An Introduction to ’Differential Privacy,’ from Penn Professor Aaron Roth

By Madeleine Stone @themadstone Collaboration across scientific disciplines can lead to groundbreaking innovation. But, just as it takes a special type of scholar to cross academic boundaries, it takes a special type of building to make interdisciplinary alliances possible. Few pause to consider the question of how physical spaces can influence academic culture. Brit Shields a graduate student in the University of Pennsylvania's History and Sociology of Science Department ,is one who does. In a paper recently published in the journal Minerva , Shields and co-author Hyungsub Choi, an assistant professor at Seoul National University , chronicle the history of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter , a building that, for five decades, has helped to shape and grow the field of materials science at Penn. More broadly, buildings like the LRSM, and now the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology , serve as physical manifestations of Penn's saga to establish interdisciplinary culture. Shields, whose thesis focuses on the intersection of architecture and scientific practices, was first introduced to the LRSM when she began studying the history of the field of materials science with Penn emeritus professor Ruth Schwartz Cowan.