getting from here to here

    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. 

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.

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.

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.