About This Webinar
Join us Wednesday, January 15th | 11AM ET / 4PM UTC
Natural ecosystems are an untapped source of quantitative design inspiration for improving the sustainability of human networks. Nature’s achievement of sustainable operations within its ecosystems are the result of millions of years of design iterations. These complex systems are made up of interacting species that effectively use all available resources to support species’ needs while maintaining system-level functions.
Join us for the next Engineering for Change Seminar with Dr. Astrid Layton at Texas A&M University, who will discuss insights into design for sustainability that engineers can glean from the natural world. Ecological food web characteristics offer novel routes to achieving traditionally ‘at odds’ engineering goals like sustainability and profit. Those characteristics include high levels of materials and energy cycling, and a unique balance between redundant and efficient pathways. Through such examples, natural ecosystems hint at solutions to fully achieve the circularity principle of ‘waste equals food.’
Attend this seminar to:
- Discover design inspiration in natural ecosystems
- Learn more about the sustainability principle of “waste equals food”
- Ask questions of Dr. Layton
- Engage with researchers, students and technical professionals with shared interests
E4C’s Seminar Series features academic laboratories researching solutions to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The world’s cutting edge research deserves a platform with a global audience. Join us for presentations of new findings from investigative teams around the globe each month. And researchers, we welcome your applications to take part in the series. Please send an email to editor@engineeringforchange.org.
Presenter
Dr. Astrid Layton is an assistant professor and Donna Walker Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University in the Mechanical Engineering department. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research uses interdisciplinary collaborations to solve large-scale system problems, developing knowledge that supports designers and decision-makers. Dr. Layton is an expert on bio-inspired systems design, with a focus on the use of biological ecosystems as quantitative inspiration for achieving sustainability and resilience in the design of complex human networks/systems/systems of systems. She is the recipient of several teaching and research awards including a 2024 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She served as member and chair of ASME’s Design Theory and Methodology’s (DTM) technical committee, has been a guest editor for journal special issues covering resilient systems, networks & graphs, and sustainable design, and is currently an associate editor for ASME’s Journal of Mechanical Design.
Moderator
Dr. Jesse Austin-Breneman is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 from MIT. He also holds a S.M. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a B.S. in Ocean Engineering also from MIT. Previous to his academic career, he worked as a development engineer in Peru, working with rural communities on alternative business opportunities and with local doctors’ groups on medical device development. He also spent two years as a high school mathematics teacher in Boston, MA. He currently is the director of the Global Design Laboratory. The group focuses on developing design processes and support tools to help multi-disciplinary design teams think at a systems-level when performing complex system design tasks. This includes investigating the best way to incorporate system-level interactions between stakeholders in emerging markets into the design decision-making process.
