Erik Demaine and His Cubes

Last August, a team of international researchers were finally able to show any position of a $3 \times 3 \times 3$ Rubik's Cube could be solved in 20 moves or less. Well, Erik Demaine, an associate professor at MIT, has upped the ante, proving that a general $n \times n \times n$ Rubik's cube can be unriddled in $O(n^2/log(n))$ moves. I actually had the chance to meet Erik Demaine four years ago at the 2007 DOE CSGF annual conference, where he gave a very interesting talk on his work in computational origami. Yes, you read that correctly, computational origami. Who said mathematics couldn't be fun? Well, it turns out that computational origami has a number of real-world applications as well, from sheet-metal manufacturing to protein folding. Anyways, if you are interested, I recommend checking out some of Erik's work - it brings a breath of fresh air to a field that can be altogether too stiff.