Can approaches from engineering help us understand how moral reasoning works? Joshua Tenenbaum seeks to apply give humans cutting-edge tools from computer science to understand how we make decisions of right and wrong.

Broadly considered, morphogenesis is the ability of groups of cells to build complex, functional anatomical structures. A multiscale agent-based model of morphogenesis that quantitatively examined the impact of stress sharing (where stress is a physiological parameter reflecting error in a homeostatic loop) on the ability to reach target morphology was constructed and analyzed. The research found stress sharing improves the morphogenetic efficiency of multicellular collectives; populations with stress sharing reached anatomical targets faster. Moreover, stress sharing influenced the future fate of distant cells in the multi-cellular collective, enhancing cells’ movement and their radius of influence, consistent with the hypothesis that stress sharing works to increase cohesiveness of collectives. These analyses support an important role for stress sharing in natural and engineered systems that seek robust large-scale behaviors to emerge from the activity of their competent components.