Date: 4pm Sunday, 7/27

Place: Yingja & Fatty's place, MesaApartmentsMap.

Speaker: Po-Yu Chen (a.k.a. Ali)

Title: Learning from Nature: Biology Inspiring the Design of Future Materials

Most natural (or biological) materials are complex composites whose mechanical properties are often outstanding, considering the weak constituents from which they are assembled. These complex structures, which have risen from hundreds of millions years of evolution, are inspiring Materials Scientists in the design of novel materials. Their defining characteristics, self assembly, hierarchy, multi-functionality, and self healing capability, are illustrated. Self organization is a fundamental feature of many biological materials and the manner by which the structures are assembled at the molecular level. Several classes of biological materials that our group is investigating will be illustrated. An outgrowth of this effort is the search for bioinspired materials and structures. Traditional approaches focus on design methodologies of biological materials using conventional materials. The new frontiers reside in the synthesis of bioinspired materials through processes that are characteristic of biological systems; these involve nanoscale self-assembly of the components and the development of hierarchical structures. Although this approach is still in its infancy, we hope that it eventually lead to a plethora of new materials systems as we elucidate the fundamental mechanisms of growth and the structure of biological systems.