Self-assembly is the ubiquitous process by which objects autonomously
assemble into complexes. It is believed that self-assembly technology will
ultimately permit the precise fabrication of complex nanostructures. Of
particular interest are self-assembly systems that are highly programmable. That
is, we can view a self-assembly system as analogous to a program, the process of
self-assembly as computation, and the resultant structure or shape assembled as
the output. In this context, we are interested in the design of compact systems
for the efficient assembly of desired target structures.
In this talk I will discuss my work in the area of self-assembly, focusing
primarily on DNA self-assembly and the tile assembly model framework. I will
introduce new models of self-assembly and discuss how these models affect the
power of assembly as well as the complexity of fundamental problems related to
system design. In particular, I will discuss a new programming paradigm called
Temperature Programming in which generic, multi-purpose particle systems can be
dynamically programmed to assemble any of a large class of target structures as
a function of a short sequence of temperature changes.