A few years ago, Jasmine Lu was just starting her PhD program in computer science at the University of Chicago. She worked in a lab that integrated devices with the human body.
And she knew she wanted to try and incorporate a living organism into a device. She played around with plants, mushrooms, algae — but they were too picky. Then she discovered a not-so-picky bright yellow blob: slime mold.
The slime mold grew on everything Jasmine tested it on: wires, tubes, random pieces of plastic. And she learned it could do something amazing: conduct electricity.
So Jasmine designed a smartwatch using the slime mold as a “living wire.” The only catch? It needed to be fed and watered to work.
It got Jasmine wondering, what would happen if our devices were alive? If we needed to feed them to make them work? Would it change the way people care about these pieces of plastic and metal we’re so quick to replace every few years?
Credits:
Producer: Ellie Katz
Editor: Morgan Springer
Additional Editing: Dan Wanschura, Claire Keenan-Kurgan, Ruth Abramovitz
Host: Dan Wanschura
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Feature image by Jasmine Lu- A Petri dish with Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold. Computer science researcher Jasmine Lu used the slime mold as a “living wire” in a smartwatch at the University of Chicago.
