Colleen K. Unsworth

Colleen is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Biology, University of Akron and a corporate Biomimicry Fellow jointly sponsored by NASA Glenn Research Center and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. At UA, her dissertation work focuses on integrating inclusive design into bio-inspired design. In the lab, she studies how animal locomotor biomechanics can inspire novel all-terrain mobility aid designs.

At NASA, Colleen works alongside engineers and data scientists to develop an AI design and translation tool (PeTaL) to streamline nature-inspired solution discovery for practitioners. She has also served as the lead organizer for Biocene 2019-2020 and coordinates NASA’s V.I.N.E. (Virtual Interchange for Nature-inspired Exploration), a collaborative network of academics, industry experts, and citizen scientists with a shared interest in nature-inspired research.