Project X: ‘a slush fund for creativity and risk-taking’

This week­end the Star-Ledger had ter­rific cov­er­age of Project X, described by fun­der Lynn Shostack as “a slush fund for cre­ativ­ity and risk-taking.”

The Project X grants under­write uncon­ven­tional engi­neer­ing research projects that are unlikely to find fund­ing elsewhere.

The Star-Ledger piece fea­tures a video by Nyier Abdou on Edgar Choueiri, who has devel­oped a math­e­mat­i­cal tech­nique for record­ing and play­ing back sound in 3-D.

Writes Judy Peet of the Star-Ledger: “Choueiri has a world-class rep­u­ta­tion in deep-space propul­sion and plasma dynam­ics. Yet with the university’s bless­ing, he is explor­ing a totally for­eign field in which he has lit­tle train­ing and few cre­den­tials. And in the process, he may rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way deaf peo­ple hear.”

Else­where, dig­i­tal music pio­neer Paul Lan­sky has called Choueiri’s efforts inge­nious. What Choueiri has man­aged to do,” said Lan­sky, “is recre­ate the spa­tial dimen­sion of the orig­i­nal record­ing sit­u­a­tion. If he could make this truly portable, it would change the world.”

The Project X grants come from a fund named in honor of  Lynn Shostack’s hus­band, David Gard­ner, Prince­ton Class of ’69. The fund, admin­is­tered by Princeton’s Coun­cil of the Human­i­ties, is known as the Magic Fund — read the full arti­cle to find out why.