The AAAS annual meeting in Chicago covers some weighty issues: climate change, shrinking arctic ice, safety of the world’s drug supply. It can get depressing, so one afternoon I decide to attend a more whimsical symposium: the mathematics of origami, the art of paper sculpture. A single sheet of paper, no glue, no cutting, only folding.

In most of the sessions attendees and speakers dress formally, in business attire; talks are polished and professional, often lacking animation and spontaneity.

The origami session was a refreshing exception. The speakers were unpolished, casually dressed nerds, but in the most positive sense — creative, dynamic mathematicians whose passion for paper folding was infectious.

Tamara Veenstra demonstrated how she uses origami to teach students about number theory. Tom Hull discussed the many types of math used in origami: geometry, matrix algebra, statistical mechanics, and more. For example, analyzing folding using matrix algebra is being applied to the design of microscopic identification tags that can be monitored over a wide area. One day soldiers might wear such tags so that their location and health can be monitored remotely. “The math involved in paper folding is far-reaching and deep,” said Hull. Applications occur in “unexpected places.”

What a wonderful rationale for basic science! Robert Lang took off on this theme, showing how an origami pattern was used on the solar array panels of a satellite, and for telescope parts — objects that need to be collapsed during transport. Small for the journey, large for the destination. Also cardiac stents, inserted into arteries and then expanded to prop them open. Flattening automobile airbags, an algorithm with roots in a problem that crops up when trying to design origami insects. Problems solved for “aesthetic value” have practical applications, according to Lang. “They could even save a life.”

The science of origami is so advanced that there are now computer programs that create crease patterns instructing you to fold anything, houses, birds, a hermit crab peeking out of its shell, fish with detailed scales. Origami on demand.

Erik Demaine, a 27-year-old whiz kid from MIT, is pushing boundaries with curved origami — you have to see it to believe it. Luckily, Erik brought examples that I was able to play with. The idea of curved creases, as opposed to the straight creases of conventional origami, is that a symmetrically folded object pops into a 3-dimensional unsymmetrical shape. He is working at the intersection between science and art, some of his work in on display at MOMA in New York. He’s also researching reconfigurable robots, one object, multiple folds, different shapes, much like the cartoon Transformer robots.

Once you branch out into different material — folding metal, polyurethane, even glass — the possibilities become astounding.