Biomimicry: applying nature's lessons to nanotechnology

Filed in archive Events on May 16, 2006

Biomimicry is one of my favorite topics in nanotechnology, as scientists take cues from nature to inspire new creations. At Georgia Tech, biomimicry has been institutionalized as a full-time research center and a recent symposium.

May 11 and May 12 the Atlanta campus was host to the International Symposium for Biologically-inspired Design and Engineering. Many nanotech projects were highlighted, as described in a recent Eurekalert article:

In an effort to create brain-inspired sensors and gain new insight into how memories are formed in the human brain, Hang Lu, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a researcher with the Center for Biologically Inspired Design and Engineering (CBID) at Georgia Tech, is studying how sensory- and memory-related genes are expressed and regulated in tiny micro-sized worms by observing the worms' behavior on an equally micro-sized chip.

"Nature has evolved a very efficient sensing system for the worms. The worms are very good at finding mates, finding food, avoiding predators and finding a good home. We're hoping we can learn a lot from this highly evolved sensing system," Lu said.

Steve DeWeerth and Lena Ting, faculty members in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, are working to create better control of legged robots and human prostheses using biological inspiration.

Their research centers on better understanding how the nervous system communicates with joints and muscles for movement and balance and then designing systems that closely replicate the naturally fluid movement of animals and humans. The research group's goal is to help build robots with better mobility and prosthetics with natural movement more similar to a real limb. (photo CBID)