Workshop: Biological Collections as a Resource for Technical Innovation

美国和世界各地的许多自然历史博物馆都收藏了大量宝贵的生物标本研究藏品。这些收藏形成了世界上许多已知生物多样性的档案。这份档案已经被用作与生物学研究和保护有关的许多不同目的的不可或缺的资源。该奖项将支持一系列活动，包括探索将自然历史收藏作为工程创新资源的新用途的研讨会。这一努力背后的理由是，世界生物多样性代表着进化的结果，这一过程与工程优化有许多相似之处，但在时间、空间以及涉及的不同物种和个体的数量方面一直在大规模运行。由于没有任何人类工程努力能够接近生物进化的时间和空间规模，生物多样性可以被视为一种宝贵的自然资源，可以优化可能对技术发展产生重大影响的知识，找到解决重大工程挑战的方案，并通过创新刺激经济活动。为了实现其启动可行进程、将自然历史收集作为创新资源的目标，该奖项支持的一系列活动将把来自非常不同背景的研究人员聚集在一起，规划前进道路的战略。第一项为期一年的活动将首先由一个核心小组举行筹备会议，认真拟定议程，以便就这一专题举行一次大型跨学科讲习班能够富有成效，并取得切实成果。在这一主要讲习班之后，一组作者将继续开会，并将主要讲习班的成果汇编成两套出版物，一套面向科学/工程界，另一套面向普通公众。第一套出版物将旨在向来自不同背景的科学家和工程师提供具体建议，说明如何利用自然历史收藏来进行工程创新。这些出版物还将尽可能详细地概述相关的挑战以及潜在的解决战略。第二套出版物的目的将是为决策者和公众提供一个合理的大纲，说明自然历史收藏的创新和经济潜力，以及实现这一潜力所需努力的估计。该项目的成果将在弗吉尼亚理工大学生物启发科学和技术中心(http://bist.centers.vt.edu).)的网站上存档

Many natural history museums in the US and around the world harbor large and invaluable research collections of biological specimens. These collections form an archive of much of the world's known biodiversity. This archive is already used as an indispensable resource for many different purposes related to research in biology and conservation. This award will support a number of activities, including workshops that will explore a novel use of natural history collections as a resource for engineering innovation. The rationale behind this endeavor is that the world's biodiversity represents the outcomes of evolution, a process that shares many similarities with engineering optimization, but has been operating on a vast scale in terms of time, space, and the number of different species and individuals involved. Since no human engineering effort can come close to the time and spatial scales of biological evolution, biodiversity can be seen as a precious natural resource for optimizing knowledge that could have a major impact on technology development, finding solutions to major engineering challenges, and stimulating economic activity through innovation.To achieve its goal of starting a viable process towards utilizing natural history collection as a resource for innovation, the set of activities supported by this award will bring together researchers from very different backgrounds to plan a strategy for a path forward. The first year-long activity will start with preparatory meetings by a core team to carefully craft an agenda so that a large interdisciplinary workshop on the topic can be productive and result in tangible outcomes. After this main workshop, a team of authors will continue to meet and digest the results of the main workshop into two sets of publications, one set aimed at the scientific/engineering community and the other at the general public. The first set of publications will be aimed at giving scientists and engineers from diverse backgrounds specific suggestions as to how natural history collections could be leveraged for engineering innovation. These publication will also outline the pertinent challenges as well as potential solution strategies in as much technical detail as possible. The second set of publications will be aimed at providing policy makers and the general public a well-justified outline of the innovative and economic potential of natural history collections as well as estimates for the effort that would be required to realize this potential. The outcomes of the project will be archived on the website of the Center for Bioinspired Science and Technology at Virginia Tech (http://bist.centers.vt.edu).