Rolf Mueller talks about biodiversity at TEDx Brunei

Rolf Mueller delivered a TEDx talk at Universiti Brunei Darussalam on March 4, 2023. In his presentation, he discussed his take on engineering for infinite adaptability by taking cues from biological evolution. His own research with bats has adapted the structures of biological mechanisms to build new technologies, looking at both function and constraints to determine the best way forward..

Mueller's abstract:

Bioinspired engineering takes insights from biological systems to inspire new technical solutions. In this context, biological evolution can be seen as an optimization process that combines random and directed elements in way that is shared by most modern optimization techniques. However, evolution operates on time scales and over numbers of individuals that vastly exceed the scope of engineering. This makes the outcomes of evolution a valuable source for the solutions of highly dimensional engineering design problems - if engineering goals and the driving forces of evolution align. Furthermore, the tree of life is far more than an expansive repository of different evolutionary solutions, since all its elements are connected through a nexus created by common heritage and ecological context.

In biology, these connections have been exploited extensively to gain insights by virtue of comparative approaches that look for patterns across species and their respective biological contexts. In bioinspired engineering, however, these relationships have not been exploited to advance the field to any major way. Effective methods to exploit evolutionary relationships for engineering insight have the potential to turn biodiversity into a natural resource for the knowledge economy of the 21st century. 

Prof Rolf Müller serves as the Raymond E. & Shirley B. Lynn Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech and also directs the University's Bioinspired Science and Technology Center. He conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of engineering and the life sciences that is aimed at transferring new insights from biological function into technology. In particular, he tries to solve the problem of achieving autonomy in complex, natural environments with engineered systems such as drones. He has (co)authored over 120 peer-reviewed, full-length publications on this topic and has been a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America since 2019. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.