The ultimate vision of the Center for Biologically Inspired Materials and Material Systems’ research and educational program is to map traditional engineering onto biology. Through this revolutionary approach, CBIMMS is developing a new paradigm for education and research, using nature as an example for engineering, while explaining nature using engineering principles and rigor. Our new curriculum serves as an integration of natural science, life science, and engineering. Center investigators use biologically inspired approaches to bridge a gap in current biomedical and bioengineering programs.

The Center’s vision is to bring “nature’s engineering” into the engineering curriculum and engineering principles into the study of nature’s materials, revolutionizing the way engineering and life sciences are taught at the graduate student level. Because of the potential enormity of the “Engineering of Biology,” this program focuses on the following three specific areas:

1. Bio-NanoScience and Engineering (single molecules and self-assembly)
   
2. Encapsulation, Coatings, and Surface Patterning (materials at the cellular scale where the lipid bilayer serves as the defining basis of all life)
   
3. Hierarchical Systems (larger, more macroscopic, functional organisms).

This focused approach will allow students and faculty to develop mapping concepts to the leading edge of knowledge and to explore the intellectual and practical aspects of creating a new curriculum in this burgeoning new area at the interfaces of biology, medicine, engineering and basic physical and chemical sciences. This is the first step towards establishing a new paradigm in science and engineering education that explores life’s mechanisms at the molecular level and translates these findings up through hierarchical scales of structure and organization to bring greater understanding of mechanism to the biological organism (reverse engineering) and unique designs to (forward) engineered devices.