NSF Award
2232327
Since the days of Leonardo da Vinci, living things have served as the inspiration for architecture and engineering. Living cells, tissues, organs, and organisms have abilities that far exceed those of human-made machines or structures, including the ability to self-assemble, reproduce, heal wounds, tolerate errors, and work together as collectives. By learning how to provide these capabilities to engineered systems, new areas of engineering will be created with the potential to provide new solutions to some of the most pressing problems faced by society. Examples of applications that could be addressed using bio-inspired design include climate-friendly manufacturing, bioenergy production, artificial foods, novel materials for medical applications, and new ways to rapidly build large resilient structures in civil engineering. At the same time, the effort to engineer bioinspired materials, devices, and manufacturing approaches will provide a new opportunity to discover the fundamental principles by which life is organized. <br/><br/>Some examples of bio-inspired design solutions that are already being investigated and on the cusp of being useful to society include: industrial-scale, climate-friendly manufacturing of proteins, cells, and artificial foods enabled by synthetic biology; synthetic systems for energy harnessing and storage inspired by living systems; autonomous robot swarms for construction and civil engineering; hybrid biomaterials that interact seamlessly with the human body for wound healing and tissue engineering; nanomaterials that mimic natural structures for enhanced strength, resilience, and enhanced optical properties; and programmable molecular robots for nanofabrication of high density multifunctional materials as well as medical applications. However, researchers in these disparate areas rarely interact with one another, and there have not been any national-scale workshops or conferences in this space. This is a missed opportunity, as it is clear that convergent interactions between these groups could drive innovation. <br/><br/>The PIs propose a workshop in the convergent area of Bio-inspired Design to bring together researchers that have rarely interacted previously, based on the idea that focused attention in this space will drive forward high-impact translational solutions to major problems that the world faces today. The vision of this workshop is to discuss how several distinct bio-inspired approaches achieve a desired functionality, identify the highest value key challenges that are most approachable using bio-inspired design principles, identify hurdles that are currently preventing bio-inspired design ideas from being practicable, and identify and disseminate best practices for achieving translational outcomes such as spinning off start-up companies, developing licensing agreements, and enabling distribution of commercial products. The proposed workshop will bring together experts in different areas related to bio-inspired design, ranging from robotics and nanotechnology to cell and organismal biology, with the goal of identifying emerging areas of research that are poised to take the next step into real world application. These experts will meet in person at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, where they will work through a process of idea generation and refinement with the ultimate goal of putting together a roadmap for bio-inspired design that will then serve as the basis for soliciting funding applications for new projects.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
