A message from the Executive Director, Bryony Schwan

Dear Biomimicry Friends,

It’s hard to believe that The Biomimicry Institute is moving into the latter half of our third year of operation. We have grown so much and in so many ways -- our team, AskNature, educational programs, exciting partnerships and an upcoming worldwide design challenge -- to name a few. Thank you to all who have supported us!

We welcomed three new staff members to the Institute this year. Chris Allen became the full time manager of asknature.org after launching and managing this ambitious project as a consultant. Emily Harrington, who came to us as an intern last summer, is now a full time scientific illustrator and graphic designer. And in May, Diana Lee joined the team as Development Director. Diana worked as a major donor fundraiser for many organizations and most recently with Greenpeace.

Staff continue to work on key programs…the AskNature team are continuing to develop new tools for the site and add content, and in July, we will host the third annual Biomimicry Education Summit at the Teton Science School.

New on the drawing board is the Biomimicry Green Building Design Challenge. We kicked off this challenge by asking green building experts at the Cascadia Green Building Council’s Living Futures Conference to help identify the top ten challenges they wish to solve in order to meet the promise of true living buildings, while reducing the energy and carbon footprint of the built environment.

In September, we will bring another set of experts together to frame the final challenge. Once the challenge has been identified, we will ask innovative architects, builders, materials scientists, and engaged citizens, “How would nature solve this?” and invite them to propose bio-inspired solutions to the energy deficit that buildings worldwide represent.

We are pleased to have Ashoka Changemakers as our partner. They will host the design challenge on their open-source competitions platform for systems change, enabling us to reach a vast network of social change organizations, social entrepreneurs, business entrepreneurs, as well as interested innovators/inventors from science, health, financial, academic, and government. Perhaps you will be one of those innovators! Stay tuned for further exciting developments.