Biography

Joseph Jacobson, head of the Media Lab's Molecular Machines research group, is working to reinvent microelectronics by developing processes for directly and continuously printing communication, computation, and displays onto arbitrary substrates. He received a PhD in physics from MIT and was a postdoctoral fellow in physics at Stanford. As a graduate student researching femtosecond lasers, he set the record for the shortest pulse ever generated by a laser (in optical cycles). His postdoctoral work in nonlinear-nonlocal quantum systems was published in the Physical Review and was written up in The New York Times, New Scientist and Physics Today. Jacobson is the author of more than 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and holds several patents and patent pendings in display technology and printed electronics. A technical founder of E Ink Corporation, he received a 2001 Discover magazine award for technological innovation, and in 1999 he was named as one of Technology Review magazine's 100 most influential innovators under the age of 35 for his work on "microsphere" technology&8212;research that has led to the development of "e-ink" and technologies for electronic books.