Pepito presented a paper on our academic engineering makerspace research in collaboration with Dr. Julie Linsey from Georgia Tech. The paper is titled “Personal Projects vs. Course-Based Makerspace Use: Tool Usage Trends Uncovered by Bipartite Network Analyses” and investigates patterns found in our network analysis of student-tool usage in the makerspaces at 2 universities, highlighting the impact on usage of a more open space where personal projects are allowed vs a more restricted space where usage is limited to courses only. Patterns were seen by year across the spaces, with some convergence occurring in the final when students complete their senior capstone design projects.
Abstract: “Makerspaces are critical to the education of engineers, providing invaluable hands-on think-design-build experiences that cannot be gained from a textbook or classroom. Recent work has shown that analyzing makerspaces as student-tool bipartite networks can provide quantitative feedback highlighting patterns that traditional makerspace data collection methods are unable to uncover. This paper preliminarily tests a newly proposed conjoined bipartite model that merges the interactions between 3 representations of the space, users, user class year, and general tool groupings generated from short end-of-semester usage surveys. A set of 4 bipartite metrics then analyze the results, including one new to makerspaces – the Gini coefficient, which focuses on node-based patterns to complement the network level patterns measured by the other 3 metrics. The metrics are able to highlight meaningful patterns between class years, with the largest structural differences being between the two spaces in usage by 2nd year students. Space A has lower nestedness and connectance and higher modularity than Space B, indicating that 2nd year students at Space A interact with tools in a more compartmentalized manner reflecting usage that is strongly tied to the curriculum, limiting their ability to explore tools. The result suggests a stabilization of the usage pattern mismatch between Space A and B by the 4th/5th year. This suggests that open-ended projects, such as capstone design may encourage a broader set of tool usage and likely knowledge gained. One suggestion made by the analysis is that the disadvantaged Space A, which is limited to being course-use only, could combat the negative effects by introducing more open-ended design projects, through courses and personal projects earlier. The results here suggest that while space design and organizational structure both play a part in space usage, different design pathways may lead to similar late-stage usage outcomes, and likely learning.”
Thelly, P., J. Linsey, and A. Layton. (2026) ”Personal Projects vs. Course-Based Makerspace Use: Tool Usage Trends Uncovered by Bipartite Network Analyses.” 10th International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM). Houston, TX, USA.
Texas A&M Energy Research Society’s (ERS) 10th Annual Conference on Energy
The Texas A&M Energy Research Society is hosting its annual energy conference and is calling for abstracts for oral and poster presentations. This year’s theme is “Global Energy Solutions: Translating Breakthrough Technologies into Real-World Impact.” The submission deadline is August 17. Click here to learn more!
MEEN undergraduate student Brendan Vohs presented collaborative work titled “From Technology to Adoption: Modeling Stakeholder Engagement in Community Solar Projects.” Biology undergraduate student Shanta Stiles presented her work titled “Enhancing Interpretability of Cyber-Physical Power System Risk Assessment Through Multilayer Network Visualization.” This was the first time doing a technical presentation for both of them and they did great!
“From Technology to Adoption: Modeling Stakeholder Engagement in Community Solar Projects“ Brendan Vohs1, Pepito Thelly1, Sita M. Syal2, Astrid Layton1 1Affiliation: J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA 2Affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Abstract: Since the discovery of photovoltaics there have been countless advances leading to the emergence and development of more efficient and scalable solar energy solutions. However, access to solar energy remains uneven, as the upfront cost and physical requirements can act as barriers to entry. Community solar projects mitigate this by enabling shared ownership or subscription-based access. Despite some highly successful examples, community solar projects often fail. Research has shown this is often due to community opposition related to insufficient stakeholder engagement. A critical gap remains in understanding how, with whom, and when stakeholder interactions should occur across project phases to support success, particularly for small to medium-scale developments. This presentation introduces a novel modeling framework that adapts bipartite mutualistic network analysis from ecology to examine patterns and characteristics arising from developer-type interactions with community members, with the long-term goal of identifying quantitative interaction patterns that correspond to higher rates of project success. Using a hypothetical-realistic 1 MW community solar case study, interactions between community and non-community stakeholders are modeled across 4 development phases under 2 scenarios: a business-as-usual engagement approach and an enhanced community engagement approach. Network metrics—including degree, connectance, Gini coefficient, and Shannon entropy—are applied to quantify interaction volume, distribution, and inclusivity. The results indicate that connectance, interaction diversity, and evenness are able to quantitatively identify increased and intentional engagement, highlighting the value of interactions that happen during early and mid-project phases. Both scenarios converge during construction, suggesting there may be structural constraints on stakeholder participation in later stages. The modeling and analysis framework provides a promising tool for guiding developers, communities, and funding agencies toward community solar projects that are better positioned for long-term success and grid integration. Keywords: Bio-Inspired Design, Network Modeling, Community Energy, Power Networks, Ecological Analysis
“Enhancing Interpretability of Cyber-Physical Power System Risk Assessment Through Multilayer Network Visualization“ Shanta Stiles1, Emily Payne2, Katherine Davis3, Astrid Layton2 1Affiliation: Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States 2Affiliation: J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States 3Affiliation: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States
Abstract: Risk propagation in cyber-physical power systems is difficult to interpret from complex interdependency matrices, potentially leading to delayed operator response, ineffective mitigation strategies, and cascading system failures during critical events. Prior work successfully applied bio-inspired system characteristics to improve resilience and understand risk propagation in power systems with the development of the Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) framework. Further improvement of ENA-based analysis has led to the development of an interactive visualization and analysis tool that translates ENA outputs into graph-based visual representations of power-system vulnerability – termed the Cyber-Physical System (CPS) Viewer. CPS Viewer integrates critical PowerWorld case data, network construction, disturbance modeling, risk propagation analysis, and contingency simulation all within a single workflow. The Viewer automatically constructs multilayer representations of the system, including physical graphs that represent generators, loads, buses, and branch flow relationships using directed weighted edges; cyber graphs that model communication paths among relays, switches, routers, human-machine interfaces, firewalls, utility control centers, and ISO/SCADA nodes; and cyber-physical connection graphs that link relay nodes to associated physical devices and buses, allowing users to inspect cross-domain dependencies directly. Interactive visualization is supported through 3D network plots, bipartite cyber-physical graphs, adjacency matrices, weighted flow matrices, and disturbance-highlighted subgraphs. Users can select disturbance nodes through the interface and the tool converts those selections into risk inputs using normalized impact scores derived from component risk attributes and adjusted betweenness centrality. A disturbance analysis can then compute direct risk matrices, indirect risk matrices, cumulative flow effects, node-level summaries, and interaction summaries. The tool connects ENA-based vulnerability assessment with operational power-system behavior, selected generator, load, and bus disturbances. These connections are translated into PowerWorld-compatible wattage changes and passed to an automated contingency workflow. The contingency module modifies generator and load values, solves the altered power flow, processes an auxiliary contingency file, and executes PowerWorld contingency analysis. The presentation will demonstrate the tool applied to the IEEE 57-bus case, demonstrating how ENA-derived risk information can be explored interactively, helping users identify high-risk nodes, inspect direct and indirect propagation pathways, and evaluate cyber-physical dependencies. Keywords: risk, bio-inspired design, cyber-physical power systems
BiSSL had a fantastic time attending ASME’s (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers)IDETC-CIE 2026 Conference in Houston. Our lab had one paper presented in the SEIKM conference track in CIE, titled: “Integrating Bio-Inspired Design for Robust System Recovery.”
The paper was lead by BiSSL alum Dr. Emily Payne-Broucek, former Ph.D. student who has since transitioned to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. With support from a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, she was able to use our bio-inspired design for resilience research to redefine how we think about system recovery.
Key takeaways include:
🌱 Nature-Inspired Restoration: We introduced an ecologically guided recovery algorithm that uses graph-based ecological network analysis to direct the recovery sequence of power grids post-blackout.
⚡ Better Reach with Limited Power: When coupled with physics simulations, our ecological algorithm restored larger portions of network during early recovery stages compared to traditional hierarchy-based restoration procedures.
💪 Enhanced Resilience: Combining bio-inspired grid designs with the ecologically-guided recovery seems to yield equal or higher long-term robustness against cascading failures during severe outages.
A huge congratulations to Emily on this outstanding contribution to bio-inspired systems design! Looking forward to seeing all the amazing impact she continues to make in her new role. The paper is published as open access for anyone interested.
E. Payne and A. Layton. (2026) “Integrating Bio-Inspired Design for Robust System Recovery.” ASME 2026 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE). Houston, TX, USA.
Pepito Thelly, former student Amira Bushagour and Dr. Astrid Layton at the Design Theory Special Interest Group meeting in Paris. Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Astrid Layton
Dr. Astrid Layton has seen firsthand how quickly research can become isolating for students — hours spent troubleshooting, refining and questioning what isn’t working. Through the Donna Walker Faculty Fellowship, she is improving that experience by giving students the opportunity to step outside the lab and share their work with the broader research community.
In the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, Layton uses the fellowship to support both undergraduate and graduate students in her Bio-Inspired Systems Lab, funding travel to conferences to present their research, build networks and gain new perspectives. The flexible funding allows her to prioritize opportunities that might otherwise be out of reach.
“I think it’s really important for students to practice talking about their research within the broader community,” Layton said. “They can get stuck focusing on what isn’t working. Conferences give them a chance to focus on what they’ve accomplished and where their work can go next.”
For Pepito Thelly, a doctoral student in Layton’s lab, that opportunity became a reality when he traveled to Paris to attend the Design Theory Special Interest Group, where he presented his research on an international stage.
“Presenting our work at an international level is something I never imagined I’d be able to do during my Ph.D.,” Thelly said. “I am incredibly grateful for both the opportunity and the support that made it possible.”
The conference experience extended beyond presenting research. For Thelly, one of the most valuable takeaways was the exposure to new ways of thinking.
“The most impactful part was hearing perspectives from people outside my immediate bubble,” he said. “When we get so focused on our work, it’s easy to lose sight of alternative viewpoints. That friction is where a lot of creativity comes from.”
Layton emphasized that these moments are exactly why she prioritizes sending students to conferences. In addition to strengthening communication skills, the experience often reshapes how students view their work and their potential.
“It gives them this confidence,” she said. “They come back with new ideas, new energy and a better sense of how their research connects to a larger community.”
For Thelly, the experience also prompted a shift in how he thinks about his future.
“It gave me more perspective,” he said. “We all have a lot of potential, but we often limit ourselves based on what we think is realistic. Stepping outside the day-to-day helped me reset that mindset and reevaluate my goals.”
The fellowship’s impact extends beyond individual experiences. Because the funding is not tied to a specific grant, Layton can support early-stage projects, fund student researchers and create opportunities for undergraduates who might not otherwise have access to this level of engagement.
That flexibility is increasingly important as travel costs and funding limitations continue to rise. Without it, Layton said, many of these experiences would not happen.
“There’s no replacement for being in those environments,” she said. “That’s where collaborations start, where students meet people they might work with in the future, and where new ideas take shape.”
For students like Thelly, those opportunities offer more than just academic growth; they provide a broader view of what is possible.
“It made me appreciate how much exciting work is being done,” he said. “A lot of ideas that once felt abstract are now becoming possible and seeing that firsthand was really motivating.”
Through the Donna Walker Faculty Fellowship, Layton is not only supporting student research — she is helping shape more confident, connected and forward-thinking engineers, reinforcing Texas A&M Engineering’s commitment to hands-on learning and real-world impact.
BiSSL Ph.D. students Hadear Hassan and Pepito Thelly represented the lab for our department’s MEEN Industry Day out at the A&M Rellis Campus. Companies attending included Airbus, Siemens, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Oxy, NOV, and Nova.
BiSSL Ph.D. candidate Hadear Hassan led the publication of an IDETC-CIE conference paper titled “Potential for Digital Technologies & Additive Manufacturing to Support Lean Manufacturing + Circular Economy Synergies” in collaboration with Aarhus University Ph.D. student (and former BiSSL MS student) Amira Bushagour and Dr. Abheek Chatterjee, who is a post doc at NIST and is a former BiSSL PhD student. The paper was presented in the SEIKM track on “Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain Systems Design and Analysis” co-chaired by Dr. Chatterjee.
ABSTRACT: Lean manufacturing and circular economy are two production paradigms aimed at addressing the challenges faced by traditional production models, such as resource constraints, environmental impacts, and waste generation. Lean manufacturing focuses on improving production efficiency by eliminating non-value-adding activities. Circular economy aims to reduce waste and resource consumption and support production demands by retaining valuable materials in the economy as long as possible. Recent research has indicated that the convergence of these paradigms is a promising strategy to support sustainable production and consumption. However, challenges remain in fully integrating these approaches, as lean manufacturing emphasizes efficiency without directly considering environmental concerns, a key goal of the circular economy. This research investigates if additive manufacturing and digital technologies (such as digital twins and product passports) offer potential approaches to support the synergies between lean manufacturing and circular economy initiatives. To this end, this article surveys how additive manufacturing and digital technologies support the core aspects of circular economy and lean manufacturing. Thereafter, the synergies between the core aspects of the two paradigms are analyzed with a focus on the application of digital technologies and additive manufacturing in supporting these synergies. Specifically, it is found that the integration of digital technologies with additive manufacturing enables real-time monitoring and predictive analytics. This integrated approach addresses the scalability and flexibility challenges of additive manufacturing implemented alone while enhancing waste reduction, resource optimization, and material life cycle transparency in lean manufacturing and circular economy applications. These findings provide stakeholders with valuable insights regarding simultaneously implementing lean manufacturing and circular economy principles – supporting financial benefits, reduced environmental impacts, and sustainable production growth. -Hassan, Chatterjee, Bushagour, Layton. (2025) “Potential for Digital Technologies and Additive Manufacturing to Support Lean Manufacturing and Circular Economy Synergies.” ASME 2025 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE). Anaheim, CA, USA.
At IDETC-CIE 2025, Dr. Layton was awarded the 2025 Early Career Award by Design Theory and Methodology in the Design Engineering Division by ASME. The award was given “For exemplary early-career contributions to research, education, and service in Design Theory and Methodology, advancing knowledge of bio-inspired network-based approaches to sustainability, resilience, and complex systems in engineering design.”
This year at the ASME IDETC-CIE 2025 conference Dr. Layton served as an invited panelist in the CIE divisions “Women in CIE” panel Sunday night.
The CIE Division hosted a one-hour networking event at the 2025 IDETC-CIE on Sunday, August 17, from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM, including a reception. This event was designed to recognize the contributions of those from nontraditional backgrounds in engineering, celebrate achievements within the ASME community, and foster professional networking and mentorship opportunities.
The event featured a group of panelists with expertise in emerging technologies—such as Modeling and Simulation, Digital Twins, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence-and how these innovations are helping to broaden access and opportunity across the field.
Ph.D. student Hadear Hassan presented research on a dynamic model that uses bio-inspired design principles to evaluate manufacturing systems for sustainability and resilience, especially under disturbances, while linking system qualities to performance metrics like capital cost and demand met at the 2025 Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC), hosted by Clemson University in Greenville, SC. The paper was a collaboration with Amira Bushagour, Dr. Abheek Chatterjee, and Dr. Astrid Layton.
The paper presented is titled “Quantitatively Supporting System-Level Sustainability and Resilience in Manufacturing.”
BiSSL PhD student Hadear Hassan presenting at the 2025 MSEC conference.
Abstract: “Manufacturing is a key driver of both economic health and environmental burdens, reporting over 12.7 million workers in the U.S. and emitting 30% of greenhouse emissions. Manufacturing systems thus must be both sustainable and resilient to mitigate environmental degradation and maintain job security and operations in case of disturbances. Doing both in manufacturing, however, is non-trivial and quantitatively ambiguous. This work investigates a bio-inspired approach to quantitatively design for both. Twenty manufacturing floor plan architectures are evaluated using a bio-inspired system design approach and traditional manufacturing metrics. Ecological Network Analysis has been shown in prior work to offer system design guidance inspired by nature’s resilient and sustainable food webs. Traditional metrics such as capital cost, throughput, and capacity utilization correlate these ecological characteristics with manufacturing-specific goals for the first time. The architectures, in both their traditional and bio-inspired architectures, are tested under disturbance scenarios to determine if the bio-inspired designs offer superior performance from a manufacturing perspective. The evaluation highlights interdependencies between metrics that capture circular economy supporting efficient pathways and resilience supporting manufacturing convertibility. The results also form the beginnings of an assessment framework for the use of low data metrics in the early-stages of manufacturing systems design.” Hassan, H., A. Bushagour, A. Chatterjee, A. Layton. (2025) “Quantitatively Supporting System-Level Sustainability and Resilience in Manufacturing.” ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC). Greenville, SC, USA.
