**Save the Date**

The 2011 Biomimicry Education Summit will be held the week of June 27th in Cleveland, Ohio.

Every summer since its founding, The Biomimicry Institute has hosted the Biomimicry Education Summit. This interactive conference brings together practicing biomimicry professors and instructors from around the world to engage, collaborate, and network. Experienced biomimicry educators share the challenges and solutions they’ve discovered in their classrooms, and glean new insights, materials, and support from the education staff at The Biomimicry Institute. If you are bringing biomimicry into your classroom or would like to know more about how to integrate biomimicry into your learning materials, please consider attending our annual meeting.

2010 Summit: what participants had to say

"We as humans are part of the universe, what we create will have consequences in our environment. We know it, there are many scientific studies that prove it and we have seen it with our own eyes. We have tried to do something about it, but many times failed. The challenge seems huge and extensive for our limited hands to resolve. But if we start changing our way of seeing and listening we are able to change our way of living. This is what biomimicry taught me, that there is a feasible solution. A way of understanding nature as a model, measure and mentor. Programs such as the Student Design Challenge and the Biomimicry Education Summit allow biomimicry to expand and reach more people."
Karen Basáñez Martinez, student, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico

"This was a truly inspiring experience – a superb demonstration of how expertise from diverse disciplines can unite under Nature's tutelage to achieve practical solutions for a sustainable future."
Christopher Viney, professor, University of California, Merced

"The biomimicry Education Summit has been an invaluable experience for me. In our very busy schedules, this provides a necessary break to focus on one subject, in depth, with real case studies and like-minded professionals. I left the summit not only with much clearer ideas on how to move forward with biomimicry education, but met several new contacts in the field as well."
Doug Paige, professor, The Cleveland Institute of Art

2010 Summit: recap

Over 50 educational institutions were represented at our 2010 Summit. Inspirational presentation symposia featured nationally renowned experts, practitioners, educators, and students of the field of biomimicry, including:

• Janine Benyus. Co-founder of The Biomimicry Institute and Biomimicry Guild, and author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997).
• Valerie Casey. Founder of the Designers Accord.
• Dr. Brent Constantz. Consulting professor at Stanford University, School of Earth Sciences, and CEO of Calera Corporation.
• Thomas Knittel. Design Principal and Sustainable Design Leader, New York office of HOK.
• Tom McKeag. Landscape architect and city planner who founded BioDreamMachine.
• Dr. Jakki Mohr. Professor of Marketing at University of Montana, Missoula.
• Dr. Christopher Viney. Professor in the School of Engineering at University of California, Merced. 
• Dr. Steven Vogel. Research Professor in the Biology Department at Duke University. 
• Karen Wallace. Director of the Center for Science Learning at the Buffalo Museum of Science and adjunct associate professor in science education at the University of Buffalo.

The 2010 Summit also featured several outcome-oriented work sessions, organized along the following problem-driven focal topics pertinent to the advancement of biomimicry education at academic institutions:

• Bringing Biology into Design: biology taught from a functional perspective
• Biomimicry Youth Education: building the foundation
• Building Biomimicry Academic Programs: frameworks for success in academia
• Biomimicry Student Design Challenges: real-life, real-time collaborations
• Bringing Scientists to the Design Table: wooing nature's apprentices