Author: alayton6

Successful BiSSL Participation in the 2025 ASEE Conference & Exposition

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June 21-25, 2025 in Montreal, Canada

Dr. Astrid Layton hosted a free workshop at the 2025 ASEE Conference & Exposition in collaboration with Dr. Julie Linsey from Georgia Tech. The NSF sponsored workshop was titled “Is My Makerspace Meeting Students’ Needs? How to gain quantitative information about your space using a student-tool network model” and focused on the use of the BiSSL developed GUI for makerspace network analysis.

Dr. Layton also presented a paper “IUSE: Analyzing Nestedness Variability for Bipartite Makerspace Tool-Tool Projection Models” on this makerspace network analysis work, with lead author BiSSL PhD student Pepito Thelly.

Thelly, P., J. Linsey, A. Layton. (2025) “IUSE: Analyzing Nestedness Variability for Bipartite Makerspace Tool-Tool Projection Models.” ASEE 2025 Conference & Exposition. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Dr. Layton presented another paper “Work in Progress: Examining the Network Growth Strategies of Early-Stage Entrepreneurs” on research done in collaboration with Dr. M. Cynthia Hipwell at Texas A&M and the NSF I-Corps program, with first authors BiSSL grad student Ria Madan and PhD student Hadear Hassan.

Madan, R., H. Hassan, A. Layton, M. C. Hipwell. (2025) “Examining the network growth strategies of early-stage entrepreneurs.” ASEE 2025 Conference & Exposition. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

New BiSSL publication in the journal Integrative & Comparative Biology

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June 20, 2025

A paper coauthored by Ph.D. student Hadear Hassan and Dr. Layton titled “Improving Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Transfer for Bio-Inspired Engineering Design” has been published in the Integrative And Comparative Biology (ICB) journal. The work covers a 4 year study of the bio-inspired engineering design inspiration process, looking at how the technical level of biological information impacts the success of the resultant engineering designs. The work finds that a staggered approach may be the most beneficial, starting with basic references like those from National Geographic or zoos and following up the initial design generation round with highly technical and detailed journal articles to provide more functional details.

“Bio-inspired design has become a significant driver of innovation, enabling the development of effective solutions to some of the world’s toughest challenges. Bio-inspired design leverages evolutionary advancements to create products and processes that are often more efficient and sustainable. However, applying biological insights to engineering can be challenging due to the distinct ways the two disciplines define and interpret core concepts. This paper explores the cognitive and technical skills required to effectively translate biological inspiration into engineering solutions. Our hypothesis focuses on bridging the “language and representation gap” between biology and engineering. The goal of this paper is to identify key aspects of biological representation that enable its successful adaptation into engineering design, fostering the development of more impactful and efficient bio-inspired solutions. The analysis of student feedback and ideation outputs revealed that engineers preferred biology texts with a medium level of technical complexity, balancing ease of understanding with image quantity. Basic references were found to support diverse idea generation, while more technical texts proved useful and necessary for understanding in-depth biological insights and applying them to engineering problems. Future research could explore the impact of information presentation order, the role of biological experts in deepening insights, and the use of machine learning to refine how biological information is selected and categorized to enhance the bio-inspired design process.” – Hassan and Layton. (2025) “Improving Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Transfer for Bio-Inspired Engineering Design.” Integrative & Comparative Biology. DOI: 10.1093/icb/icaf119

Normalized student usefulness ratings per reference, based on reading ease (FRE) across the 3 reference categories (technical-blue circles, general-orange triangles, and basic-green squares). The red horizontal and vertical shading bars highlight the most frequently selected range for FRE if technical references, which falls between 28 and 45, along with their corresponding normalized voting quantity ranging from 0.65 to 1.

BiSSL PhD Student Emily Payne Becomes a Texas A&M Chevron Energy Graduate Fellow

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June 5, 2025

Emily Payne, a Ph.D. student in BiSSL, will be a Texas A&M Chevron Energy Graduate Fellow for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. The award, a partnership with Chevron and the Texas A&M Energy Institute, funds 10 outstanding graduate student researchers from across the Texas A&M campus annually with fellowship awards of $10,000 each.

Funded by Chevron, the fellows program includes mentoring from faculty experts and opportunities to meet with subject matter experts at Chevron. Currently enrolled Texas A&M University graduate students from any school or college whose current and active research efforts focus on energy, including policy, technology, science, and societal impacts were eligible. The Texas A&M Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows program is part of Chevron’s University Partnership Program, which supports universities around the country by providing the necessary funding to better develop the future of the energy business. 

“This exciting new collaboration between Texas A&M and Chevron represents a significant step forward in our shared commitment to advance energy solutions in support of a lower carbon energy future. Our newest Chevron Fellows are poised to make a real impact by creating scalable solutions that will transform the energy landscape. We eagerly anticipate the positive contributions they will make for the world,” said Jim Gable, the Vice President of Innovation at Chevron’s Technical Center and President of Chevron Technology Ventures.

Invited Seminar at Clemson University

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April 11, 2025

Dr. Layton presented BiSSL’s work on sustainable design using bio-inspired techniques at Clemson’s mechanical engineering department graduate seminar on April 11. The research seminar was titled “The Best of Both Worlds: An Ecological Design Guide for Engineering Sustainability & Resilience” and had an audience of mechanical engineering and mathematics.

Abstract: The resilient and sustainable characteristics of Nature’s ecosystems are the result of millions of years of design iterations. These complex systems of systems are made up of interacting species that support their own needs while maintaining system-level functions. Dr. Layton will discuss ecosystems as a relatively untapped source of design inspiration for improving the resilience and sustainability of our human-engineered networks. Adapting quantitative descriptors and analysis techniques from ecology for human designers enables desirable ecosystem characteristics to be used as optimization and design guides for everything from industrial resource networks to power grids. Ecological characteristics such as high levels of materials/energy cycling and a unique balance between redundant and efficient pathways offer novel routes to achieving traditionally ‘at odds’ engineering goals like resilience, sustainability, and cost.

Design Society Invited Talk on “Future of Sustainable Design”

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March 20, 2025

Drs. Astrid Layton, Jessica Menold, Kosa Goucher-Lambert, Mohsen Moghaddam, and Zhenghui Sha were invited by Drs. Carolyn Seepersad and Julie Linsey at Georgia Tech for an insightful series of talks on The Future of Design for the annual “Rigi” meeting of the Design Society. The talks will be compiled in an editorial journal paper in the Journal of Mechanical Design later this year.

Drs. Carolyn Seepersad, Astrid Layton, Kosa Goucher-Lambert, Zhenghui Sha, and Mohsen Moghaddam at the annual Design Society “Rigi” meeting, held at Georgia Tech.

BiSSL Student Emily Payne Wins Award

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February 22, 2025

BiSSL Ph.D. student Emily Payne awarded the Susan M. Arseven ’75 Make-a-Difference Memorial Award! The award was given by the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) at their annual conference at Texas A&M University. The award encourages and provides financial assistance to A&M graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering fields. Two awards of $1000 each are accompanied by a commemorative plaque and certificate. 

Dr. Susan Arseven’s career in computer science began after earning a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in Library Sciences from Columbia University. She initially worked at IBM, leading a project at the University of Pennsylvania to create the first major automated library system. Dr. Arseven furthered her education with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, followed by a role at American Cyanamid, where she progressed from systems analyst to Chief Information Officer. In 1981, she completed an Executive MBA at Columbia University. Later, she served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Union Camp Corporation until 1999. Throughout her career, Dr. Arseven was involved in advisory and community roles, including at Pace University’s School of Computer Science.

Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) is an organization of undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and staff at Texas A&M University that serves and represents women in all areas of science and engineering at Texas A&M University. Their mission is to promote the involvement of women in the fields of science, engineering, and technology. They aim to stimulate and encourage young women to pursue such careers as well as act as a support system for those that are currently pursuing professional degrees.

Dr. Layton Invited Presentation at the 2025 INCOSE International Workshop

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February 2, 2025 Seville, Spain & Virtual

By an invitation from the INCOSE Natural Systems Working Group (NSWG), Dr. Layton presented on BiSSL work at the 2025 International Workshop. The talk titled “Biological Ecosystems as Quantitative System Design Inspiration for Resilient and Sustainable Human Networks” covered highlights from the BiSSL approach to using inspiration from ecological systems to improve sustainability and resilience in human networks.

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.

PhD Student Hadear Hassan Attends Global Young Scientists Summit in Singapore

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Singapore – January 6-10, 2025

The National Research Foundation of Singapore has been conducting the interdisciplinary Global Young Scientist Summit in Singapore (Global Young Scientists Summit (nrf.gov.sg)) since 2013. The goal of the summit is an open exchange between young scientists (in 2025 about 350 young scientists from across the globe) and some of the most prominent scientists in the world (in 2025 around 20 Nobel Laureates and Field’s prize winners are expected). Texas A&M was invited to send our brightest young scientists to participate. Hadear was selected as one of 5 top nominations from A&M by the National Research Foundation of Singapore to participate in the summit.

The event enables promising young scientists to exchange ideas and knowledge with the speakers and their peers over four days under this theme. At the Summit, participants will take part in lectures, plenary sessions and panel discussions. They will have the opportunity to interact with and be mentored by speakers in informal small group sessions.

Invited Biology Symposium Presentation

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Atlanta, GA – January 5, 2025

We started the year off with our lab’s work being presented at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB, https://sicb.org/) 2025 conference, thanks to an invitation from Drs. Cassandra Donatelli and Karly Cohen to participate in their special session “From evolution to innovation: bridging biology and engineering through bioinspired design.” The presentation, and upcoming paper with PhD student Hadear Hassan, focused on how to better support engineers seeking to do bio-inspired design: “The Role of Information Representation in Fostering Bio-Inspired Designs in Engineering.” The presentation will be published as a paper in the ICB journal later this year.

Abstract: Engineering designs inspired by the natural world encompass many innovative and novel solutions to human problems, often solving problems where engineers had initially only seen trade-offs. Most bio-inspired engineering designs however have been the result of either chance observation or dedicated study, hindering efforts to have biological inspiration become a mainstream tool. Efforts have been made to develop normative bio-inspired processes and identify approaches that can aid the non-experts in biology find and successfully implement a bioinspired strategy, however true accessibility is still lacking. This work uses classroom studies to understand the impact of information representation on engineering design creativity under a biologically inspired engineering umbrella. Small teams of students were provided with a common problem description, followed by different sets of biological information. This biological information was made up of various technical levels of figures, discipline-specific terminology, and reading levels. The students were tasked with generating bio-inspired design solutions using the provided biological information. Sketches and feedbacks from students provide insight into a possible connection between information representation (text vs. images, reading level, disciplinary overlap, ideation novelty and diversity scores) and bio-inspired engineering designs. Using images and different levels of technical complexity in the text are possible routes for improving successful interdisciplinary knowledge transfer in ways that broaden the accessibility of problem driven interdisciplinary design.