I recently presented the research regarding reversible computation that I've been working on with Dr. Aubert at the 22nd annual Phi Kappa Phi Undergraduate Research and Fine Arts Conference at Augusta University, and learned a lot from it. I gave a 12 minute speech and presentation on the importance of concurrent reversibility in front of an interdisciplinary audience, so I had to explain every part of my very theoretical and geek-talky research.
The style of my presentation was strongly guided by my mentor Dr. Aubert, so it was focused on explaining the research at a very low level. I could have stood up for 12 minutes explaining formal language syntax and the computation physics that reversibility has the capability to overcome, but instead I went over exactly what each part of my research was part by part so that the audience did not get lost in what I was talking about.
After my presentation I spoke with a biochemist and cancer researcher in the audience, and we had a long discussion on the similarities of distributed reversibility with how the body works. He made points that in biology, there are many processes which are inherently reversible. One good example is our metabolism. When we eat more than we can expend, we store energy in the form of fat cells. When we expend more than we eat, we burn fat cells to produce energy. While this is a gross oversimplification of ketosis and lipocyte deposition, the point is very valid. The body is one of the most complex things on our planet, and there is a lot we can learn from it.
I'm currently working on a problem of how to implement a distributed system of unique and infinite key generation, and while speaking to the biologist, he went to the topic of our immune system and how it marks unknown actors and reacts to external stimulus. It got me thinking that the distributed nature of the immune system is still able to communicate markings and stimuli throughout the body is a great analogue for the kind of problem I am attempting to solve. The body uses transport cells and encoded information to relay information throughout our immune system, so I thought about doing something like this for my distributed key generation issue. I don't want to say what it exactly is yet because I am unsure if the concept is even valid, but I thought I'd share my thoughts on the benefits of interdisciplinarity. I believe there is a lot to learn from people in other fields, and often times will open up new perspectives to solve any challenge you may be facing.