March 18, 2022

About the speaker

Timothy Gomez is a graduate student in the department of computer science at UTRGV. He received the Presidential Graduate Research Assistantship during his masters. In the fall Timothy will be joining the EECS PhD program at MIT.

Additional authors for this work include: Robert M. Alaniz, David Caballero, Sonya C. Cirlos, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, Armando Tenorio, Tim Wylie

Building Squares with Optimal State Complexity in Restricted Active Self-Assembly

Tile Automata is a recently defined model of self-assembly that borrows many concepts from cellular automata to create active self-assembling systems where changes may be occurring within an assembly without requiring attachment. This model has been shown to be powerful, but many fundamental questions have yet to be explored. Here, we study the state complexity of assembling n × n squares in seeded Tile Automata systems where growth starts from a seed and tiles may attach one at a time, similar to the abstract Tile Assembly Model. We provide optimal bounds for three classes of seeded Tile Automata systems (all without detachment), which vary in the amount of complexity allowed in the transition rules.