Hello! I’m Jake Read, this is my personal website.

I’m currently working on my PhD at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms with Neil Gershenfeld, where I am trying to uncover the key technologies that will enable rapid scaling and broad interoperability in open source manufacturing.

In practice, I’m an Engineer / Designer of machines, software (embedded and otherwise), circuits, and networked systems. When left unsupervised, I tend towards furniture projects, fixing old german cars, throwing ceramics, reading into the wee hours, etc.

You can find my machine systems scattered around on the MTM website, where I have also written a few guides. In particular, I think the practical microcontroller primer, which I wrote to help HTMAA 2021 students, is useful.

I’m currently spending a lot of time with the Clank Project and its sister project, a modular-all-the-way-down software/hardware systems assembly tool that I call OSAP… both of which are frameworks: I am also working on application-layer codes for modular motion control, search-for-dynamics on just-in-time assembled modular systems, as well as search routines for material processing parameters: i.e. making machines smart enough to figure out how fast & hot to process things automatically.

I also track WIP on the CBA GitLab instance and on my GitHub profile.

Previously, I worked at Otherlab on advanced manufacturing, and with the C.H.A.O.S Lab at Princeton on green building technology. Also with AeroVelo building high perfomance composite aircraft. I was originally trained as an Architect at the University of Waterloo in Canada (where I also briefly taught a digital fabrication course), and I completed the Kings College (Halifax) “First Year Program,” wherein we read a tonne of books.

contact: jake.read at cba.mit.edu or via github