeing there? I would say Charlotte's working more on the soft machine design, and then Cat and Qifan are working more may be on the fabrication side and Qifan, a little bit, on some of the nitty-gritty of fabrication and how do we advance some of the tools we have in our fabrication toolkit.

Cat's looking at how do we increase the payload of some of these software robots in an intelligent way and making soft rigid hybrids. Those are the four working on soft robotics. Daniel is following a bifurcation of the research where we're actually working with molten glass and molten glass manufacturing and we've partnered up with actually one of my old colleagues who was in Maria Yang's group for his masters. We both actually were here for undergrad together and we started in the Glass Lab together as undergrads. He went to Lincoln Labs worked with Maria, and in his masters was taking John Hart's additive manufacturing class. In that class started up the Molten glass 3D printer at MIT that was then in the media lab. He has a company, Evenline, that's in Rochester New York now and they have that printer running. We're looking to get spicy with glass manufacturing and doing some interesting hybrid techniques that I maybe won't go into entirely but looking to use that for structural glass near and far. Maybe I'll stop at that.

One of the things Daniel and I are super excited to dig into with the work that we're doing with Evenline or Michael Stern and his team is that, I think again taking the intersection of design and manufacturing, looking at what the performance requirements are of the object you eventually want to build and then use that to actually inform the design of the machine that will build it. Then, once you have that machine then, again though, explore what design space is available to you. I would like people to start using the term manufacturing space. What manufacturing space is available to you? You can change that depending on the process and depending on the machine.

One of the things we're looking at doing is working with other glasses than he's able to do right now. People say, "Oh, maybe that's just an incremental change." I would push back on that because if you increase you're working temperature by a couple of 100 degrees, which is required for some of the glass that we want to be able to use, then that's a non-trivial change for the materials that you can use in the wear and tear in the machine.

Glass is incredibly corrosive when it's in its molten form. Even in a studio where we have a relatively low temperature glass, you have to replace those crucibles after a while and they look like Swiss cheese when you take them out of the furnace to replace them. When you start getting to higher temperature glass or glass that might be even a little more corrosive then you start getting to the point where the only thing that can hold it and hold up to it is platinum. That's pretty pricey but there might be other clever ways to deal with this so that you can get around that challenge.

Then, also, looking at not just what objects you're making but also where are you making them. What's the availability of maintenance? What type of maintenance do you want to do? How automated is this? How do you design the machine around that?

Danny: When you say “where”, you mean physically where in the world are you doing this?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, where in the world or maybe on the moon are you doing this?

[music]

Danny: Can I talk about your parents a little bit?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Sure.

Danny: Not because I have any inside information here. You look worried. [laughs]

Prof. Kaitlyn: No, I'm not. I think this is fun.

Danny: The only reason why is because you mentioned that you grew up in a teaching family.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes.

Danny: I'm wondering how that influenced or provided a different lens as you enter this environment.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Well my mom is very proud that she got me to believe in and recite for other people that teaching is a noble profession - by the age of five. My mom is a teacher. She has a PhD in education from Columbia.

Danny: Oh, that's where Dewey and Thorndike are from.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, yes. She definitely quotes them regularly. I think there's a Dewey quote in her email tagline. I would never claim that I have formal training via just conversation at home. My mom and my brother have formal training in education and that's their focus. I think if nothing else I think I would've been very hard hit in my own education if I didn't have a mother who was very aware that everybody learns very differently. I struggled with that a little bit in elementary and middle school where people thought, "Oh, Kate's not quite getting it. She's thinking differently."

Some teachers were like, "Oh, she just thinks very differently. This is awesome," but not everybody necessarily gets on that train. I'm really glad that I was allowed to be very creative in how I approach different topics. My mom was very much interested in letting me have a lot of freedom with how I approach my own education and be really creative with that as opposed to doing things very procedurally.

Danny: How much of that do you bring into the classroom here?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I've talked about it with my grad students. I think I almost frustrate people a little bit because I want to adapt my teaching style to different people. I can do that most in individual styles. It's harder when you have a whole lecture hall. One thing that's been really nice about working in the Glass Lab is then I have small groups and you can really watch people's body language when you're working and when you're giving a demonstration or a lecture and see what's sticking and what's not sticking.

Now, I love MIT and Harvard students dearly but myself included we all have this natural tendency to want to prove that we're smart and to have people see that we understand something even if we don't understand something. A lot of times as teachers I think we say blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Does that make sense? Then the student goes, "Uh-huh"

Danny: [laughs]

Prof. Kaitlyn: Uh-huh is not the right answer. [chuckles] The great thing about working in 2.007, and I would say particularly in the Glass Lab is the proof is in the pudding and you get to see the pudding so quickly.

Danny: Yes, sure.

Prof. Kaitlyn: You give a lesson and then they try it immediately and then you can see based on their body mechanics basically like, "Did you get it? Were you listening? Did you take it in, or no?" I think talking with my mom I don't know how she incepted this into me, but I'm quite confident this is her doing that basically, in everything I teach while trying to cater to a variety of different learning styles, at the very least I try to for everyone connect something to physical experience and common experiences that we can all relate to.

[music]

Danny: All right. Music I don't have a quiz so there's no pressure.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Okay. All right. Well, I've already admitted to that. I do terrible at music quizzes.

Danny: Contemporary music, what are you listening to? If I do a Spotify the Kate Becker Spotify playlist looks like what?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Can I pull up my phone? Let's see. Well, the most recent concerts I've been to are brass house music Too Many Zooz and Moon Hooch. [chuckles] I'm a variety monster. A lot of different things come up. In that line, I would say Caravan Palace also comes up. Basically, I'm irreverent to time period. I think is what Spotify told me more so than being a time traveler. I like a lot of classic Big Ben Jazz as well like Duke Ellington. I would say there's a lot of folk.

I played a lot of classical music growing up. That was like where my training was in flute and piccolo. I think I enjoyed a little bit more the jazz but there's not a lot of opportunities for Y.A.S flute. There's some part of why I like Duke Ellington or I guess Jethro Tull with that--

Danny: Jethro Tull. That's right.

Prof. Kaitlyn: My oldest brother was like, "Kait you have to listen this. You can't play flute and not listen to Jethro Tull." Just I think at least for the meme factor. I used to be a purist and be like, "Oh, I have to listen to an album as it was laid out because people put a lot of care and time into picking the order of the pieces that you put in there," much like a concert. I'm like, "Oh, that seems--

Danny: I haven't swayed from that opinion either, myself.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I've recently got into digging through the different lists on Spotify.

Danny: Okay. I've got strong feelings on this.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes. I probably agree and have just gone down over to the dark side and just been like, "Well, I'm going to try it anyway." [chuckles]

Danny: See, I can't say I've gone over to the dark side as much as I just have to tolerate it because that's where we are. When Steve hits the little shuffle button over on his computer-

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, yes, that's fair.

Danny: -I just flip out. Yes, I'm kind of a snob that way.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I respect that. How does that affect the piece if you pull out some of them? Yeah, it feels a little offensive. I get where you're coming from to take out. It's like reading a poem. I'll be like, "Oh, you don't need those dances. That's not part of it."

Danny: I dig it. I'm totally in that zone. [chuckles]

Prof. Kaitlyn: That being said, so I'll listen to lists on Spotify, but then I also will pull things thematically. I mix. I would say, for more classic stuff, then I'd want to listen to it on an album and respect that. I'm also getting to the point where I am also a variety monster and want to experience new things, so I'll just hit that shuffle button too.

Danny: All right.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I can't keep away from it.

Danny: You're a flautist. Flautist? Flautist.

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes, flautist. It does sound pretentious, doesn't it?

Danny: No, I just want to make sure it's not flutist. It's Flautist.

Prof. Kaitlyn: The tootie-fluties...

Danny: You brought it, though.

Prof. Kaitlyn: I brought it.

Danny: Let's see this. Are you going to break it out?

Prof. Kaitlyn: I got my foot out last night and noodled around with it. I was telling my partner, it's like, "Oh, it's never fun for the first 5 to 10 minutes of it," because then it's like I'm out of practice, and it's warming up. I'm snooty about tone. I also know that now I haven't been playing as much recently and then I get really self-conscious. I'm like, "I'm out of tune." Being out of practice, I was like, "I don't know if this is a good idea,"

I have this flute that is, I think I would say one of, if not the most prized possession that I have. It's an Austin Brannen that's no longer made, so Brannen Brothers still exists. This is a flute that is no longer made. It's a year younger than I am, and it's a solid silver flute that's entirely handmade. Not cheap, definitely worth more than my car. I'm also driving a 2004 stickshift Toyota Corolla that has a mean rattle.

Danny: All right, lay it on. Look at this thing. This is beautiful.

Prof. Kaitlyn: That's beautiful.

[Instrumental]

Danny: Bravo. Oh, oh my gosh.

Prof. Kaitlyn: To anybody who knows that. Sorry for the wrong notes.

Danny: No, tell us more about the piece.

Prof. Kaitlyn: It's a Eugene Bozza's Image for a flute solo or image.

Danny: That is awesome. I love it.

Prof. Kaitlyn: There's not a lot of work that's meant to just be played without accompaniment. Usually, you play with a small chamber ensemble with a pianist, but that's a fun one.

Danny: Oh, you got to find people here and do that.

Prof. Kaitlyn: No, I need to. You can hear it like I'm out of practice. It's out of tune. I played some wrong notes. Sorry, everybody, but it's still fun to play. I hope I can find a group here.

[music]

Danny: Did you wear a dinosaur suit for Halloween here?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, at Harvard.

Danny: At Harvard you did?

Prof. Kaitlyn: At Harvard I did.

Danny: Are you importing this?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Oh, I do have two dinosaur suits if you want to run around campus with me

Danny: For Halloween or just anytime?

Prof. Kaitlyn: Yes. You see what I'm wearing right now.

[laughter]

Prof. Kaitlyn: Danny gave me some grief in Lab because I had not appropriately dressed for Waikiki Wednesday. I actually rented. Instead of buying clothes, I like to borrow or rent clothes. I looked up, I was like, "Okay, what do we have for tropical wear?" I showed up in a tropical onesie today coverall. Got a glimpse of myself this morning. I rolled out of the house at 6:15 or something, so I didn't really look at the mirror. I went to the bathroom quickly before we started chatting. I was like, "Oh, yes, I'm a lot today."

Danny: [laughs]

Prof. Kaitlyn: "All right, buckle up." I really enjoy the sartorial freedom I feel like I'm being afforded by my colleagues.

Danny: I'll wear the dinosaur-

Prof. Kaitlyn: Dinosaur.

Danny: -suit.

Kate: Excellent.

Danny: You can put me down. If you drag it in, I'll put it on.

Kate: Okay. All right. I have them. It's going to happen, Danny.

Danny: Oh, no. Okay.

Prof. Kaitlyn: You think I'm kidding?

Danny: No:

Prof. Kaitlyn: You might be kidding. I'm not.

[music]

Speaker 1: I want to welcome Kait back to our nerd family at MIT and to thank her for sitting down with me. We're having fun with 2.007, and I look forward to many more with Kait. Squishy spaghetti grippers and everything. 

Thank you for listening! If you enjoy our little operation, please leave us a review or rating on Spotify or Apple and follow us on Instagram. Lock the Quill and Pappalardo lab. The global Challenge entries keep coming in. John from Indonesia is still a contender for the T-shirt, but this month's entries are much closer than you may think. Just email us your address, and we'll pick the farthest listener in the next episode to win a Lock the Quill sticker. Have a great weekend, everybody.

[music]

[00:46:55] [END OF AUDIO]