“The real uncertain part is species diversity,” says Adam Wolf, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University who studies how different kinds of plants respond to changes in water availability.From Modeler to Maker Wolf once relied on mathematical models that predict how plants grow, but these models are mostly “agnostic to species,” says Wolf.“So I became someone who builds tools.” Taking Nature’s Pulse Wolf is a co-founder of the Princeton University Low-Cost Sensors for the Environment (PULSE) Lab, which bundles sensors collecting climate data with a cell phone transceiver so the data can be sent on a schedule as a text message to a PULSE server.3D Printing the Pods “The original plan was to make everything out of extruded aluminum,” says Wolf, who prototyped the PULSE pods on a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.