3D Fabrication of Biologically Inspired Structures
»Talking Matters« Lecture Series Continues with a Talk by Materials Scientist James Weaver
Scaling Nature (1): Wrinkles«: Liquid Lacquer. Copyright: weißensee school of art and design berlin / Luis Magg | Bacterial cellulose curtain. Copyright: Bastian Beyer and Iva Rešetar
On Tuesday, 15 June 2021, the Cluster lecture series »Talking Matters« continued with a talk by materials scientist James Weaver from Harvard University. Weaver spoke on invitation of the project Material Form Function about »High Resolution Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing: 3D Fabrication of Biologically Inspired Structures«.
The lecture was given in English and was part of the online lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« entitled »Talking Matters«.
Abstract
Nature produces a remarkable diversity of intricately architectured mineralized composites that in many instances far exceed the performance of their modern engineering analogues. Despite significant investigations into structure-function relationships in these complex biological materials, in many instances, there is a lack of critical information regarding the specific functional roles of many components of these structural hierarchies. Here we introduce the technique of multi-material additive manufacturing, which we employ as a research tool to unravel the functional complexities of a wide range of biological materials including laminated composites, photonic architectures, and low drag surface coatings.
CV
Dr. James C. Weaver is a Senior Scientist at Harvard University‘s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where he runs the Wide-Field Electron Optics Laboratory. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Aquatic Biology and Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and went on to pursue postdoctoral studies in Molecular Biology, Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Earth History. Working at the interface between zoology, materials science, biomedical engineering, and multi-material 3D printing, his main research interests focus on investigating structure function relationships in hierarchically ordered biological composites and the fabrication of their synthetic analogues. He has played critical roles in the development of new model systems for the study of a wide range of biomineralization processes, is an internationally recognized and award-winning scanning electron microscopist, and for the past ten years has led all additive manufacturing-related research efforts on commercial 3D printers within the greater Harvard community. With a strong history of national and international academic and industrial collaborations, he has coauthored more than 150 journal articles in the biological, physical, and geological sciences. His work has been featured on the covers of more than 40 scientific journals and he has contributed to numerous collaborative art installations, which have been exhibited in Berlin, Boston, Frankfurt, London, New York, and Paris.