Principal Investigator Richard Fletcher
We A more elegant approach to electromagnetic sensing of objects can be done via NMR. The NMR signature of a given material can be detected in a very similar manner as detecting any other magnetic resonance. The most common uses of NMR are in chemistry and medical imaging (you can see an MRI scan of my head on my personal web page). We (i.e. Neil Gershenfeld) are interested in using NMR to do logic computation in materials, but we are also interested in making cheap simple NMR readers to do crude identification of materials which would be useful for a variety of applications (security, surveillance, chemical sensing).
We adapted a table-top NMR system I had used in an undergrad Physics lab to work with a permanent magnet and miniature probe and set it up at the Media Lab. You can see our lab's first working NMR system here (June 1997). Since then, fellow students Yael Maguire and Jason Taylor have design and built high-performance table top NMR systems which can be applied to the field of quantum computing.
Dr. Flether's personal interest in NMR is not for computing, but rather for interesting sensing applications. A low-cost NMR unit would enable, for example, refrigerators and appliances which know if your milk has spoiled or how much fat is in the dinner you are cooking tonight.