[1] Gershenfeld is also known for releasing the Great Invention Kit in 2008, a construction set that users can manipulate to create various objects.

He attended Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, then Swarthmore College, where he graduated in 1981 with a B.A.

Gershenfeld has presented his course on "How to make (almost) anything" at the Association of Professional Model Makers (APMM) 2010 Conference.

[11] This class later has led Gershenfeld to create Fab lab[12] in collaboration with Bakhtiar Mikhak at MIT.

In his interview with Discover magazine on the question what personal fabrication might be useful for, Gershenfeld said, "There is a surprising need for emergent technologies in many of the least developed places on the planet.

[15] His research lab's work has been published in Science as well as in The American Physical Society journal.