Steven Weiner
When I entered his office, the first thing I noticed was that Peng Jiang kept a butterfly mounted in a glass display case on his desk. It did not seem like something an engineer might typically keep close by. I had not yet realized that Jiang was a rather atypical engineer.
To Jiang, an associate professor of chemical engineering at UF, his research has as much to do with chemistry as it does with the anatomy of butterflies. Jiang is one of a growing number of scientists who are looking to nature for inspiration for technological innovation. The field is known as biomimetics, which literally means "the mimicking of biology."
Although the term was coined in the 1950s, scientists and engineers have only recently begun to explore biomimetics to see just how much nature can reveal about our technology and our greater understanding of science.
For more information on biomimetics, also known as biomimicry and bionics, and biomimetic research, here are a few websites to check out:
