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Neil Adam Gershenfeld (born December 1, 1959) is an American scientist. He is a professor in the MIT Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms. He works mainly on interdisciplinary topics in physics and computer science, such as quantum computing, nanotechnology, and personal fabrication.
He attended Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Later he attended Swarthmore College, graduating in 1981 with a B.A. degree in physics with high honors. In 1990, he earned a Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University, titled Representation of chaos.
Gershenfeld has presented his course on "How to make (almost) anything" at the Association of Professional Model Makers (APMM) 2010 Conference.
This class later has led Gershenfeld to create Fab lab in collaboration with Bakhtiar Mikhak at MIT. Gershenfeld feels very passionate about this project, as he believes that teaching kids how to use technology and create it themselves will empower the future generations to become more independent and create technology that each individual community needs, not a technology that is currently available on the market. Fab labs have spread around the world, having been established in the remotest of places and countries. In his interview with Discover magazine on the question what personal fabrication might be useful for, Gershenfeld said, "There is a surprising need for emergent technologies in many of the least developed places on the planet. While our needs might be fairly well met, there are billions of people on the planet whose needs are not. Their problems don't need incremental tweaks in current technology, but a revolution".
As well as "How to make (almost) anything" class, Gershenfeld has started teaching the following classes: "How To Make Something That Makes (almost) Anything", "The Physics of Information Technology", "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling".
Gershenfeld has been a keynote speaker at the Congress of Science and Technology Leaders (2015, 2016).
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Scientific American named Gershenfeld one of their "Scientific American 50" for 2004 and has also named him Communications Research Leader of the Year. Gershenfeld has been featured in The New York Times, in The Economist, and on NPR. He was named as one of the 40 modern-day Leonardos by the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago. Prospect named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals.
An email from Gershenfeld contained in the Epstein files confirmed a lunch meeting between the two, described as a warm-up for meetings in "more entertaining venues."
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