Astrid Layton Ph.D.: bio-inspired complex network design for sustainability & resilience
BiSSL LAB NEWS
Texas A&M Regional Engineering Conference, hosted by the Student Engineers’ Council
February 1, 2020
I’m excited to help kick-off the Texas A&M Regional Engineering Conference (TREC) this Saturday with a keynote speech! TREC co-chairs Laura Orellana and Keeton Bailey have done an excellent job creating an impactful problem statement for the interdisciplinary freshmen teams to work on for the next three weeks.
TREC is an event hosted annually by the Student Engineers’ Council (SEC) at Texas A&M Engineering to foster professionalism and interdisciplinary collaboration among freshmen by developing a solution to a sustainability-related problem and presenting their product 3 weeks later.
18th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER 2020)
January 29, 2020
BiSSL is looking forward to representing our bio-inspired systems of systems (SoS) design work at this year’s 18th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research in Redondo Beach, CA. The conference this year is focused on “Recent Trends and Advances in Model-based Systems” and will be going on from March 19-21, 2020. PhD student Abheek Chatterjee is first author on a paper with our collaborator Dr. Richard Malak titled: “A Bio-inspired Framework for Analyzing and Predicting the Trade-off between System of Systems Attributes.” We hope to see you all there!
Journal of Cleaner Production Publication
January 7, 2020
Congratulations to BiSSL alumni Tirth Dave (MS graduate December 2019) on the publication of his paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production! “Designing ecologically-inspired robustness into a water distribution network” covers Tirth’s work on bio-inspired network design coupled with modeling of a water distribution network, showing that we can draw inspiration from nature to improve the resilience and reduce freshwater use in industrial resource networks.
ABSTRACT: Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs), network of industries that collaborate by utilizing each other’s byproducts and wastes, are highly desirable for both the industries themselves, their environment, and governments due to their economic, environmental, and social advantages. Previous work has shown that EIPs are not as successful as they could be in terms of mimicking the behavior of biological ecosystems, highlighting that more work needs to be done for EIPs to truly mimic their biological-counterparts. The Kalundborg EIP, located in Kalundborg, Denmark, is a well documented example of an EIP with long-term success. Using the water network within the Kalundborg EIP as a case study, two bio-inspired networks are selected from an optimization based on the ecosystem metric robustness. The bio-inspired solutions are compared with a traditionally cost-minimized solution to understand what bio-inspired design can offer when a network is disturbed. Disturbances such as connection breakages and industry shutdowns are tested, showing that the bio-inspired designs require minimal recovery costs – in stark contrast to the traditional network solution. The results show that the bio-inspired designs reduce the network’s dependence on a scarce import (freshwater) and have higher overall network resilience in the event of disturbances. The three network solutions are discussed from a ecological perspective, explaining differences from the standpoint of ecosystem characteristics. The analysis highlights the benefits of using ecology to understand the nature of and improve the design of industrial networks.
ABSTRACT: Human networks and engineered systems are traditionally designed to maximize efficiency. Ecosystems on the other hand, achieve long-term robustness and sustainability by maintaining a unique balance between pathway efficiency and redundancy, measured in terms of the number of flow pathways available for a given unit of flow at any node in the network. Translating this flow-based ecosystem robustness into an engineering context supports the creation of new robust and sustainable design guidelines for engineered systems. Thermodynamic cycles provide good examples of human systems where simple and clearly defined modifications can be made to increase efficiency. Twenty-three variations on the Brayton and Rankine cycles are used to understand the relationship between design decisions that maximize a system’s efficient use of energy (measured by thermodynamic first law efficiency) and ecological measures of robustness and structural efficiency. The results reveal that thermodynamic efficiency and ecological pathway efficiency do not always correlate and that while on average modifications to increase energy efficiency reduce the robustness of the system, the engineering understanding of ecological network design presented here can enable decisions that are able to increase both energy efficiency and robustness.
Two BiSSL students, MS student Colton Brehm and PhD student Abheek Chatterjee, have had full papers accepted to 2020’s CIRP LCE conference! The 2020 conference focuses on “the role that engineering must play in the achievement of the sustainable future that people wish.” The conference this year is hosted by Grenoble INP – Institut d’Ingénierie Univ. Grenoble Alpes and will be held in Grenoble, France May 13-15, 2020.
Abheek Chatterjee, Colton Brehm, and Astrid Layton (2020) “Mimicking the nested structures of ecosystems in the design of industrial water networks.”
Abheek Chatterjee and Astrid Layton (2020) “Bio-inspired Design for Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains.”
J. Mike Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Seminar
November 13, 2019
Honored to have been invited to give our department’s graduate seminar later today, I’m looking forward to it! Feel free to stop by if you’re around, I’ll be talking about my research regarding “Using biological inspiration to improve the design of complex human-engineered networks.”
Brief description: Biological ecosystems have been through millions of years of R&D, producing complex networks of interacting species that are able to support individual needs while maintaining system-level functions. In this talk Dr. Layton will show that these networks offer a relatively untapped source of design inspiration for improving the sustainability and resilience of our human engineered networks. Quantitative descriptors and analysis techniques are adapted from ecology through close collaboration with ecologists, enabling desirable ecosystem characteristics to be used as optimization guides for industrial resource networks (or eco-industrial parks, EIPs), water networks, supply chains, and power grids. Characteristics such as a high level of cycling of materials/energy within the system and a unique balance between redundant and efficient pathways are connected back to the achievement of traditional engineering goals such as cost and robustness.
So incredibly proud of all of our BiSSL research students! Last week’s fellowships and scholarships awards dinner for the J. Mike Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering was an honor to attend, to celebrate all of our department’s diverse and accomplished students!
Tirth Dave was awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship
Abheek Chatterjee was awarded a Emil Buehler Aerodynamic Analog Fellowship
Colton Brehm was awarded a Graduate Excellence Fellowship
Varun Panyam was awarded a Graduate Excellence Fellowship
Shelby Warrington won the James J. Cain ’51 Award
Kristina Viro won the J. Mike Walker ’66 Impact Award
October 10 & 11, 2019
MS students Tirth Dave and Varuneswara Panyam both successfully defended their theses!
Dave, T., (2019) “Designing Robust Water Distribution Systems using Ecology as an Inspiration” Mechanical Engineering M.S. Thesis, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
Panyam, V., (2019) “Bio-inspired design for robust power systems” Mechanical Engineering M.S. Thesis, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
PhD student Hao Huang from the Power Systems group in Electrical Engineering will be presenting our Bio-Inspired Power Grid design work at the Fourth Annual Texas A&M Conference on Energy on September 23-25, 2019. The event is sponsored by the Texas A&M Energy Research Society in partnership with the Texas A&M Energy Institute. The presentations will include a poster presentation in the “Seed Grant Poster Session” on Monday 23td 3:30-4:30pm as well as an oral presentation in the “Energy-Efficiency, Economics, Sustainability, and Policies” session on Wednesday 25th from 11:05-11:20am.
Natural, Built, Virtual — the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s 21st Annual Research Symposium
September 16, 2019
(L to R) Dr. Ahmed Ali and Dr. Astrid Layton
Our collaborative and multidisciplinary research on by-product reuse and supporting a circular economy will be presented by Mechanical Engineering’s Dr. Astrid Layton and Architecture’s Dr. Ahmed Ali today at the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s 21st Annual Research Symposium “Natural, Built, Virtual” http://symposium.arch.tamu.edu/symposium/2019/
BiSSL PhD student Abheek Chatterjee will be presenting his resilient system design related research “Investigating Ecosystems’ Mimicry towards Design of Resilient Resource and Infrastructure Networks” this Friday, September 6th at the “Resilience Rising” symposium being hosted by TAMU College of Architecture.
The symposium will be held in Rudder Tower on the College Station campus. Come learn and network with fellow TAMU researchers and practitioners as they discuss recent projects on Hurricane Harvey and disaster resilience! The event is free but registration is limited.
BiSSL graduate students Varuneswara Panyam and Abheek Chatterjee presented their first authored papers this week in Anaheim, CA. The papers for their talks “Bio-Inspired Human Network Design: Multi-Currency Robustness Metric Formulation Inspired By Ecological Network Analysis” and “Bio-inspired modeling approaches for human networks with link dissipation” can be found only through ASME IDETC2019.
BiSSL MS Student Jewel Williams Graduates!
August, 2019
MS student Jewel Williams graduated from Texas A&M University with her Masters of Science this August 2019 after successfully defending her thesis earlier this summer. Her thesis was titled “Opportunities of Applying System Analysis to the US Waste Management System: Bio-Inspired Solutions for a More Circular Economy”
Fall 2018/Spring 2019
Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Team for “Matrix Trays: Waste to Opportunities”
Matrix Trays: Waste to Opportunities, a seed grant project supported by Texas A&M’s President’s Excellence Fund, funded a Mechanical Engineering senior design/capstone team with myself and Dr. Ahmed Ali from the Architecture department as their advisors. Read more about the project here: “Student-designed smart shades reflect a more sustainable future”
“The project focused on taking a very common industry byproduct, a single-use matrix tray used for placing small electronic chips, and conceiving and prototyping a new product that would use the trays that removed them from the waste stream,” Layton said. “This goal aligns with those of a circular economy where the label ‘waste’ is removed by recognizing existing value. The students were given free rein in their concept generation, a freedom that resulted in an exciting final product with significant potential for future work.”
The Fall 2019 J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship
Congratulations to two of our BiSSL graduate research students, PhD student Abheek Chatterjee and Masters student Tirth Dave, for winning the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship for continuing students for the Fall 2019 semester! The highly competitive graduate scholarship awards graduate students doing excellent research, academic performance, and leadership in the department.
June 12, 2019
Jewel Williams successful presented her 1st authored paper, with BiSSL undergrad Shelby Warrington as 2nd author, at the ASME International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference held in Erie, PA.
Abstract: Circular economy aims to address limited resources through the continuous circulation of materials and energy. Recirculating low quality materials for reuse is a sustainability goal that is analogous to the primary function of Nature’s detritus species, a keystone for the proper functioning of ecosystems. Prior applications of ecosystem structure to human network design uncovered that even the most economically successful networks of industries demonstrate a lack of analogous detritus actors in the form of reuse and recycling. The recycling industry’s volatile nature, dependency on international factors, and financial difficulties prevent this strategy from becoming an efficient alternative. Creativity in design, inspired by ecosystems, is proposed here as a method to repurpose manufacturing byproducts that are otherwise seen as low quality waste materials. Realizing the reuse potential of these materials can create detrital-type feedback loops, an attribute that supports the characteristic resilience and efficiency of ecosystems. The work here analyzes existing methods of pursuing circular economy and investigates the potential benefits generated by purposefully adding connects that create detrital-feedback-loops at the consumer and producer levels.
(2019) Williams, J.; S. Warrington; A. Layton. Waste Reduction: A review of common options and alternatives. ASME International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference. Erie, PA.
May 20, 2019
Our interdisciplinary paper with Electrical Engineering, first authored by PhD BiSSL student Varuneswara Panyam, has been published in Applied Energy. The paper covers our proposed method for using ecosystems to guide the design of power grids towards a more biologically-inspired resilience.
The paper is available for free download here through July 16, 2019.
“Bio-inspired design for robust power grid networks”
by Varuneswara Panyam, Hao Huang, Katherine Davis, Astrid Layton
Technological advances have created a world where humans are highly dependent on an uninterrupted electric power supply, yet extreme weather events and deliberate attacks continue to disrupt power systems. Inherently robust ecological networks present a rich source of robust design guidelines for modern power grids. Analyses of ecosystem networks in literature suggest that this robustness is a consequence of a unique preference for redundant pathways over efficient ones. The structural similarity between these two system-types is exploited here through the application of ecological properties and analysis techniques to long-term power grid design. The level of biological similarity between these two system-types is quantitatively investigated and compared by computing ecological network metrics for a set of synthetic power systems and food webs. The comparison substantiates the use of the ecological robustness metric for optimizing the design of power grid networks. A bio-inspired optimization model is implemented, which restructures the synthetic power systems to mimic ecosystem robustness. The bio-inspired optimal networks are evaluated using N-1, N-2, and N-3 contingency analyses to assess system performance under the loss of 1, 2, and 3 components respectively. The bio-inspired grids all experienced significantly fewer violations in each loss scenario compared to traditional configurations, further supporting the application of the ecological robustness metric for power system robustness. The results provide insights into how ecological robustness can guide the design of power systems for improved infrastructural resilience to better survive disturbances.
May 10, 2019
BiSSL MS student Colton Brehm was a finalist for the Leo Award for best paper for his CIRP Life Cycle Engineering conference paper “Designing eco-industrial parks in a nested structure to mimic mutualistic ecological networks.”
Industrial Ecology uses ecological systems as a guide for improving the sustainability of complex industrial systems. Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) have gained support as a solution that seeks to simultaneously reduce environmental burdens and promote economic interests by exchanging materials and energy between industries to their mutual benefit. Recent studies have focused on drawing relations between food webs (FWs) and EIPs to improve the sustainability of the latter using ecological metrics, such as the level of cycling or average connections between actors. This study incorporates a new ecological metric, nestedness, into the discussion of sustainable design for EIPs. The association of nestedness with mutualistic ecological networks supports its application to EIP design. The work here improves the understanding of holistic network structure with the goal of improving future design decisions for EIPs with purposeful placement of material and energy flows.
April 15, 2019
Congratulations to BiSSL PhD student Varuneswara Panyam who became an Associate Fellow in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) Academy for Future Faculty (AFF) at Texas A&M.
The Academy for Future Faculty (AFF) is a CIRTL@TAMU program. The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Learning and Teaching in higher education. The CIRTL mission is to enhance excellence in undergraduate education through the development of a national faculty committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse learners as part of successful and varied professional careers.
AFF provides professional development for graduate students and post-docs in preparation for a career in higher education. AFF offers a two-semester program anchored by faculty mentorship and featuring weekly seminars and workshops. AFF events are free and open to everyone in the Texas A&M University academic community. Participants may choose to attend a few events or enough to complete requirements for the Academy for Future Faculty Fellow certificate. New fellows are recognized at our annual banquet in April.
April 8, 2019
Congratulations to BiSSL PhD students Varuneswara Panyam and Abheek Chatterjee for each of their first authored papers being accepted to the 2019 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences: 31st International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) in the Biologically Inspired Design session. They will be presenting their papers in Anaheim, California August 18-21, 2019.
Varuneswara Panyam and Astrid Layton, “Bio-inspired modeling approaches for human networks with link dissipation”
Structural similarities between human networks and biological ecosystems have inspired biomimetic design of human networks. The approach requires the networks to be represented as graphs, where the actors are nodes and the connections between actors are links. A major oversight in the application of ecosystem-based modeling to human networks thus far has been in the selection of actors and links. Transfers between species in a biological ecosystem are direct, happening when the species are co-located. Human networks often require a physical aid to complete the transaction, such as power transmission lines, pipelines, or vehicles. These exchange methods experience dissipation, which is not captured in current applications of ecosystem-based human network modeling. Human networks modeled as ecosystems thus far simply categorize exchanges as links in the graph, effectively forcing dissipation during material/energy transport to be neglected. This dissipation can sometimes be high relative to the total energy/material exchanged and thus is a potentially large oversight. Three hypothetical power grids and three Italian urban water distribution networks are used to quantify the impact of modeling interaction aids — power lines and water pipelines — as actors (and thus including any dissipation) in an ecosystem model. Ecological structural and flow metrics previously applied to human networks are evaluated between the two modeling methods. The comparison shows that the impact of this overlooked aspect is potentially significant and warrants consideration.
Abheek Chatterjee and Astrid Layton, “Bio-Inspired Human Network Design: Multi-Currency Robustness Metric Formulation Inspired By Ecological Network Analysis”
The Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) metric ecological robustness quantifies the unique balance that biological food webs have between their pathway efficiency and redundancy, enabling them to maximize their robustness to system disturbances. This robustness is a potentially desirable quality for human systems to mimic. Modeling the interactions between actors in human networks as predator-prey type exchanges (of a medium or currency rather than caloric exchanges) enables an ENA analysis. ENA has been shown to be a useful tool in improving the design of human networks because it allows the characteristics of biological networks to be mimicked. The application of these metrics is, however, limited to networks with only one flow type. Human networks are composed of many different types of flow interactions and thus a biologically-inspired indicator of total system robustness must take into account all of these interactions. This work further develops the traditional ENA ecological robustness metric to accommodate various flows between actors in multi-currency human networks. Two novel methods for quantifying multi-currency flow network robustness are introduced. The mathematical derivation for these new metrics is presented. The water network for the Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) is used as a case study to determine benefits of the proposed robustness metrics. The results obtained using the single-currency robustness and the two multi-currency robustness metrics are compared using the case study. Based on the analysis of the results obtained at the system level, as well as at the sub-levels, both multi-currency metrics showed the ability to predict systems characteristics for the multi-currency Kalundborg EIP. While both of these are promising, more research regarding these metrics is needed in order to develop an elegant and comprehensive total system robustness metric.
April 7-9, 2019: Engineering Sustainability ’19 Conference “A Climate for Change”
Hosted by the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh and the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at CMU, thanks to all for the insightful presentations throughout the conference.
April 4, 2019: 1st Annual President’s Excellence Fund Symposium at Texas A&M
Dr. Ahmed Ali and I are very proud of our Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Team (Zachary Merrill, Alexandra Stewart, Austin Grosklags, Joseph Bustillo, and Miguel Cervantes) and our graduate students Jewel Williams and Patricia Kio, who represented our T3 project “Matrix Trays: From Waste to Opportunities” during the Symposium poster session.
(From left to right: Joseph Bustillo, Jewel Williams, Zachary Merrill, Austin Grosklags, Patricia Kio, Alexandra Stewart, Miguel Cervantes)
“Designing eco-industrial parks in a nested structure to mimic mutualistic ecological networks” first authored by Colton Brehm
Industrial Ecology uses ecological systems as a guide for improving the sustainability of complex industrial systems. Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) have gained support as a solution that seeks to simultaneously reduce environmental burdens and promote economic interests by exchanging materials and energy between industries to their mutual benefit. Recent studies have focused on drawing relations between food webs (FWs) and EIPs to improve the sustainability of the latter using ecological metrics, such as the level of cycling or average connections between actors. This study incorporates a new ecological metric, nestedness, into the discussion of sustainable design for EIPs. The association of nestedness with mutualistic ecological networks supports its application to EIP design. The work here improves the understanding of holistic network structure with the goal of improving future design decisions for EIPs with purposeful placement of material and energy flows.
March 22, 2019: TAMU Student Research Week
BiSSL Master’s student Tirth Dave just won 1st place out of all Engineering Graduate Student Presentations at Student Research Week at Texas A&M University! His presentation was titled: “Sustainable Water Networks Design: A Bio-inspired Approach”
Everyone here in the BiSSL group is so proud!
Student Research Week at Texas A&M is the largest, single-university student-run research symposium in the nation. Students get to show their research and have a chance to win up to $1,000 in award money and receive feedback from faculty and graduate student judges.
March 19, 2019: TAMU Student Research Week
Clare Boothe Luce scholar and J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering undergrad Shelby Warrington did an excellent job presenting her work at Student Research Week – Texas A&M University from our last 2 years working together on bio-inspired human system modeling!
Student Research Week at Texas A&M is the largest, single-university student-run research symposium in the nation. Students get to show their research and have a chance to win up to $1,000 in award money and receive feedback from faculty and graduate student judges.
The Clare Boothe Luce Scholar Program has, since its first grants in 1989, become one of the single most significant sources of private support for women in science, mathematics and engineering in Higher Education in the United States. Clare Boothe Luce, the widow of Henry R. Luce, was a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut. In her bequest establishing this program, she sought “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in science, mathematics and engineering. To date, the program has supported more than 2,500 women. Learn more here.
The 2019 ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering ConferenceGraduate Travel Award
Congratulations to BiSSL Masters student Jewel Williams for winning a Graduate Travel Award to attend the ASME conference for Manufacturing Science and Engineering (MSEC) in June at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Jewel will be presenting her first authored paper titled WASTE REDUCTION: A REVIEW OF COMMON OPTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES.
March 5, 2019: MSEC2019 Student Led Paper Accepted
Congratulations to BiSSL Masters student Jewel Williams and undergraduate Clare Boothe Luce scholar Shelby Warrington for the acceptance of their peer-reviewed conference paper titled WASTE REDUCTION: A REVIEW OF COMMON OPTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES. The ASME conference for Manufacturing Science and Engineering (MSEC) will be held in June at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.
Paper Abstract:
Circular economy aims to address limited resources through the continuous circulation of materials and energy. Re-circulating low quality materials for reuse is a sustainability goal that is analogous to the primary function of Nature’s detritus species, a keystone for the proper functioning of ecosystems. Prior applications of ecosystem structure to human network design uncovered that even the most economically successful networks of industries demonstrate a lack of analogous detritus actors in the form of reuse and recycling. The recycling industry’s volatile nature, dependency on international factors, and financial difficulties prevent this strategy from becoming an efficient alternative. Creativity in design, inspired by ecosystems, is proposed here as a method to repurpose manufacturing byproducts that are otherwise seen as low quality waste materials. Realizing the reuse potential of these materials can create detrital-type feedback loops, an attribute that supports the characteristic resilience and efficiency of ecosystems. The work here analyzes existing methods of pursuing circular economy and investigates the potential benefits generated by purposefully adding connects that create detrital-feedback-loops at the consumer and producer levels.
Women’s History Month @ A&M
March 1, 2019
At Texas A&M University, diversity is changing the face of engineering, so join us in celebrating Women’s History Month! Throughout March, hear what Texas A&M Mechanical Engineering students, staff and faculty have to say about embracing differences.
This afternoon’s shoutout goes to Assistant Professor Dr. Astrid Layton:
“Just because a subject is hard for you and seems easy for everyone else, doesn’t mean it isn’t for you! The hard stuff is often the most interesting and rewarding, and it’s hard work – not talent that creates success.”
The Spring 2019 J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship
Congratulations to two of our BiSSL graduate research students, PhD student Varuneswara Panyam and Masters student Colton Brehm, for winning the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship for continuing students for the Spring 2019 semester! The highly competitive graduate scholarship awards graduate students doing excellent research in the department.
BiSSL graduate students Jewel Williams was one of only 60 students selected to participate in this weekend’s 48 hour Aggies Invent for the Planet event! We’re all wishing her good luck!
Feb. 15-17, 2019
Invent for the Planet: The sun never sets on innovation.
For 48 hours, college students from 30 universities around the world will be joining Texas A&M University virtually as we tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today. From water insecurity solutions to stopping the spread of disease and creating new technology for the classroom, this competition will test the limits of your creativity and resourcefulness. Will your idea help save lives and improve life on Earth? From Feb. 15–17, the sun won’t set on innovation.
February 7, 2019: IEEE TPEC2019
Enjoying the presentations going on at IEEE TPEC2019 (Texas Power and Energy Conference), including work we did with Dr. Kate Davis and her group, being presented by my PhD student Varuneswara Panyam right now!
“Bio-Inspired Design for Robust Power Networks” first authored by Varuneswara Panyam
Extreme events continue to show that existing power grid configurations can be vulnerable to disturbances. Drawing inspiration from naturally robust biological ecosystems presents a potential source of robust design guidelines for modern power grids. The robust network structure of ecosystems is partially derived from a unique balance between pathway efficiency and redundancy. Structural and basic-functional similarities support the application of ecological properties and analysis techniques to power grid design. The work presented here quantitatively investigates the level of similarity between ecosystems and power grids by applying ecological network metrics to a basic, realistic hypothetical 5-bus power system. A comparison between the power grid’s performance and average ecosystem performance substantiates the use of the ecological robustness metric for the development of a bio-inspired power grid optimization model. The bio-inspired optimization model re-configures the five bus grid to mimic ecosystem robustness. The results demonstrate the potential of ecosystems to provide new robust design principles for power grids.
December 11, 2018: 2019 CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference – 3 Student Led Papers Accepted
“An ecosystem perspective for the design of sustainable power systems” first authored by Varuneswara Panyam
The evolution of power systems has recently seen a strong increase in renewable energy integration. This evolution has resulted in bidirectional pathways with two-way exchanges between the grid and consumers that is beginning to resemble the cyclic organization of food webs. Ecologically-similar cycling of materials and energy in industrial networks has previously been shown to improve network efficiency and reduce costs. The cyclic organization of food webs is proposed here as a design principle to quantify the effectiveness of two-way connections between the grid and consumers. The presence of ecosystem-like cycling in traditional power grid networks is investigated using the ecological metrics cyclicity and cycling index. Two hypothetical 5-bus grids are modified to replicate the two-way exchanges of real power systems with consumer renewable energy generation. The results show a positive correlation between increased structural cycling in grids and reliability improvements measured by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) standard N-1 contingency analysis. These results suggest that the metrics cyclicity and cycling index can play a role in quantifying and improving the sustainability of power grids.
“Bio-inspired design for resilient water distribution networks” first authored by Tirth Dave
Economic, environmental, and social advantages have been achieved over the years through byproducts and waste exchanges between industries. These Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) are touted to be ecologically similar, however when they are analyzed using Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) techniques it has been found that they do not successfully mimic analogous ecosystems. ENA coupled with average food webs characteristics are used here to create a bio-inspired design optimization for the water distribution network of the Kalundborg EIP in Denmark. The bio-inspired solution is compared to a cost-based solution to illustrate what the former can offer beyond a conventional approach. Both solutions similarly minimize freshwater consumption, however the bio-inspired solution has additional benefits that suggest a more sustainable and robust design, such as the ability to maintain network function in the event of a connection losses. The results suggest that consumption and cost reductions alone may not be the best optimization route.
“Designing eco-industrial parks in a nested structure to mimic mutualistic ecological networks” first authored by Colton Brehm
Industrial Ecology uses ecological systems as a guide for improving the sustainability of complex industrial systems. Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) have gained support as a solution that seeks to simultaneously reduce environmental burdens and promote economic interests by exchanging materials and energy between industries to their mutual benefit. Recent studies have focused on drawing relations between food webs (FWs) and EIPs to improve the sustainability of the latter using ecological metrics, such as the level of cycling or average connections between actors. This study incorporates a new ecological metric, nestedness, into the discussion of sustainable design for EIPs. The association of nestedness with mutualistic ecological networks supports its application to EIP design. The work here improves the understanding of holistic network structure with the goal of improving future design decisions for EIPs with purposeful placement of material and energy flows.
We would like to thank everyone for your participation in the design competition! There were many innovative submissions that highlighted the excellent students here at A&M, across all disciplines. I’m happy to finally be able to announce the winners to you all! The jury is pleased to announce that three prizes, first, second, and a tie for third, as well as one honorable mention, have been awarded to the following submissions:
First prize of $1000 goes to:
The team of Will McKinney and Brooks McKinney for their innovative modular aquaponics design
Second prize of $500 goes to:
Britteny Martinez for her unique flexible and customizable ceiling tile design
Third prize of $200 is split between two designs:
The team comprised of Aamer Arshad Kazi, Sitangshu Chatterjee, Het Pandit, Vivek Patel, and Omprakash Das for their design of an innovative optic fibre matrix containment unit
Shelby Warrington for her customizable lamp shade featuring colored glass design
Honorable Mention goes to:
The team of Sarojeet Deb and Shantanu Vyas with their green building façade design
November 26, 2018: BiSSL Ph.D. student Varuneswara Panyam will be giving a seminar presentation for the Energy and Power group in A&M’s Electrical & Computer Engineering department on November 26th at 3pm in ETB 1003.
The presentation will cover preliminary research from his Ph.D. on redesigning the modern power grid for robustness following principles from Nature’s ecosystems. All are welcome!
Abstract: Extreme events continue to show that current power grid configurations, designed for efficiency, are vulnerable to disturbances. Naturally robust ecological networks present a potential source of robust design guidelines for modern power grids. Ecosystems balance pathway efficiency with redundancy to achieve robust network structure. Structural similarities between these two system-types support the application of ecological properties and analysis techniques to power grid design. In the talk, I will discuss the analogy between the two systems and an optimization model that our group has created to reconfigure a power grid to mimic ecosystems’ robust behavior.
Bio: Varuneswara Panyam is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Shiv Nadar University in 2016. His Ph.D. research is focused on bio-inspired design of power systems.
November 14, 2018:
BiSSL head Dr. Astrid Layton will be joining three other awesome women engineering faculty for GradSWE’s Faculty Panel Luncheon Event on Wednesday, Nov 14, in ETB 3002 from 12:30-2pm, to discuss how to choose the right career path. Some topics we will discuss include:
1- How professors chose their career path (academia, industry, national lab, etc.)
2- What considerations they took into place when making those decisions.
Lunch will be provided!
BiSSL is one of two research labs cohosting an A&M student weekend design concept competition coming up November 2nd-7th, with prizes of $1000 (first prize) $500 (second prize) and $200 (third prize). Texas A&M students with winning designs will have the opportunity to work with Dr. Astrid Layton and Dr. Ahmed Ali’s multidisciplinary research team (both Mechanical Engineering and Architecture departments).
General Motors is committed to becoming landfill-free by 2020 and to achieve this, they are seeking to divert byproducts from ending up in landfills by generating potential applications for their more challenging materials. This includes the matrix trays used to package electronics through the automated manufacturing process. Texas A&M Architecture and Mechanical Engineering are pairing with General Motors to host a design competition to promote byproduct reuse and sustainable industry practices, specifically looking for design concepts that generate new applications for these matrix trays. Deliverables are a short (1 page or less) description and a visual aid (computer generated drawing or neat hand drawing) explaining the design concept.
Registration is open to A&M student individuals or teams, with a deadline of November 1st at midnight, registration can be done here.
October 16, 2018, Austin, TX
Dr. Layton and BiSSL Master’s student Jewel Williams will help Austin Technology Incubator celebrate their launch as the new Circular Economy Incubator! Discussions with industry experts and entrepreneurs about real-world solutions, including leading Circular Economy companies: Wisetek, Remade, re:3D, and Leaf and Flour. Keynote to be given by BiSSL collaborator Dr. Ahmed Ali on Circular Design for the Built Environment.
TheAustin Technology Incubator(ATI) is the deep technology incubator of The University of Texas at Austin working with university and community entrepreneurs to commercialize their breakthrough innovations. For over 29 years, ATI has used a customized approach to support entrepreneurs addressing the world’s most pressing problems by connecting startups with the expertise, relationships, and funding sources they need to succeed in the marketplace.
Read more about the event and the companies presenting here…
(Right) Discussions before the presentation, and (Left) Dr. Ali’s keynote talk.
BiSSL undergraduate student Shelby Warrington travels to the 2018 annual conference and expo for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), held in Pittsburgh, PA.
“We stand at a key moment in history. As sustainability challenges intensify and the window for action grows smaller every day, the need for leadership by higher education is greater than ever. With a theme of “Global Goals: Rising to the Challenge,” the 2018 AASHE Conference & Expo will examine the critical role of higher education in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by the world’s governments in September 2015, the 17 SDGs establish ambitious global targets to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.”
Friday September 21st, 2018 at 9:10am: Dr. Layton, invited speaker for Texas A&M University’s MEEN381, Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Seminar
Dr. Layton will discuss her path from being an undecided freshman undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh to her Assistant Professor position in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M, as well as how her research interests started and evolved.
Dr. Layton, invited panelist “Network Science Approaches for Systems Engineering and Design” at ASME IDETC/CIE 2018 conference in Quebec City, Canada
Tuesday August 28th from 2-3pm the ASME CIE Systems Engineering and Information Knowledge Management (SEIKM) technical committee will host a panel on “Networks and Systems.” The panel will consist of Mr. BabakHeydari (Assistant Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology) speaking on Complex Socio-Technical Systems, Dr. AstridLayton (Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University) speaking on Bio-Inspired Network Analysis Techniques, and Dr. Sara Behdad (Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo, SUNY) speaking on Network Approaches for Sustainable Design and Manufacturing.
The Texas A&M Energy Research Society (ERS), in partnership with the Texas A&M Energy Institute, is pleased to present the Third Annual Texas A&M Conference on Energy. Varun’s poster is to be presented during Poster Session 2 (3-4:30pm) on Tuesday, September 25th, 2018. The poster covers preliminary work done by Ph.D. students Varuneswara Panyam and Bogdan Pinte and their advisors Dr. Kate Davis (Electrical Engineering) and Dr. Astrid Layton (Mechanical Engineering).
BiSSL Ph.D. student Varuneswara Panyam was accepted to and will attend the National Science Foundation’s summer school on Decision Making in Engineering Systems at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, June 23-29, 2018. The six-day summer school will introduce graduate students to the foundations of decision making in large systems and is hosted by Dr. Ali Abbas, Director of the Neely Center, at the University of Southern California.
Topics covered include
Characterizing uncertainty in a systems engineering and design environment
Building Preference – Value – Utility models for systems engineering and design
Introducing the basic axioms of decision making, and methods to analyze flawed methods of decision making
Research methodologies for decision making in systems engineering and design
Future research directions
Practical applications of decision making in systems engineering featuring guest speakers from industry and academia
Assistant professors Astrid Layton (MEEN) and Kate Davis (ECE) are awarded the Texas A&M Energy Institute’s 4th Annual Energy Seed Grant, for their work on “Bio-Inspired Design of Complex Energy Systems to Achieve Robust, Efficient, and Sustainable Networks.”
Proposals were assessed based on the following criteria: (a) innovative and transformative potential of proposed research work in energy; (b) quality of interdisciplinary research group; (c) potential for developing a successful proposal for government funding; and (d) potential for securing external government funding.
Paper accepted by the ASME IDETC/CIE 2018 conference in Quebec City, Canada
Congratulations to our students Varuneswara Panyam and Tirth Dave for their paper titled “Understanding Ecological Efficiency and Robustness for Network Design Using Thermodynamic Power Cycles” getting accepted into the International Design Engineering Technology Conferences, Design Theory and Methodology. The conference will be held in Quebec City, Canada from August 26-29, 2018.
Ecology has acted as a source for sound design principles and studies of ecosystems have examined how ecological principles can enhance sustainable human network design. Engineered systems are often designed for maximum performance, but in many cases, robustness is lost due to unwanted variations in inputs or efficiency. Taguchi’s signal to noise ratio and other quality engineering principles are well known fundamentals in the field of robust design. In this paper, we will introduce flow-based metrics from ecological network analysis (ENA) for robustness, efficiency, and redundancy. Ecosystem robustness is related to the balance between flow path diversity and system delivery efficiency. Systems with diverse flows are more resilient to a disturbance since there are redundant pathways, but are inefficient because they contain many flow paths with the same endpoints. Efficient systems are better able to transfer material and energy, but this is at the cost of fewer pathways so the system is brittle. Thus to survive a disturbance, an ecosystem system balances redundancy with efficiency. Thermodynamic power cycles are used to understand the relationship between energy efficiency, measured using first law efficiency, and ecological robustness and an ecological balance of efficiency to redundancy (as measured by ascendency vs development capacity). The result highlights the importance of understanding differences in the meaning of efficiency between two fields, and that from an engineering standpoint robustness does not have to be sacrificed to obtain energy efficiency.
April 25, 2018, 11:30-12:30pm Come hear the perspective of five new female assistant professors in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Computer Science & Engineering, about applying for faculty positions, transitioning from graduate school to faculty, faculty candidate interviews and offer letters, and more!
A&M’s Presidents Excellence Fund. T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation is a multidisciplinary seed-grant program that is part of the President’s Excellence Fund designed to further Texas A&M University’s commitments to the three pillars of advancing transformational learning; enhancing discovery and innovation and expanding impact on our community, state, nation, and world.
The first initiative in the 10-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Fund—T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation—recently closed the first round and 100 innovative interdisciplinary projects were selected for funding. The fund will invest approximately $3 million annually in T3 projects. read more here…
Journal of Industrial Ecology Best Paper Prizes: Journal article by Layton, Bras, and Weissburg awarded Second for the 2016 Graedel Prizes.
“Winners of the 2016 Graedel Prizes: The Journal of Industrial Ecology Best Paper Prizes” by Helge Brattebø, Reid Lifset
The Graedel Prizes were established to honor Professor Thomas Graedel, now emeritus from Yale University after an outstanding successful career as researcher and pioneer in the field of industrial ecology (IE). The prizes are awarded to the best two papers published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE) every year; one paper written by a junior single author or first author (below the age of 36) and one paper written by a senior single author or first author.
“The winning papers, as well as the ones that were nominated but were not selected, demonstrate research of high scientific quality and relevance on a wide spectrum of topics in the field of industrial ecology.”
The two prize‐winning papers successfully competed among 12 nominated papers, out of which four were written by a junior author or junior first author. The paper by Ivanova and colleagues (2016), the winner in the junior author category, with a study on household consumption, was in a close race with the paper by Layton and colleagues (2016) offering a study on data and organization of eco‐industrial parks (EIPs) and food webs (FWs).
The second best paper in the junior author category by Layton and colleagues (2016) is an excellent paper with original and novel contributions to research methods for more fundamental understanding of the characteristics of EIPs and FW mimicry. In particular, the study offers significant improvements in systematic analysis of metrics and data processing for a large data set of EIPs and FWs. The paper analyzes to what extent the IE metaphor is actually implemented in EIPs, and FW structures are compared with EIP structures. The paper concludes that EIPs are less complex that their ecological counterparts, and that EIPs still have a long way to go to meet the resilient and efficient properties of natural systems. This is a valuable contribution to IE research: It improves the scientific links between ecology methods and IE methods and offers a basis for better ecosystem mimicry in circular economy initiatives. The study represents great value for the IE community and increases our understanding of the extent our metaphor actually holds. It is also valuable in terms of the data provided and analysis made of the current EIP structures. The paper is well written with proper illustrations, an excellent structure, layout and language, and with extensive data and documentation including supporting information.
Read the full article on the 2016 prize awards here and read the winning journal article here.
In nature, networks have evolved where animals and plants interact and use efficient methods to best utilize resources. Dr. Astrid Layton, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is researching whether companies can apply a similar concept of how this natural network looks and behaves in an effort to create more sustainable networks of industries. … read more
Shelby Warrington joins BiSSL research group as a recipient of the Clare Boothe Luce Scholars program
Congratulations to Shelby Warrington for winning a place in the Clare Boothe Luce Scholars program, one of eight students selected.
Eight female engineering students at Texas A&M University were recently accepted into the competitive Clare Boothe Luce Scholars program, which provides funding for undergraduate research to talented female engineering students.
The $250,000 grant was awarded to Texas A&M’s Women in Engineering program this year in recognition of the College of Engineering’s commitment to supporting women’s pursuits in academia and research. The program benefits undergraduate students by providing an opportunity to pursue research for three years, helping them prepare for future academic success in graduate school.
I will be presenting my work titled “Designing Sustainable Manufacturing Networks: The role of exclusive species in achieving ecosystem-type performance” at the IDETC2017 conference, under the 22nd Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference (DFMLC) division, on Monday, August 7th.
The corresponding conference paper is:
Layton, A.; B. Bras; M. Weissburg. Designing Sustainable Manufacturing Networks: The role of exclusive species in achieving ecosystem-type performance. Cleveland, OH, 2017. ASME 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conference.
Ecology is proving to be an innovative source for design principles. Studies have examined how ecological principles can enhance sustainability in industrial networks. Ecologically inspired manufacturing networks tend to focus on supporting symbiotic relationship formation, creating a cyclical flow structure that has been shown to result in efficiency and resource consumption improvements. Despite successes, bio-inspired manufacturing networks still fail to accurately mimic ecosystem cycling. The roles of exclusive actors and specialized predators in achieving the high cycling characteristic of ecosystems is investigated here. Exclusive actors participate in the network as either only a consumer (predator) or only a producer (prey). Specialized predators consume only one producer inside the system boundary. The populations of these special actors in manufacturing networks versus ecological food webs speaks to the potential influence these roles have on the cycling the network achieves. The trends shown here suggest less exclusivity is necessary for achieving ecologically-strong network cycling.
“The ENGAGE Summer Camp is a six-day residential summer camp designed for students from underrepresented groups who are strong in science, technology and mathematics. The camp gives students hands-on, memorable experiences while inspiring them to consider a career in engineering.
During the camp, students stay on campus in residence halls, engage in discussions with student and faculty panels, visit engineering laboratories and research centers and work on engineering projects. Current engineering students serve as camp counselors and are with camp participants throughout the entirety of the summer camp.”
Texas A&M’s ENGAGE instructors with the program’s guest of honor Johnita Jones. From Left to Right: David Staack (MEEN), Bruce Gooch (CSCE), Johnita Jones (ExxonMobil), Philip Ritchey (CSCE), and Astrid Layton (MEEN)
