Marcin Biography

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Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.

TED Fellow, 2011

Please see recent TED Talk:

Please see Marcin's TED profile

Website - Open Source Ecology

Weblog - http://bit.ly/3xa1mU

Wiki - http://bit.ly/63rPDN

Biography

Marcin came to the U.S. from Poland as a child.  He graduated with honors from Princeton and earned his PhD in fusion physics from the University of Wisconsin before shifting direction and starting a hydroponic vegetable farm in Madison, WI. Lacking real experience in practical matters, he then began his education from scratch, and in 2003 he founded Open Source Ecology in order to make closed-loop manufacturing a reality. He began development on the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), an open source DIY tool set of 50 different industrial machines necessary to create modern civilization from scrap metal. OSE has prototyped 8 machines and intends to build everything from an induction furnace for melting metals to an open source combine.

What are you working on right now?

We are simultaneously launching our first full product release of the Compressed Earth Brick Press (CEB), and building a new flexible fabrication workshop with our Tractor, Soil Pulverizer, and CEB. We are blogging, updating the wiki with instructions, and travelling frequently for speaking events. This winter, we’ll focus on strategies for developing the rest of the GVCS in a massively-parallel collaborative fashion through crowd funding and stronger developer outreach.

What do you do for fun?

Part of the nature of my project is that I create my own world from ‘scratch’, which is an exhilarating pursuit.  This entails living closely with the land and developing a built-in sense of recreation and freedom in my work, the same kind that I’d wish for adopters of our designs.  The project has also brought a rich community of collaborators from diverse disciplines, allowing for exciting cross-pollination and skill-exchange.  

Tell a surprising anecdote about yourself that few people know.

According to my parents I could tie my own shoes when I was two years old.

I once went to a physics professor to ask about what item a certain long wave equation was describing. He said, “Oh, it doesn't exist. I just made it up.” It was confirmed then that my education was not really adding up to solving pressing world issues, and it was time for a mid-course correction.

See my personal invitation for collaboration at Marcin Bio/CV