Research Center of Nature-Inspired Engineering
Over billions of years of evolution, many biological systems have orchestrated a variety of principles to process and manage information, materials, and energy using the least materials with high efficiency. In particular, many phenomena in nature, ranging from the ways that natural materials self-assemble and respond to external stimuli to the manifestation of directional liquid flow on the surfaces of materials are underpinned by elegant surface topographical mechanisms. Our research lies in the seeking, unraveling, and conceptualizing of the power of these evolved mechanisms and then translating the learned understandings to design nature-inspired surfaces that dynamically change their interfacial and transport properties such as wetting, adhesion, thermal-fluid transport for water-energy nexus and biomedical applications.
