Invited Presentation in ASME’s Engineering 4 Change Seminar Series

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Zoom – January 15, 2025

What can engineers and designers learn about sustainability from nature?

Natural ecosystems are an untapped source of design inspiration for improving the sustainability of human networks. This month’s Engineering 4 Change (E4C) Seminar Series features Dr. Astrid Layton Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and Donna Walker Faculty Fellow in Mechanical Engineering. Her work explores how ecological food webs inspire sustainable engineering solutions. Join us, with Dr. Layton, for a session moderated by: Dr. Jesse Austin-Breneman , Associate Professor at Olin College of Engineering.

🌱 Discover how natural ecosystems can guide sustainable design
♻️ Explore the principle of ‘waste equals food’ in circular economy models
🚀 See examples of material cycling and energy efficiency
💬 Engage online with researchers, students and technical professionals worldwide

E4C’s Seminar Series features academic laboratories researching solutions to meet the UN’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 worldwide.

🗓️ January 15th, 16:00 UTC –  11 am  ET
🔗 Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3ZJGyvo

Highlights from the presentation have been posted on their website: https://www.engineeringforchange.org/webinars/engineering-design-for-sustainability-learning-from-natures-systems-to-actually-achieve-waste-equals-food/

Sustainability as a systems-level problem with systems-level solutions.
Benefits of bio-inspired systems, meaning industrial or other human-made systems modeled after systems found in the natural world.
The ecological ‘window of vitality,’ a metric for systems analysis that measures efficiency and redundancy. She then uses the metric to show the effects of modeling a water distribution network after a natural ecological system.

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