Conference Speakers

Jeannette Yen

Director - Center for Biologically Inspired Design , School Of Biological Sciences At Georgia Tech

 Jeannette is the Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically Inspired Design. The Center brings together a group of biologists, engineers, designers and physical scientists who seek to facilitate interdisciplinary research and education for innovative products and techniques based on biologically-inspired design solutions. The participants of Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically-Inspired Design believe that science and technology are increasingly hitting the limits of approaches based on traditional disciplines, and Biology may serve as an untapped resource for design methodology, with concept-testing having occurred over millions of years of evolution. Experiencing the benefits of Nature as a source of innovative and inspiring principles encourages us to preserve and protect the natural world rather than simply to harvest its products. Jeannette team-teaches the interdisciplinary course in biologically inspired design [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMlvUJ9_GSk].

Jeannette Yen is a Professor of Biology and has been at Georgia Tech since 2000. Her Ph.D. is in interdisciplinary environmental science of biological oceanography where she studies how fluid mechanical and chemical cues transported at low Re flow serve as communication channels for micro-aquatic organisms, primarily zooplankton: key link in aquatic food webs. She has been to all 7 continents, including Antarctica for her research and education. [http://www.rh.gatech.edu/news/307781/antarctica-quest-bottom-food-chain]. She recently collaborated with Mel Chin where her plankton swim above Times Square as augmented reality

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.artnet.com/exhibitions/mel-chin-confronts-climate-change-times-square-virtual-reality-artwork-1317413/amp-page.

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Wednesday 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Bio-Innovation in Nonwovens II

Stylin’ in Nature

Nature produces many unusual materials in unusual ways. Spiders extrude silk, paper wasps use saliva to make paper using much less water than we do, toucan beaks are lightweight because of void structures, glass sponges are strong because of welds at the right points, wings fold over and over again because of tough flexible materials placed strategically. I will describe what nature can make, how they produce it, and how they are able to make the intricate patterns we see all around us. In this research, I search for links between the biological processes of producing fibers and sheathing to seek tricks of Nature that may improve how we process nonwovens.

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