PHOTO: Rick Friedman

It was her Menger sponge, a cube measuring 1.5 meters (5 feet) on one side and made from 66 048 folded business cards, that put her on the map, but Jeannine Mosely has loved origami since the age of 5. It was the perfect background for an MIT Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science and a career in three-dimensional modeling. She says she loves to breathe life into numbers: “You can see a mathematical theorem or formula made real when you create a new model.” See her work at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., through 8 June; at the Siggraph 2008 Convention in Los Angeles, in August; and online at TheIFF.org, Creased.com, and PEM.org.