What is Nature-inspired Exploration? Biomimicry
Friday 01/05/2018 
8:00 pm ET (5:00 pm PT)
FREE 2-hour FACE-To-FACE Workshop
Educators in Grades K-12

The NASA Educator Professional Development Collaborative at
Texas State University is providing a 2-hour FACE-TO-FACE Workshop.

Participants in this workshop will get an overview of strategies and resources from NASA for classroom engineering design projects using BIOMIMICRY and then participate in a discussion of specific applications of these strategies.

There’s no doubt humans are resourceful — just look at the world we’ve created. However, as much as there may be to celebrate regarding just how far we’ve come, it’s also incredibly important to hone in on the massive sustainability problems that have resulted from our innovations. Biomimicry seeks to change that.  An alternative approach to innovation, biomimicry’s goal is to create sustainable solutions to human challenges by echoing nature’s patterns and strategies. The approach involves creating products, processes, and polices that are well-adapted to life on earth for generations to come.  Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to create a more efficient solar cell is an example of nature-inspired design. The premise is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already found solutions to many human design challenges.  As an approach to problem-solving and design, biomimicry is impacting the way engineers design our products and systems. More and more, engineers are consulting nature’s genius to answer pressing questions such as, “How will we harness energy?” or “How will we make our materials?” and “How will we come up with new product designs to compete in a global marketplace?” We are discovering that for every human challenge, nature has a time-tested solution.  Hard to envision what this would look like?

Examples will be shared that is happening now at NASA as well as hands-on activities that you can share with your students.


Dr. Karen Crow Roark is an Education Specialist for the Educator Professional Development Collaborative (EPDC).  She has been in the educational world for over thirty years working as a teacher, assistant principal, and professional development trainer in rural Georgia to the heart of Washington, DC in public, private, and non-profit.  She attended Breanu University, Berry College, State University of West Georgia, University of Sarasota, and University of Georgia.  She received her Doctoral in Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Leadership.  In 2001 she received her National Board Teacher Certification.

Some of her accomplishments include receiving a Fulbright Scholar to Japan; working as an Educational Leadership Institute Scholar at Harvard University; participation in the Teacher in Space summer program at Huntsville Space Center; and being named to the National Teacher Hall of Fame. She has had the opportunity to travel to forty-nine of the fifty states and several countries overseas.