BioInspired! So What? Now What!

Abstract: At this workshop, Sabir Khan, Architect and Industrial Designer, and Jeannette Yen, Biological Oceanographer and Bio Inspired Designer, will teach participants how to mine Nature for design principles using search strategies that have proved useful to our students.  We will deploy the tactics we’ve developed [problem decomposition of current technological solution, functional decomposition of solutions of similar challenges in nature, analogical reasoning] to translate the biological insights into technological innovations. We then will down select from the diversity of designs generated in this translation process to take the best ideas [teams will be formulated to be as interdisciplinary as possible*] and execute the final step in the conceptual design process.

The objective of critiques of the final presentations is to evaluate the concept for its potential for prototyping. The next step, done under the participants’ own initiative, is to build and test the prototype at their home institute. If of interest, final designs will be presented as part of conference program.

*We will customize the focus to the interests of the participants who will be selected based on their response to our pre-course survey: your expertise [biology, engineering, design], your strengths in sustainable practices [materials economy, energy savings, water saving, etc], reasons for your interest in learning how to practice BID. We look forward to sharing what we have learned from teaching students in biology, mechanical and biomedical engineering, materials science, architecture and industrial design at Georgia Tech who are looking to change the world. PRELIMINARY PROGRAM pdf