(Press release date)
On January 2017, the 9th edition of the bleeding-edge educational program Fab Academy will kickstart simultaneously in more than 90 labs distributed across the entire planet to explore the applications and implications of digital fabrication. Neil Gershenfeld, MIT's renowned physicist, is once again, leading this initiative, which promises to turn upside-down manufacturing as we know it.
If you could make almost anything, what would you do? That will be the first question that around 300 international students will face next January. The beginning of twenty breathtaking weeks in a race to learn how to design and fabricate that thing. Welcome to The Fab Academy.
From that moment, something magical will happen around the world every Wednesday at a particular time, which spans from 6 am in Alaska, to 9 am in Boston, to 3pm in Europe, to 11 pm in Japan and to 4 am in New Zeeland. At that time, small groups of students gather for class in fabrication laboratories (fabulous facilities equipped with hi-end digital fabrication tools) to attend the live masterclass taught by Neil Gershenfeld by videoconferencing system. Every week on a different topic: CAD, project management, electronics, programming, composites, 3D printing, laser cutting, interface design... In a nutshell, everything you need to know to create your own tech startup, to set up a fab lab, to become a Fab Academy instructor or all of them. That is, assuming you find the time to complete and document the weekly assignments and the final project. Not an easy task, but always with the support and guidance of your local instructor and peers. Because it is also a distributed education system where not only the lecturer and the instructor, but also students, from all kind of fields, share expertise and help each other reinforcing the concept of collaborative economy. A life changer game for many of the players.
Fab Academy has a cost of 5000 USD/EUR, which is evenly distributed to cover the central expenses of running the program and supporting the participating labs.
The Fab Academy is one of the programs run by The Academy of Almost Anything, also known as The Academany. Another program which is currently ongoing is the second edition of the Bio Academy, or How to Grow (almost) Anything, a genetics and synthetic biology course directed by George Church (Harvard Medical School) and an impressive faculty. There are also other educational programs under preparation like Why To Make (almost) Anything which will be directed by Olafur Eliasson and Machines That Make by MIT's Phd. Nadya Peek.
Links
Fab Academy: http://fabacademy.org
Bio Academy: http://bio.academany.org
Academany: http://academany.org
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