title: New course in bioengineering and bioinspired design.
abstract: The past two years, a new interdisciplinary course has been offered at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA, USA), which seeks to surmount barriers that have traditionally existed between the physical and life sciences.  The course explores the physiology leading to the physical mechanisms and engineering principles that endow the astonishing navigation abilities and sensory mechanisms of animal systems.  The course also emphasizes how biological systems are inspiring novel engineering designs. Two (among many) examples are how the adhesion of the gecko foot inspired a new class of adhesives based on Van der Waals forces;  and how the iridophore protein plates found in  mimic octopus and squid act as tunable ¼ wave stacks, thus inspiring the engineering of optically tunable block copolymer gels for sensing temperature, pressure, or chemical gradients. A major component of this course is the integration of a 6-8 week long research project.  To date, projects have included engineering: a soft-body robot whose motion mimics the inchworm; an electrical circuit to sense minute electric fields in aqueous environments based on the shark electrosensory system; and cyborg grasshoppers whose jump motion is controlled via an electronic-neural interface.  Initial feedback has indicated that this course has served to increase student interaction and cross-pollination of ideas between the physical and life sciences. Student feedback also indicated a marked increase in desire and confidence to continue to pursue problems at the boundary of biology and engineeringbioengineering.
authors: Washington and Lee University.
authors: Jonathan C
authors: JC
authors: Erickson