Innovation Anthology #682:
When it comes to engineering, using biological systems means incorporating the properties of life or nature without actually creating life.
And as Dr. Carlo Montemagno explains, the focus is to develop new devices that function by interacting or responding with their environment.
Carlo is director of Ingenuity Lab at the University of Alberta.
He says that in an age of 3D printing to manufacture products, this biological element is really the fourth dimension.
DR. CARLO MONTEMAGNO: By using advanced printing technologies that we are working on at Ingenuity Lab, we end up being able to integrate these life functions with other engineered constructs that we build, and incorporate them in an architecture that allows us to to achieve this high level of functionality. So when I talk about the fourth dimension, I’m talking about, of course, the three dimensional structure, x, y and z, and I’m talking about the fourth dimension of function of incorporating function as an intrinsic property of the things that we build and construct.
Dr. Carlo Montemagno’s group is already developing a pill capsule that’s based on these biological principles.
Thanks today to INGENUITY LAB.
Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Ingenuity Lab
Program Date: 2015-04-21