Clampco Products, Inc., an Ohio Aerospace Institute member, contributed to the historic launch when their clamps were used in the craft where astronauts Robert Behnken and Doug Hurley traveled into space. The effort was part of the NASA Commercial Crew Program, and marked the first human launch by a private company.
The launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon rocket was considered the start of a new era of commercial space exploration with a goal of making life multi-planetary.
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.
