If you keep up with this blog you know I am
intrigued by the process of science and do my best to share a whole story when
possible. Not just the brilliant outcomes and success stories, but also the
setbacks, failures, and hurdles. To understand the process better I often seek
out conversations with researchers to find out what the whole story is. When it
comes to stories involving bioinspiration I want to know what comes first, the
biology or the engineering? Is there a need that is subsequently filled by
biology? Or does biology inspire a solution to a problem we didn’t know we had?
If we go back and look at some previous posts there are times when it seems
obvious. For instance, with the Velcro® story,
it seems George de Mestral started with the biology, the burr, and found a
function for the biological mechanism, adhesion. On the other hand, the adhesive needle story clearly started as a surgical need that was fulfilled by biology. Jeff
Karp and his team were searching for biological examples of things that attached
to animal tissue. Not only do parasites fit this need, there is a large
diversity of parasites that have many different ways of attaching to their host
(they also study non-parasitic mechanisms of attachment such as porcupine
quills). Often times Karp and his colleagues go to the zoo or aquarium for
inspiration, but you can’t see internal parasites visiting these venues. For
the parasite work they went to the Google and poured over pages and pages of
parasite images. I recommend you try it; it could be a moment of enlightenment.
Karp kindly referred to his study subjects as ugly critters, I prefer to
consider them marvels of evolution.
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| A screen shot of the Google search - I started the hard work for you. |
A couple of months ago there was a story in the weekly UC San Diego newsletter that caught my eye. The newsletter often highlights current research being done
on campus, and this particular article profiled a research team that developed
a robot capable of collecting scientific samples on Mars.
It was a cool project that incorporated bioinspiration, undergraduate involvement,
and the teeth of sea urchin. The sand substrate on mars is difficult to collect
because it is very fine and flows through traditional grasping pinchers.
Picking stuff up on Mars could be compared to the arcade game from 1980 where
you pay money to use the slippery three-pronged claspers to pluck
a a stuffed animal out of the bin. It is difficult. Working with researchers at
the Scripps Institute of Oceonography, members of
the McKittrick group engineered an
effective grasping mechanism inspired by the teeth of the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus fragilis,
which are very strong and have evolved to scrape rock substrates.
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| The crane game. |
In order to get a better idea of how this
process works I emailed the group leader, Dr. Joanna McKittrick, and she accepted
my request to come and meet with members of her team and suggested I sit in on
one of their weekly group meetings. To get to their building from my office I
walked passed the iconic UCSD Geisel Library toward the engineering quad. You know you are in the engineering quad when you
see the ‘Fallen Star’ sculpture (a lop-sided house) on top of Jacobs Hall.
I arrived at the lab with the intention of gaining insight into the process of
bioinspiration, but my interviewing skills were a little rusty. I found it
easier to talk about the outcomes of the project and absorb the process. I
started out talking to a senior graduate student, Steven Naleway, who was
defending his dissertation the following week and has since joined the faculty at
the University of Utah’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
I was impressed he was giving me the time of day. A week before I
defended my dissertation I was not granting interviews to nosy biologist
bloggers. We started out in his office and he walked me through the “process” of
bioinspiration starting with biologists, an organism, and an investigation of
the structural details of the study subject. Then comes the materials science
to mimic the structure, which involves expertise in engineering, physics, and
chemistry. This was depicted as a circular process that led to
bioinspiration. The reading material on his desk reflected this process - Fishes: A Guide To Their Diversity and Mechanical Behavior of Materials.
While we were talking Joanna McKittrick came in
followed by her mini dog. Her and Steven discussed a few pieces of business,
such as the previous weeks outreach event at a local elementary school, and
then she left followed by the dog. She gave me a sidelong glance but was not overly
curious about me, or why I was taking up her graduate students time. My
conversation with Steven moved down to the lab as more graduate students
returned to the shared office and wanted their chairs back.
The lab was empty of people but filled with
what looked to me like a hodge podge of machinery and equipment that I could not
deduce the function of. Some pieces looked like they could have been there
since 1960, and other items could have arrived yesterday from the
manufacturer. As the time for lab meeting approached we walked through the
rest of the lab and passed through a small room with a large table covered in inspiration.
A shark jaw, an armadillo carapace, and a dried fish on a stand. In this part
of the lab it was clear the biology came first. Whether it was finding a useful
function for sea urchin teeth, understanding how a woodpecker skull withstands
the constant impact of banging its beak into trees, or investigating seahorse
armor.
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| Piranha on a stand. This isn’t the fish in the lab (it wasn’t a piranha), but it looked similar. |
Lab meeting was attended by Joanna, her
dog, her Diet Dr. Pepper, five graduate students (one female, five male), and
one undergraduate (female). As is customary for these types of events, each
person is responsible for defending their productivity from the previous week.
The conversation moved around the room as the group members described what they
had been up to, what they found out, and what setbacks they encountered. All of
the members contributed to a brainstorming session for difficult problems, and
then the discussion moved to the next person. Joanna runs a straightforward meeting
and balances razor sharp directness with thoughtful suggestions and
encouragement – a tried and true method to get #$%$ done. The conversation topics
ranged from hydroxyapatites and nanoindentation to 2D freeze casting and how
the elementary school kids demonstrated gender specific appeal for the various
demos the lab group brought to the elementary school.
Integrated into this depiction of “process”
for how graduate and undergraduate projects move forward, I should also share
the light-hearted elements of camaraderie. For instance, one of the graduate
students recently returned from his “Vegas wedding” and everyone offered their
congratulations and asked if Elvis was there, and then proceeded to rib him for having an Apple sticker on his Lenovo laptop.
In the end I learned more about the process
of the sea urchin inspired Mars rover from the original article in the UCSD
newsletter. Maybe that says more about my interviewing skills than anything
else. But hey, I was working my way into the arena
and had a great time.
