Nature’s Unifying Theories and How They Can Be Used for Good
Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Eng. Mecânica Universidade de Aveiro, AveiroPhilip LeDuc, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Computational Biology, and Biological Sciences, of Carnegie Mellon University, USA, will give a seminar on July 20th, at 10 am in the Auditorium José Grácio, Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Aveiro. Philip LeDuc has always been interested in examining whether seemingly unconnected areas of his life actually have intersections. For example, two areas that have always interested him are the mechanics of machines, such as taking apart lawn mowers in his youth, and the wonders of nature. While they seem unconnected, he wonders what their commonalities are, which has led him to work on this intersection for almost two decades towards unifying theories between them.Here he will present how his lab has been looking for nature's unifying theories that are threaded throughout life. His lab approaches this by envisioning different biological organisms as "systems" and examining how these unconnected systems intersect. They use their approaches as engineers to investigate these systems in nature, looking for unifying principles with some of the same fundamental approaches used on machines such as planes, trains, and automobiles. He works with a diversity of biological systems ranging from mammalian cells to microorganisms to plants, and they apply principles from mechanical engineering fields (e.g. solid mechanics, control theory, fluidics, heat transfer, and design) to understand how these principles may apply across diverse nature-based systems. His goal with his projects is to tackle grand challenges, so his work includes areas like improving health, sustainable energy, clean water, understanding evolution, and even art. They pursue these goals by developing and utilising unique custom-built systems, including biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and computational biology. These intersections are especially fascinating to him, as biological systems have evolved for distinct reasons (the "initial and boundary conditions" are different). In addition, as an engineer, he is truly interested in building new systems from the knowledge that he obtains. Thus, he will also present how their lab thinks about these nature-inspired design principles in relation to translational efforts. Join this conference for free, on July 20th, at 10 am, in the Auditorium José Grácio, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Aveiro.