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June 9, 2025

Olin course integrates biology, design, and engineering to create sustainable systems

Students in Olin’s “Biomimicry” course are learning how drawing insights from nature can help them become better and more sustainable designers and engineers. 

Biomimicry involves examining and emulating nature's patterns and strategies to solve human challenges. Many Olin courses incorporate learning from nature into their curriculum, including the first-year “Design Nature” course and upper-level courses like “Think Like a Biologist.”

“We had both been incorporating biomimicry learning into our own courses module and through working with external partners over the years,” say Jean Huang, associate professor of biology, and Benjamin Linder, professor of design and mechanical engineering and ADE Director, who co-teach “Biomimicry.”

“We decided to combine efforts and realms of expertise and develop an advanced course with a dedicated focus on this important area.”

This course fills a unique interdisciplinary niche in the Olin curriculum by integrating biology with design and engineering in a way that blends sustainability, application of knowledge, ethics, and systems thinking. “Biomimicry” also supports creative, divergent thinking that enables students to gain tools and mindsets for addressing societal challenges. Students examine diverse problems such as addressing inequalities in food access, increasing flood resistance along shorelines, and reducing fragmentation of ecosystems due to infrastructure.   

“In a lot of my other courses, we had been thinking about structure in a very macro way,” says Jeffrey Woodyard ’27, a mechanical engineering major. “In ‘Biomimicry,’ we learned about a lot of microstructures in animals that achieve certain functions in unusual ways. It’s pretty inspiring to see what the natural world can accomplish at a scale that is almost invisible to the human eye.”

Woodyard says that with what he’s learned in the course, he might like to try working on prosthetics that are inspired by natural models.

Mechanical engineering major Caterina Cirone ’27 was drawn to the course because it linked her interests in engineering and animals.

“I've had a love for nature and wildlife since I was a kid, so it was exciting for me to put all that knowledge into the discipline of engineering,” says Cirone, who has an interest in human-centered design. “Throughout our projects, we found animals that had cool mechanisms—such as a python’s expandable mouth or a jewel beetle that produces colors not through pigment, but through microscopic, cone-like structures—and thought about how we could implement them into some kind of sustainable design.”

Students engaged in individual and group projects throughout the year using this methodology on both large and small scales. Marcellus Smith ’27 and Amir Osorio ’27 worked on a project to better understand how the design of moth wings helps them avoid predators.

“Moth wings have enhanced ultrasound dampening on them that looks like fur, and it’s used to combat bat echolocation by absorbing sounds, which disrupts the bat’s ability to locate them correctly,” says Smith.

“We placed two distinct moth samples in a scanning electron microscope and looked at the different structures down to the nanoscale; one was like scales and the other was tiny hairs. We then tested the wings using an ultrasonic sensor that mimics bat signals and measured how long the sound took to return, so we could see which material worked better.”

In addition to project work, students also experienced guest lectures and engaged in field trips, such as visiting the Nature Laboratory at the Rhode Island School of Design.

“Our approach to this class centralizes sustainability in biomimicry practice and asks students to consider the ethics of design practice and responsibility to the natural world,” say Huang and Linder.

“It’s great to see students build creative systemic thinking and higher-level learning from nature over the course of the semester and ultimately learn how to develop systems that are conducive to life.”