In the project infomatter, researchers are investigating whether materials can store and process information in a completely different manner than our current digital computers. This work is motivated by the realization that many of the complex phenomena seen in real materials that have vexed researchers can be understood using tools from information theory. In particular, we use materials ranging from synthetic metamaterials to crumpled sheets of paper,
to investigate if their mechanical response can be seen as performing (unusual) computions: in short, can a crumple act as a computer?
Our work is shining new light on the poorly understood physics of many of the complex materials that surround us, from granular media such as sand to glasses and crumpled sheets of paper, which in the future
may improve our handing of such complex materials - for example, handling granular matter is very energy intensive, and a better understanding of its memory effects may contribute to making industrial processes more efficient.
However, we aim for having our biggest impact in computing. Current use of enery for computing already exceeds that of airtravel, and with the exponential growth of demand for computing for, e.g. machine learning and AI, it is of paramount
importance to find new, robust, and enery efficient ways to compute. Our work on using passive materials to process information, in a manner that has key aspects in common with how our energy efficient brains work, and
circumvents the classical problems of digital computing such as the von Neumann bottleneck, will open new avenaues towards the low CO2 footprint of the future.
