A Tufts team is one of four grand prize winners in the National Science Foundation’s search for big ideas to inform its research agenda for the coming decade.
The competition, named NSF 2026 Idea Machine—that year being the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country—will “inform the U.S. agenda for fundamental science, engineering, and STEM education research,” according to the NSF. The NSF received more than 800 entries, which went through five selection phases. The other three grand prize winners are from Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Matthias Scheutz, a professor of computer science and director of the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts, and Vasanth Sarathy, a doctoral candidate in computer science and cognitive science, won a grand prize for their project “From Thinking to Inventing.” They will receive $26,000 and are being honored at a ceremony at the NSF today.
“The real prize is the opportunity to promote the progress of science and engineering by helping NSF identify possible new areas of research,” according to an NSF statement. Later this year, the NSF will accept proposals for workshops and Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGERs) related to the research themes chosen in the NSF 2026 Idea Machine competition.
In their submission, Scheutz and Sarathy focused on the question, What can machines invent and how? When faced with new problems, humans can improvise to come up with solutions, inventing new ways of using existing materials. Can machines do that, too?
