Congratulations to BiSSL Ph.D. student Pepito Thelly, one of 7 Ph.D. finalists in the Texas A&M 2025 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) Final! He was selected out of over 85 participants.
Pepito, a student in Dr. Astrid Layton’s Bio-inspired Systems Lab who’s bio-inspired design research has collaborated with Dr. Julie Linsey and her iDREEM lab at Georgia Tech, will present “Bio-Inspired Makerspace Networks.” Good luck Pepito!
Learn more: https://loom.ly/lKaoE-I Join the free finals, virtually or in person, and vote for the People’s Choice Award!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BiSSL Ph.D. student Hadear Hassan has been awarded the 2024 James J. Cain ’51 Award by the department, an award that recognizes the demonstrated academic and innovative excellence of the recipients and is awarded to only 2 graduate students each year. She received the award at the 2024 Mechanical Engineering Student Award Recognition on October 10th.
Dr. Astrid Layton and Ph.D. student Hadear Hassan at the Fall 2024 MEEN Award Ceremony.
James J. Cain ’51 was a long-time supporter and graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Cain was the youngest of five children and was born and raised in Sherman, Texas. After completing high school, Cain attended Texas A&M and received a degree in mechanical engineering. During his long and distinguished career of more than 35 years at Mobil Oil, Cain was renowned for his desire to mentor students and faculty at Texas A&M. He took great pride in being a part of Mobil’s college recruiting team, often filling positions with Aggie graduates.
BiSSL: Bio-inspired Systems Lab 