This talk will describe how electronics and computation can be blended with a range of different materials including paper, paint, fabric, and wood to create unique, personal, and expressive technology. It will introduce new engineering developments including techniques for sketching functional user interfaces and folding shape-changing origami. It will also discuss the ways in which researchers in the High-Low Tech group are helping others create and share new technology by teaching workshops, developing project-sharing platforms, and participating in open source hardware communities.

Leah Buechley is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group. The High-Low Tech group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives, with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. She is a well-known expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research was the recipient of a 2011 NSF CAREER award and has been featured in numerous articles in publications including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, and the Taipei Times. She received PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College.