Making Sense of Bio-Inspired Design

Photo credit: Kellar Autumn

Kellar Autumn, Professor of Biology at Lewis & Clark College, is best known for his discovery of the mechanism of adhesion of geckos. He is the leader of the Gecko Team, a collaboration between L&C, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UCSB. His research focuses on the mechanisms and evolution of animal locomotion, and on developing biologically inspired materials and machines.

In 2005, Kellar’s lab discovered that gecko setae are the first self-cleaning adhesive known to science. Why might anyone care? Because the gecko adhesive system is perhaps the first truly smart adhesive, which means gecko-inspired smart adhesives may revolutionize adhesives and assembly techniques. In the design world, this matters.
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