Workshop/Collaborative Research: Charting a Course for Computer-Aided Bio-inspired Design Research; Palo Alto, California; March 20, 2011

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The objective of this award will be to conduct a one day workshop with the aim of investigating the emerging research area in engineering design known as Bio-inspired Design (BID). The key intellectual merit of the workshop lies in identifying future research directions of BID -- specifically problem focused research directions such as complex system design and sustainability. Another key intellectual contribution is the identification of the fundamental impediments to joining the engineering and biological (and related) disciplines and the associated research directions needed to overcome them. Bringing these two disciplines together is critical due to: i) the relevant technical knowledge in each community; and ii) the cultural difference between them that has occurred through the development of engineering as a solution generating applied science and biology as a knowledge generating pure science. This workshop will serve as a means of gathering researchers in a single location to identify the state of the art in the emerging field and to identify critical knowledge gaps that represent potential for further exploration. The attendees will address the critical question: "How do we transform BID from point solution efforts to fundamental methods and theories?" Additional discussion points will focus on biological/natural sustainable solutions that could potentially be explored as models for engineered systems. If successful, this award will enable researchers in the emerging field of Bio-Inspired Design (BID) to lay the framework that allows BID to move from a general concept with point specific applications to a full research field with identified problems, challenges, and rigorous approaches to deal with those challenges. The issue of sustainability for complex engineered systems is presently of national and global importance and will be explored in the context of BID. The continuing forums on the workshop website combined with a follow-up workshop six months later allow an aftershock effect of the effort to reach additional individuals in a slightly altered and matured form. A final report will be widely distributed across traditional disciplinary lines in order to achieve the greatest impact and provide the greatest guidance to researchers.