BioDesign Projects

Our BioDesign projects produce strange tools by using resources from the fields of art, design, engineering, and biology. The projects are developed in a course called Sticky Innovation (cross-listed with engineering and art), in which interdisciplinary teams develop strange tools for a competition called the BioDesign Challenge. These strange tools are created to solve concrete problems addressed by the United Nations Sustainability Goals. Each June the BioDesign Challenge meets in NYC for the international finals. In 2020, our team won the research award for the competition. BioDesign provides solutions for wicked problems that cannot be solved within a single discipline by inventing unexpected new products—strange tools. We achieve this through a combination of qualitative and quantitative mixed methods in design, engineering, and biology. For example, the propolis trap and the ‘Lifebrik’ are two strange tools that have been developed successfully in this course to address Colony Collapse Disorder in honey bees and soil health, respectively.