Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

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Chemist Joanna Aizenberg mines the deep sea and the forest wetlands for nature's design secrets and uses them to fashion new materials that may change the world

By Gareth Cook ?| January 26, 2012?|

Image: Photograph by Jared Leeds

In Brief

• Who: Joanna Aizenberg
• Vocation|Avocation: Runs a biomimetics lab
• Where: Harvard University
• Research Focus: Takes inspiration from nature for designing new types of materials.
• Big Picture: ?What we do, then, is study interesting biological systems, but with the eyes of a physical scientist.?

Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik?s cubes?the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven.

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