Dr. Astrid Layton, assistant professor in the J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering and Donna Walker Faculty Fellow, received an esteemed Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER Award stands as one of the NSF’s highest honors, supporting early-career faculty in becoming exemplary academic leaders.
The accolade recognizes Layton's scholarly contributions and underscores her research's pivotal role in achieving resilience and sustainability in engineering. Layton is poised to transform engineering system design by drawing inspiration from the resilience and sustainability inherent in nature.
Resilience, the ability to withstand and recover from disruptions, is paramount for engineering systems, yet there are few methods for integrating resilience into the early phases of design. Layton's research leverages insights from biological ecosystems so that engineers have quantitative tools for enhancing resilience when confronted with limited information.
“I envision a future where engineers don’t have to choose between settling for something that’s sustainable or resilient. This grant supports my career goal to learn, evaluate and adapt the complexity and interconnectedness of biological systems to engineering design for both sustainability and resilience,” said Layton.
This grant supports my career goal to learn, evaluate and adapt the complexity and interconnectedness of biological systems to engineering design for both sustainability and resilience.
Drawing from principles of engineering design, biological ecosystems, and ecological network analysis, Layton's interdisciplinary approach promises to revolutionize system design by infusing it with findings from nature. The project will examine biological ecosystem traits to clarify when and how their effectiveness helps system designers improve a system’s ability to survive, respond, and recover, highlighting both targeted and random disturbance situations.
The future impact on critical infrastructure systems that underpin society's essential services, such as water supply, power distribution, and pharmaceutical-type supply chains, is of particular significance. By drawing insights from resilient biological ecosystems, the project seeks to furnish designers with practical tools to effectively use resources, mitigate vulnerabilities, and fortify system robustness.
Layton's project also includes a visionary "Walk Like an Engineer" program that engages participants in engineering design within natural settings. The program equips a future workforce with the intuition to tackle complex challenges by fostering interdisciplinary communication skills and an early interest in engineering design.
“Engineering from the perspective of nature — something that all human beings are inherently familiar with — draws interest from a diverse group of people,” said Layton. “This grant takes advantage of that to support a long-term career goal of mine to foster excitement and feelings of inclusion in engineering via bio-inspired design through the “Walk Like an Engineer” program that partners with our local nature center. These engineering and nature scavenger hunts will encourage participants to see themselves as design engineers learning from nature.”