Published on Dec 4, 2015
Professor van den Bogert describes his contribution in the field of robotics development to aid human motion. He shares insights to his study of horses and what that means for humans regaining lost mobility.

Dr. Van den Bogert currently holds the Parker-Hannifin Endowed Chair in Human Motion and Control in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University. After training as a physicist and mathematician, Ton van den Bogert became a graduate student in the department of veterinary anatomy where his equestrian fascination began.

Published on Nov 4, 2012 To solve global challenges, we must strategically mobilize and transform communities through effective action and substantive change. This talk explores how organizations can take inspiration from biological concepts found in nature and evolve to become living organisms that have the ability to replicate, thrive, and catalyze positive change around the world.

Chris Castro is a change agent, entrepreneur and steward of the environment. As a student at the University of Central Florida, he co-founded IDEAS (Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions). Through the nonprofit organization IDEAS For Us, he continues to work with youth leaders and green professionals, across the nation and globally, to facilitate positive environmental change and sustainability. He is a Youth Delegate for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Clinton Global Initiative; was awarded the prestigious Champions of Change honorable mention from the White House and Obama Administration; and recently attended the United Nations World Youth Congress in Brazil for the Rio+20 Summit. In addition, Chris is currently working as an energy consultant through Citizen Energy (CE), a start-up firm helping to develop the clean energy workforce and transform the market for energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption throughout Florida.

Published on Nov 17, 2015
Biomimicry is innovation through emulation of biological forms, processes, patterns, and systems; think Velcro, a non-toxic adhesive inspired by how burrs stick to animal fur. The University of Akron provides first-of-its-kind, graduate-level training in this emergent field through the Biomimicry Fellowship Program, now in its fourth year. In this talk, Emily Kennedy, a member of the inaugural cohort of Biomimicry Fellows, describes her unique educational experience, including how introducing biomimicry at her industrial sponsor has galvanized sustainable consumer product innovation.

Emily Kennedy is a Biomimicry Fellow in the Integrated Bioscience PhD Program at the University of Akron. Her graduate studies are sponsored by GOJO Industries, the inventor of PURELL® Advanced Instant Hand Sanitizer. Emily works part-time in the GOJO R&D department, training innovators to explore biology as a source of creative inspiration and model for sustainability.

Published on Dec 24, 2014
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Nature has been solving complex problems and successfully changing worlds for over three billion years. Humans have been causing wars, poverty, pollution, hunger and toxic-designs of products (as well as lot of cool stuff) for a few thousand years. Andy Middleton Founder Director of the The TYF Group, and Founding Partner of The Do Lectures argues that if we intend sticking around to the end of the universe, we’ll need to start behaving more as though we’re a part of nature, rather than apart from nature. He shares ways in which designers can shift their perspective of product design, processes, networks and thriveability by taking practical examples from nature and showing how they connect to today’s real challenges.

Andy Middleton is an imaginative and innovative thinker on sustainability and resource use, with an uncanny ability to connect practices, ideas and networks into projects that can deliver transformation. He is a change specialist, speaker and facilitator with 20+years worldwide experience of helping business and government identify and implement the transformative, disruptive change that is needed to secure economic and environmental resilience. His current research interests and practices include the use of crowd source collaboration for sustainability problem solving, building pathways for food security and integration of the ecosystems approach and biomimicry principles into strategy & decision-making.

Published on Feb 7, 2013
After discovering that we live in what he calls "a house of technology" that limits our free thinking, Jamie Miller looked to nature to find new sources of inspiration for innovation. In this talk Jamie talks about how nature elegantly has solved the most complex of problems and how we can benefit from mimicking nature to solve problems of our own in fundamentally new ways.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Uploaded on May 2, 2011
Jamie Miller is a member of the Biomimicry Speaker's Bureau and an Environmental Engineering PhD student at the University of Guelph. He is currently helping coordinate a biomimicry collaboration at the University of Guelph and pursuing research in the area of biomimicry and basic human needs. Named as a "New Centurion" by The David Suzuki Foundation, Jamie's work in Indonesia and Sri Lanka have helped inspire his efforts in education and curricula reform, where he continues to work on transforming our perception of nature and our relationship with technology, through a lens of global equality and sustainability.

Biomimicry--a tool for creativity and innovation--has the potential to transform business practices to be in harmony with nature. Professor Jakki Mohr, Regents Professor of the University of Montana, provides many examples of how biomimicry is used to develop technological innovations, including: Qualcomm's mirasol display technology, creating vibrant color based on the butterfly wing; Swedish Biomimetics 3000 uMist technology for industrial sprays without VOCs based on the bombardier beetle; Greenshield Technology's waterproof fabric finish based on the lotus leaf, and Ornilux Birdsafe Glass based on UV reflective strands in spider webs. Her research and projects with companies commercializing biomimetic inventions and infusing biomimicry into their innovation processes provides insights for success. Interface Flor, with its line of Entropy carpet tiles, is a shining success story in the world of biomimicry, based on not only its use of biomimicry in product innovation (patterned after the forest floor), but also in its infusion of sustainability through-out the company.

Jakki Mohr, Ph.D., is the Regents Professor of Marketing and the Jeff & Martha Hamilton Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Montana-Missoula. She is an international expert on the marketing of technology and innovation, and the co-author of a book on that topic. Motivated by the desire to bring the promise of new technologies to solve social and global problems, she has worked with companies and universities worldwide in strategic market planning to commercialize innovation. Her most recent interest is the field of biomimicry. Funded by the Marketing Science Institute out of Boston, she is studying how

Published on Dec 18, 2013

Published on Jul 10, 2015
Designer Rene Polin & PhD Candidate Daphne Fecheyr share their successful work in taking cues from the natural world to solve complex industrial design problems in their 2015 TEDxCLE talk.

René Polin has more than 20 years’ experience in product design and development. He is the president and founder of Balance Inc. – a full-service product innovation consulting firm in Cleveland, OH.

Daphne Fecheyr-Lippens biography includes a lot of bio. While getting her MS in Biotechnology she realized that she didn’t fit in as well as the rest of her classmates. For a long time she was looking for her passion, which she finally found after learning about Biomimicry. Now she realizes that she fits best within an interdisciplinary team, where she can bring a nature-centered perspective to solving problems. She is getting her PhD at The University of Arkon, the reason why she left her comfortable habitat of Ghent (Belgium). For her dissertation, which is sponsored by Parker Hannifin, she is learning from avian eggshells how to create novel UV-protective materials, and from hedgehogs how to absorb high impact forces. Together with the other fellows, she co-authors a blog germinature.com about anything related to Biomimicry.