A painter and sculptor since she was a child, Florida International University student Briana Gonzalez brings an artistic sensibility to her work at a new FIU center to design "origami" antennas. The lightweight antennas are designed to fold, like origami, for easy packing, making them useful for spacecraft and for soldiers who ordinarily lug heavy communications equipment. Once deployed, using simple mechanisms, the antennas can continue to change their profiles and performance. Such designs are more efficient than rigid antennas, and their unconventional nature-and aesthetics-appeal to Gonzalez, who is working toward a degree combining art, electrical engineering, and physics. "I think that [art] makes me think about problems differently," Gonzalez says. "Maybe it makes me approach them from a different point of view... because I'm constantly activating my brain in a different wav."
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