August 14– 17 marked the 3rd Annual Biomimicry Summit, Biocene 2018, hosted by OAI, NASA and Great Lakes Biomimicry. With great success, the four day event included guest speakers, presentations, activities, a NASA GRC tour, networking, live animals, and much more. Biomimicry is the study of nature by way of design and relating it to innovation and technology. Velcro, Japan’s Bullet Train, and the Wright brothers wing design for flight; all stemmed from the study of plants and animals.
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.