On Tuesday, November 16, Prof. Ashok Goel of Georgia Tech will present the College of Engineering Brown Bag talk. Prof. Goel's topic will be "Creative Analogies in Biologically Inspired Deisgn." This topic is broadly of interest in Engineering. Ashok's abstract is below along with other materials of interest. This talk is cosponsored by CEER and CRCSTL. 

Prof. Goel will a another talk on Monday, Nov 15, on "Learning Conceptual Models of Complex Natural Systems." This talk will be held at 4pm in 212 North Kedzie. 

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Creative Analogies in Biologically Inspired Design

Ashok K. Goel

Design & Intelligence Laboratory

School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract:

Biologically inspired design is a growing movement in engineering design. This movement entails a growing number of academic courses and programs in biologically inspired design.  In this talk, I first describe a series of cognitive studies of biologically inspired design in an interdisciplinary senior-level course at Georgia Tech. Then, I describe our findings about the nature of creative analogies in biologically inspired design. Next, I describe how these findings have helped transform the interdisciplinary course. Finally, I describe the design, development and deployment of an interactive learning technology called DANE (for Design by Analogy to Nature Engine) for supporting biologically inspired design in the course.

Background for the talk:

from the DI Lab Archive http://www.dilab.gatech.edu/publications.html

Michael Helms, Swaroop Vattam & Ashok K. Goel. Biologically Inspired Design: Products and Processes. Design Studies, 30(5):606-622, September 2009.

Swaroop Vattam, Michael Helms & Ashok Goel. A Content Account of Creative Analogies in Biologically Inspired Design. AI for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Special Issue on Biologically Inspired Design, 24: 467-481, November 2010.

Swaroop Vattam, Bryan Wiltgen, Michael Helms, Ashok Goel & Jeannette Yen. DANE: Fostering Creativity in and through Biologically Inspired Design. To appear in Procs. First International Conference on Design Creativity, Kobe, Japan, November 2010. 

Prof. Goel's Short Bio:

Ashok Goel is an Associate Professor of Computer Science & cognitive science in School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Director of the School's Design & Intelligence Laboratory, and a Co-Director of Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design. Ashok is an Associate Editor of IEEE Intelligent Systems and ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, and serves on the editorial boards of AI Magazine and Advanced Engineering Informatics. He is a Co-Chair of the Sixth International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams, and the Chair of the Eighth ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition. 

Acknowledgements: The DANE project is an ongoing collaboration among biological, cognitive, computing, design, engineering, and learning scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology, including Jeannette Yen in Georgia Tech’s School of Biology.  The project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (CreativeIT Grant #0855916 and TUES Grant #1022778).