1 00:00:00,00 --> 00:00:06,37 Speaker 1: So what makes it so unique in your eyes, what you are doing with your team? 2 00:00:06,37 --> 00:00:21,03 Speaker 2: The idea is to be open, I think open for looking for interesting solutions in nature and the approach, 3 00:00:21,03 --> 00:00:28,56 probably quite unique still from my group, but I think it becoming more and more popular, is, 4 00:00:28,56 --> 00:00:31,76 we have two directions of how we look at nature. 5 00:00:32,03 --> 00:00:38,46 One is, let's say there's an interesting creature doing something amazing, 6 00:00:38,46 --> 00:00:46,06 and we are trying to learn the- what is happening and maybe apply it. 7 00:00:46,62 --> 00:00:50,04 That's one approach, and apply it maybe to different things. 8 00:00:50,05 --> 00:01:00,63 But even more interesting, it's just emerging now, is that instead of looking for one creature that tells us something, 9 00:01:00,9 --> 00:01:05,1 what if we take lessons from completely different organisms? 10 00:01:05,71 --> 00:01:11,16 They have nothing in common, they have different environments, but one can teach something, 11 00:01:11,16 --> 00:01:14,11 but it's not enough for certain purpose. 12 00:01:14,34 --> 00:01:18,08 Together with yet another organism, you can learn something else, 13 00:01:18,46 --> 00:01:27,37 and combining lessons from completely different organisms that evolve their things for their specific needs, 14 00:01:27,37 --> 00:01:29,43 then to solve a certain problem. 15 00:01:29,44 --> 00:01:38,02 So that's a really interesting approach, is really take small lessons from different, from plants, 16 00:01:38,27 --> 00:01:47,35 from brittle stars because I have research where I combine lessons from this creature with this, 17 00:01:47,69 --> 00:01:53,39 so they have nothing in common. That one taught us something, this one taught us something. 18 00:01:53,76 --> 00:02:01,96 Combining them together, we produce a new technology that would never appear if we wouldn't combine these two lessons. 19 00:02:01,96 --> 00:02:06,1 So the idea of combining different creatures- 20 00:02:06,1 --> 00:02:16,96 Speaker 1: What will [inaudible 00:02:07] combined from the two? So can you explain what did you learn of these two? 21 00:02:16,96 --> 00:02:25,72 Speaker 2: So you probably know who are starfish and sea urchins. 22 00:02:26,28 --> 00:02:34,84 So this is the closest relative of both, so it's also you see his five folds in his ray of the body, 23 00:02:34,99 --> 00:02:42,25 just like a starfish, but it's called brittle star. Its arms are called brittles, it's very fast. 24 00:02:42,68 --> 00:02:52,9 You see it's black, and it's already dead of course, but during the day, it's black and during the night, it is white. 25 00:02:52,9 --> 00:03:04,02 And the way it changes color is by introducing inside the, its skeleton, 26 00:03:04,02 --> 00:03:10,75 black pigment that covers the lens just like some glasses that change color when there's too much light. 27 00:03:11,17 --> 00:03:19,38 This is what this organism does, and makes light reception dynamic depending how much light outside, 28 00:03:19,39 --> 00:03:29,82 so that's the lesson from here. This one has structural color, so this blue is structural color. 29 00:03:30,02 --> 00:03:34,51 Structural color means that it's not chemical color. 30 00:03:34,83 --> 00:03:41,09 It's not coming from pigment, it's coming from arrangement of peaches. 31 00:03:41,09 --> 00:03:47,34 It's coming purely from distances between peaches in this structure. 32 00:03:47,56 --> 00:03:54,6 So depending how close they are, it would be the blue or green, so it has almost nothing to do with the material. 33 00:03:54,61 --> 00:04:03,49 I can get blue color in any material by just making it in their regular array. Now this color is not dynamic. 34 00:04:03,49 --> 00:04:14,28 It's not changing in any way, so we can combine the idea of how liquid here changes color of this organism, 35 00:04:14,28 --> 00:04:24,23 and introduce this liquid as an active element into structures that would make very similar to that butterfly. 36 00:04:25,61 --> 00:04:37,48 Result of that is that we put together new technology where the color can change as a function of infiltration of a 37 00:04:37,56 --> 00:04:43,1 liquid, but then we use this for very interesting applications. 38 00:04:43,1 --> 00:04:51,33 We're looking how that concept was liquid, suddenly changes color in different ways, 39 00:04:51,33 --> 00:04:54,88 and I will probably show you a couple of those things in the lab. 40 00:04:54,88 --> 00:05:08,88 We can use that as sensor, we can use it for encryption because, there's certain messages can be written there, 41 00:05:08,88 --> 00:05:12,65 and you will never see them. We actually have a butterfly with tattoo. 42 00:05:13,6 --> 00:05:25,61 The tattoo is coming out, only one you expose to a liquid and that gives us a way to have hidden messages. 43 00:05:25,61 --> 00:05:30,69 Logos that would appear only when you expose it to right liquid. 44 00:05:31,69 --> 00:05:38,48 So the oral idea of dynamic materials is in this particular case, by combining these strategies, 45 00:05:38,48 --> 00:05:46,34 but we have many more examples of one organism teaches something, and the other one teaches a little bit more, 46 00:05:46,34 --> 00:05:46,88 and together, it's interesting. 47 00:05:46,88 --> 00:05:49,01 Speaker 1: And you apply it to materials in a way? 48 00:05:49,01 --> 00:05:58,02 Speaker 2: Yes, so we're making now, and we're actually making, I actually have a lot of them, 49 00:05:58,23 --> 00:06:06,97 but most of them are in design school because I use them for teaching, but we'll see some of them in my lab, 50 00:06:06,97 --> 00:06:13,85 where you will see it looks exactly like this beautiful blue color, but it's actually material that we make, 51 00:06:13,85 --> 00:06:15,94 but compared to this. 52 00:06:17,09 --> 00:06:28,53 As simple as, imagine a shot glass that has beautiful color, and depending on what you drink, 53 00:06:28,91 --> 00:06:32,84 it will give you different messages that you don't know really existed. 54 00:06:32,84 --> 00:06:38,79 So simple way to make it beautiful, but in fact, we can use it. 55 00:06:39,26 --> 00:06:52,12 In particular, we're working with department of transportation to design it into a sensor for detection of oil quality, 56 00:06:52,13 --> 00:07:02,1 so in North Dakota, they're pulling out a lot of oil. There is no pipe line, and they're transporting it by rail. 57 00:07:02,1 --> 00:07:05,12 And within the last couple of years, 58 00:07:05,12 --> 00:07:12,94 there were a lot of explosions because oil was not properly labeled by what type of oil that is. 59 00:07:13,45 --> 00:07:23,08 So to have a very simple detector that has beautiful color and depending on the quality of oil, 60 00:07:23,49 --> 00:07:30,21 this oil would either infiltrate it or not, and therefore the color will change in certain ways. 61 00:07:30,21 --> 00:07:47,36 As a very simple, you don't need to use fancy equipment, it's almost pregnancy tests or pH paper.. 62 00:07:39,07 --> 00:07:47,11 You put it in oil and you know what quality it is in which container you need to pack it so .. 63 00:07:47,36 --> 00:07:53,92 Speaker 1: So you learn from nature, from animals or plants, or organisms? 64 00:07:53,92 --> 00:07:54,31 Speaker 2: Yup. 65 00:07:54,31 --> 00:07:59,15 Speaker 1: You learn from their characteristics or from their, what their, if you go deeper into, 66 00:07:59,15 --> 00:08:00,54 what biologies normally do. 67 00:08:00,54 --> 00:08:10,8 Speaker 2: That's right, so I don't call it by a mimicry, because I'm not mimicking nature, it is by inspired science. 68 00:08:10,91 --> 00:08:18,38 So I use it as an inspiration, and things that I make are not necessarily even used the same way nature used it, 69 00:08:18,72 --> 00:08:21,48 often for completely different application. 70 00:08:21,48 --> 00:08:27,01 It's just certain design principles that nature has evolved, 71 00:08:27,01 --> 00:08:33,62 become very interesting approaches that one can use for smart materials design. 72 00:08:33,62 --> 00:08:44,09 So it is not mimicking nature, it is taking lessons inspired by nature, and think where we can use these beyond, 73 00:08:44,9 --> 00:08:47,47 well beyond what nature is doing. 74 00:08:48,07 --> 00:08:57,1 And also, we can't, at this moment, mimic the entire complexity of natural system, and probably I don't want to. 75 00:08:57,1 --> 00:09:06,77 So the butterfly and this sea urchins, they need to multiply, they need to do all kinds of things. 76 00:09:06,78 --> 00:09:13,66 If I'm making a device, let's say, to detect quality of oil, I don't need all of these features. 77 00:09:13,66 --> 00:09:16,38 So being able to extract from nature. 78 00:09:16,38 --> 00:09:23,3 So to take these principles, and simplify them sometimes, 79 00:09:23,3 --> 00:09:30,61 or reformulate them in such a way that it can be used somewhere else. This is what we actually do. 80 00:09:30,61 --> 00:09:41,12 Speaker 1: In a way, evolution already chose the best way of having organisms. 81 00:09:41,12 --> 00:09:51,65 Speaker 2: I may not agree with that, I'm not sure that evolution always makes the best choice. 82 00:09:51,65 --> 00:10:01,01 In a sense that there is always local pressures, local environmental conditions and often, 83 00:10:03,16 --> 00:10:12,59 nature has the materials stuck with certain choices that is very expensive to change. 84 00:10:13,06 --> 00:10:21,98 And then, within that range, so I would say that, my logical solutions are often sub-optimal. Not optimal. 85 00:10:21,98 --> 00:10:30,06 We have our ideas, why? In particular, published in a number of papers. 86 00:10:30,87 --> 00:10:40,14 So if we look, we got this paper that was actually describing how this organism changes color, but it's a skeleton, 87 00:10:40,14 --> 00:10:48,47 so nature often does something we do not do yet, which is designing one material for multiple purposes. 88 00:10:48,47 --> 00:10:58,01 So, often natural design might not be best for each of the purposes it has to serve, 89 00:10:58,01 --> 00:11:01,13 but it does it very well for multiple things. 90 00:11:01,14 --> 00:11:06,74 For example, if I design lenses, and these are lenses on top of a skeleton, 91 00:11:06,74 --> 00:11:12,33 maybe I'll design lenses in a different way, and better than these in a different material, 92 00:11:12,33 --> 00:11:15,59 but the same material is supposed to be a skeleton. 93 00:11:16,06 --> 00:11:21,47 So it's not just optically perfect, it has to be structurally perfect. 94 00:11:22,1 --> 00:11:29,33 So neither of them are probably perfect, but to think about one material that can do both things well enough, 95 00:11:30,08 --> 00:11:34,23 then evolution finds the best solution for that. 96 00:11:34,24 --> 00:11:41,36 And sometimes we'll look at this optimization, there are so many parameters you need to optimize for, 97 00:11:41,36 --> 00:11:49,24 maybe there are some that we don't even know about, and then what we can say, flaws of evolution. 98 00:11:49,39 --> 00:11:57,77 It's not perfect, it could be done better. Maybe not, because the material is supposed to do many other things. 99 00:11:57,78 --> 00:12:07,29 For example, multiply, dissolve at certain moment, and then our regular approaches of why not to make it out glass, 100 00:12:07,29 --> 00:12:14,36 why not to make it out of metal, will not be applicable, and therefore not used in nature. 101 00:12:14,36 --> 00:12:20,82 So multi-functionality is a very interesting approach. 102 00:12:20,82 --> 00:12:26,7 Speaker 1: So what you are doing is creating next nature in a way. 103 00:12:26,7 --> 00:12:29,87 Speaker 2: I don't know, but I would say that. 104 00:12:30,26 --> 00:12:36,85 I would just say that maybe there are creatures that already have these features, 105 00:12:36,86 --> 00:12:48,3 but what we are trying to do is combine unrelated lessons from different organisms together to solve an interesting 106 00:12:48,3 --> 00:12:49,41 societal problem, 107 00:12:49,41 --> 00:12:58,08 some interesting technical problem to create a new material that can do something that our current materials can't do. 108 00:12:59,34 --> 00:13:06,62 So it is not next nature, but I would say it's next generation of advanced materials. 109 00:13:07,29 --> 00:13:16,82 Materials that respond to environment, so why can't we have our buildings that either breathe, 110 00:13:16,82 --> 00:13:26,11 or shut the wettability depending whether it's the rain outside or not. 111 00:13:26,11 --> 00:13:39,22 Why can't we have our entire windows that would, in a smart way, which means in response to temperature outside, 112 00:13:39,52 --> 00:13:44,78 to light outside, change the performance to let the light through or not. 113 00:13:44,78 --> 00:13:58,61 There is so many things that if we consider general lessons from nature that we haven't yet, understood very well, 114 00:13:58,7 --> 00:14:06,21 which is responsiveness, which is adaptive nature and ability to reconfigure, adjust. 115 00:14:07,95 --> 00:14:16,45 If we would have materials of that kind, that would be a really interesting move for technology. 116 00:14:16,45 --> 00:14:20,68 Speaker 1: What's the thing where you are now the most proud of if you apply to material? 117 00:14:20,68 --> 00:14:25,46 Speaker 2: That's a tough question. 118 00:14:25,46 --> 00:14:31,04 I have a very big group, and in a way, each of these projects is my baby, 119 00:14:31,32 --> 00:14:37,34 so you don't ask which baby you don't like most out of your kids. 120 00:14:38,00 --> 00:14:46,39 Each of them, in some ways, satisfies different parts of what is important to me. 121 00:14:47,48 --> 00:14:54,53 If you would ask what is the most interesting science, it's one part of that. 122 00:14:54,72 --> 00:15:06,72 I don't even often, in this case, as question, is it going to be useful, is just to uncover interesting mechanisms 123 00:15:06,72 --> 00:15:10,81 and ideas and what nature does in interesting ways. 124 00:15:10,81 --> 00:15:14,79 And there are a couple of things where we are proud of in this direction. 125 00:15:16,24 --> 00:15:21,09 For example, to understand the structure of this plant. 126 00:15:21,5 --> 00:15:31,2 So to understand that the organism was able to create a fiber-optical network, and a beautiful skeleton of glass, 127 00:15:31,66 --> 00:15:43,5 and fully explain how this is structurally, and from materials point of view, is design and is architecture. 128 00:15:43,5 --> 00:15:52,91 That's, I'm proud of. I also like, in this direction, ability to grow pretty much any crystal I want. 129 00:15:52,91 --> 00:16:04,88 We may look at some of them in the microscope later on just to grow flowers that are just size of human hair 130 00:16:04,88 --> 00:16:09,38 or smaller that, but in any shape or form. 131 00:16:09,81 --> 00:16:16,51 So that to understand them, the lengths, I am so well that we can do it, so I am very proud of that part. 132 00:16:16,98 --> 00:16:28,45 Now the other side though, is that is we do not just science purpose, but coming not from science 133 00:16:28,45 --> 00:16:34,55 and then thinking where one can use it, but to do it the other way around, starting with a problem 134 00:16:34,55 --> 00:16:36,77 and think how one can solve it. 135 00:16:36,77 --> 00:16:48,51 So these are more technology or application oriented studies and there, and the ones that I'm most proud of, probably, 136 00:16:48,51 --> 00:17:00,52 are the two developments that have happened in my group in the last five, six years. And these are two technologies. 137 00:17:00,99 --> 00:17:14,32 One is based on inspiration coming from pitcher plant where we really developed completely new family of materials that 138 00:17:14,32 --> 00:17:17,99 can be designed in a very simple way at this moment. 139 00:17:17,99 --> 00:17:30,63 We can make it in metal, polymer and glass, and any material but the material that would repel, what you want to repel, 140 00:17:30,63 --> 00:17:33,14 it would repel ice, it would repel barnacles and mussels. 141 00:17:33,14 --> 00:17:43,51 It would repel blood, it would repel bacteria, and to create the family of [inaudible 00:17:41] materials. 142 00:17:43,51 --> 00:17:55,49 Very proud of this work, and I'm very proud of work of where we can use self-assembled materials and structural color, 143 00:17:55,49 --> 00:18:04,48 actually, as sensors, as a way to detect and reveal how materials are exposed to environment, 144 00:18:04,48 --> 00:18:10,9 so these are two that are related to applications there. 145 00:18:11,44 --> 00:18:17,87 The overall idea for that came from, we want to solve a problem, of let's say, fouling. 146 00:18:18,11 --> 00:18:23,00 What should we do, which organism should we look at to help us do it. 147 00:18:23,02 --> 00:18:33,59 So not from the organisms to application, but rather from application to organisms and natural system that can help. 148 00:18:33,59 --> 00:18:48,45 Speaker 1: And when you look at it, we can create- there is an endless future of possibilities in your science. 149 00:18:48,45 --> 00:18:54,2 It's like, a whole new world's opening by looking at biology in this way, 150 00:18:54,72 --> 00:19:00,23 and then thinking about characteristics that can be used in other materials. 151 00:19:00,23 --> 00:19:06,85 Speaker 2: I agree. The, I hope that there would be more and more studies of this kind. 152 00:19:06,85 --> 00:19:13,64 It's just a good example of that is our recent paper, actually published this year in nature, 153 00:19:14,73 --> 00:19:26,6 was on making the most efficient ethics changes, the most efficient water collection systems, 154 00:19:26,6 --> 00:19:33,51 and the way we designed it was combining lessons from three different natural systems, 155 00:19:34,12 --> 00:19:43,98 where we were looking on how to optimize three parameters, all of them orthogonal to each other, very different, 156 00:19:44,91 --> 00:19:49,45 and combining these three organisms gave us the best solution. 157 00:19:49,46 --> 00:19:59,75 Nothing in technology works as well as that, so we combine lessons from desert beetle, from cactus 158 00:19:59,75 --> 00:20:08,85 and from pitcher plant and we're able to put together something interesting that neither of them alone will teach us. 159 00:20:09,38 --> 00:20:12,8 Now how many of these capabilities? I'm sure it's endless. 160 00:20:12,8 --> 00:20:14,29 There's so many organisms, 161 00:20:14,29 --> 00:20:24,57 and there are so many things about organisms that nobody has studied yet in endless combination of something that 162 00:20:24,57 --> 00:20:28,21 nature evolved here, because it was important for this organism, 163 00:20:28,21 --> 00:20:36,04 and somewhere else because it was important for another organism, together it gives unusual, 164 00:20:36,05 --> 00:20:42,38 unexpected solution that nobody can easily come up with that concept, 165 00:20:42,7 --> 00:20:54,69 so it's not generally obvious. We are not trying to go and to try to do the obvious science, it's uneven, 166 00:20:56,51 --> 00:21:02,87 untraditional, unorthodox combinations that we're trying to do. 167 00:21:02,87 --> 00:21:06,33 Speaker 1: And where did it all start for you? 168 00:21:06,33 --> 00:21:14,42 When did your passion for looking at nature, looking at it, where did it start? 169 00:21:14,42 --> 00:21:18,52 Speaker 2: I can't even remember, I think it was always there. 170 00:21:19,73 --> 00:21:33,32 I guess in some ways, there's a little bit of unpleasant beginning of all that when I was a child, 171 00:21:33,32 --> 00:21:35,06 when I was two years old. 172 00:21:35,06 --> 00:21:48,79 It all started when I went to kindergarten, and my nurse in the kindergarten by mistake, 173 00:21:49,18 --> 00:21:57,18 gave me triple dose of vaccine for anti-polio vaccine, at that time, vaccine was alive 174 00:21:57,93 --> 00:22:10,45 and I actually was paralyzed for a number of years. 175 00:22:10,98 --> 00:22:22,14 So when I was paralyzed, I was in the sanatorium, on the black sea and was exposed to shells, to waves, 176 00:22:22,47 --> 00:22:25,64 to black sea at that time. 177 00:22:25,64 --> 00:22:35,56 They were unpleasant times, but at the same time, it was the time when all the kids were running around and playing 178 00:22:35,56 --> 00:22:46,04 and I was in a chair and that was the beginning of looking, observing nature and loving it, really. 179 00:22:46,54 --> 00:22:55,92 Then in school, I guess that, so I was, winner of all the mathematical Olympias, 180 00:22:55,92 --> 00:23:01,91 so science was always something I wanted to do. 181 00:23:01,91 --> 00:23:14,8 It was never a question of which science, but I guess that my parents, who were very influential for me, 182 00:23:14,81 --> 00:23:22,48 we constantly had discussions and some fights between them, whether I would follow my dad's steps or my mom's steps, 183 00:23:24,65 --> 00:23:27,15 and I decided to combine both. 184 00:23:28,19 --> 00:23:34,65 My mom was a medical doctor, specifically interested in infectious diseases, 185 00:23:34,65 --> 00:23:46,98 and I do now a lot of work in making materials from medical devices that prevent infections that prevent bacteria to 186 00:23:46,98 --> 00:23:51,63 form, and my dad is a structural engineers. 187 00:23:51,63 --> 00:24:00,21 He always wanted me to be an engineer, and this combination is actually really interesting, and I guess that's, 188 00:24:00,21 --> 00:24:10,78 as I mentioned, I can track it back a time when I was three or four years old. 189 00:24:10,78 --> 00:24:15,99 Speaker 1: Yeah, and then looking at the shells when you were in this chair, 190 00:24:15,99 --> 00:24:22,82 in what way- that was the only thing you could, do of course. You could see the sea, you could smell the sea. 191 00:24:22,82 --> 00:24:25,54 Speaker 2: That's right. I'm sorry. 192 00:24:25,54 --> 00:24:39,74 What always interested me, and it's something that probably, I keep doing it 'til now, is pattern information. 193 00:24:39,74 --> 00:24:50,18 It's not only seashells, let's say, but the, how waves leave interesting signs on the sand. 194 00:24:50,66 --> 00:25:02,81 So these rhombii in the patterns left behind by the waves on the sand was my obsession for a very long time. 195 00:25:02,82 --> 00:25:11,04 So since I was most interested in mathematics as a student in school, 196 00:25:11,06 --> 00:25:21,94 I actually thought that I would be applied mathematician, but then I was convinced that by doing physical chemistry, 197 00:25:21,94 --> 00:25:28,51 I could still do a lot of mathematics, but I can also do physics, chemistry, and biology, 198 00:25:28,51 --> 00:25:39,69 and it was quite a convincing augment to get to the Moscow university to the chemistry department. 199 00:25:40,2 --> 00:25:51,15 So it's patterned information, how different features form and many things in my research, in particular, 200 00:25:51,15 --> 00:25:59,84 patterns in these photonic crystals, or patterns on this sponge, if you see, probably, 201 00:25:59,84 --> 00:26:02,92 that the patterns on this sponge are extremely- 202 00:26:02,92 --> 00:26:03,9 Speaker 1: Can you get it a bit closer for the camera? 203 00:26:03,9 --> 00:26:16,19 Speaker 2: So if you look at that, it's not living anymore, but it's a natural sponge, it's fully, this skeleton of it, 204 00:26:16,19 --> 00:26:25,64 it's fully made of glass, just like we make our buildings and our windows, but I hope, you see, 205 00:26:26,07 --> 00:26:32,31 that in addition to just beautiful glass architecture, it is still irregular. 206 00:26:32,86 --> 00:26:43,21 It has something like a chessboard structure, so there's one window and another one is closed, and it's, again, 207 00:26:43,72 --> 00:26:44,46 pattern. 208 00:26:44,47 --> 00:26:55,00 I was interested when I started to look at that, how this symmetry, that can arise from a living organism, 209 00:26:55,01 --> 00:27:01,08 how can it form a skeleton with such an incredible regularity. 210 00:27:01,09 --> 00:27:07,75 If you look here, there are also diagonal elements running through the sponge, 211 00:27:08,31 --> 00:27:13,62 and they're running exactly every four square. Every four square. 212 00:27:13,96 --> 00:27:25,98 Every second square, it has a dark square, so there's an incredible regularity, so the origin of these features, 213 00:27:25,98 --> 00:27:40,52 the origin of this order, is all within the, our status of how patterns, how interesting assembly works. 214 00:27:40,52 --> 00:27:47,2 Speaker 1: And what did you do with the information you got from this sponge? What did you apply with it? 215 00:27:47,2 --> 00:27:49,2 Did it allure you or what? 216 00:27:49,2 --> 00:28:02,27 Speaker 2: So this is, there's a couple of things that we are trying to do, hopefully, is to, 217 00:28:02,27 --> 00:28:03,58 what we do is we simplify this sponge design, so these are 3D printed, 218 00:28:03,58 --> 00:28:13,37 and this one has all the structural elements this sponge has. This one has a little bit less, this one. 219 00:28:13,56 --> 00:28:25,4 So we make different types of this structure to understand why nature ended up with this specific architecture to make 220 00:28:25,4 --> 00:28:29,84 the most mechanically strong material. 221 00:28:30,39 --> 00:28:42,61 So the lessons that we learn from that is how to make most mechanically strong glass that one can arrange from very 222 00:28:42,61 --> 00:28:44,27 small scale to very large scale. 223 00:28:44,73 --> 00:28:57,33 So then this sponge, in fact, I gave couple of lectures describing that if you look at this from every level, 224 00:28:57,4 --> 00:29:12,82 I can probably teach entire class of civil engineering, and everything we use in the design, laminated materials 225 00:29:16,08 --> 00:29:23,18 or fiber-enforced materials or cemented structures, everything. 226 00:29:23,18 --> 00:29:30,86 Every element that we use now is actually already used by this sponge. So it's a lot of interesting things. 227 00:29:30,86 --> 00:29:37,32 Whether it's additional features, in particular, hierarchy, how nature makes it from mammoth scale, 228 00:29:37,32 --> 00:29:45,1 up to this macroscopic scale to avoid corns that the sponge has in the sea. 229 00:29:45,57 --> 00:29:51,83 So there is a lot of interesting lessons, but again, there's lesson in multi-functionality. 230 00:29:53,06 --> 00:30:05,6 This is a skeleton, but it's also, in our opinion, designed to control and optimize three functions, at least. 231 00:30:05,72 --> 00:30:08,88 Which is, has to be strong, because it's skeleton, 232 00:30:08,88 --> 00:30:18,4 but it also- these are optical fibers that couple light into this structure, 233 00:30:18,41 --> 00:30:21,52 most of them I already removed from my research. 234 00:30:21,52 --> 00:30:30,96 So the structure has to act as a beacon in the sea, so how one can use glass to make optical fibers 235 00:30:30,96 --> 00:30:40,81 and also skeletons out of glass in natural conditions, not the two-thousand degree sea as we deal with glass, 236 00:30:40,81 --> 00:30:47,00 but in addition to that, sponge is a primitive organism, sponges breath 237 00:30:47,66 --> 00:30:55,31 and feed by pumping seawater through this openings. 238 00:30:55,31 --> 00:31:07,86 All these openings in its structure is for pumping seawater, then organic particles that are coming through this body, 239 00:31:08,4 --> 00:31:16,37 are uptaken and [inaudible 00:31:10] by this primitive, it's not even a- it's a multicellular organism, 240 00:31:16,38 --> 00:31:20,15 but it doesn't have organs, it's nothing, it's really primitive. 241 00:31:20,15 --> 00:31:29,7 However, it's able and combining optical properties, mechanical properties, and what we believe, the design, 242 00:31:29,7 --> 00:31:35,57 with this nice structure of opening one pore, closing another one, 243 00:31:36,18 --> 00:31:47,9 is heading served function to optimize fluidics so that it doesn't need to use too much energy to pump water through 244 00:31:47,9 --> 00:31:52,91 this structure so that some windows are open more than others. 245 00:31:52,91 --> 00:32:00,9 And in addition to that, I don't know how much you could see, but there are two white things inside, 246 00:32:00,9 --> 00:32:07,06 you can probably maybe can get it out, maybe. 247 00:32:07,06 --> 00:32:12,76 That's very sticky, so very difficult to get it out, maybe now you can see them better. 248 00:32:13,05 --> 00:32:23,61 This is part of the claw of a shrimp that lives inside the sponge. Symbiotically with the sponge, 249 00:32:23,61 --> 00:32:34,42 so we learn a lot about natural symbiotic life, of how to make mechanically strong materials, and optical fibers, 250 00:32:35,05 --> 00:32:47,28 and it's all designed for these shrimp to be protected from environments where nobody can catch them and eat them, 251 00:32:47,28 --> 00:32:54,75 but for shrimp to be able to eat, needs food, so how would the shrimp get the food? 252 00:32:55,32 --> 00:33:02,96 The optical fibers provide enough illumination so everything is attracted to light. 253 00:33:02,96 --> 00:33:06,55 I would come of that, there's always feast. 254 00:33:07,49 --> 00:33:12,09 So they have more than enough food, and the products of their life cycle, 255 00:33:12,1 --> 00:33:23,4 so all their excrements are used by sponge for its own feeding, so really interesting ideas. 256 00:33:23,41 --> 00:33:34,33 However, what if and we are thinking about it, but I'll know whether it would be, after all, the outcome of that, 257 00:33:34,33 --> 00:33:40,47 but what if we look at that and we think about a future building. 258 00:33:41,02 --> 00:33:49,89 So this building, this 3d printed version, has every structural element that this sponge has. 259 00:33:50,21 --> 00:33:53,87 This sponge is also a building because shrimp lives inside. 260 00:33:54,32 --> 00:34:03,56 But what if we would actually use the idea of energy saving ideas, the sponge has already evolved, 261 00:34:03,56 --> 00:34:10,61 which is in this case, to pump water through the system, but in this case, 262 00:34:10,62 --> 00:34:21,44 it could be a building where size of the openings of some of the windows would be opened for airflow for wind so that 263 00:34:21,44 --> 00:34:28,58 you could have the most efficient energy balance of the building, but at the same time, mechanically, 264 00:34:29,08 --> 00:34:36,12 it would have all of these diagonal elements, you can see the end, one open, one closed, so that mechanically, 265 00:34:36,77 --> 00:34:42,64 it's very strong, but it's actually, on top of that, aesthetically very pleasing. 266 00:34:42,65 --> 00:34:47,09 What if this building, this is lesson from sponge, 267 00:34:47,09 --> 00:34:55,78 but what if this building would also have lessons that we can take from butterflies 268 00:34:55,78 --> 00:35:05,87 and this building will change color due to the liquid coming through certain places and during rain, 269 00:35:07,3 --> 00:35:16,1 it would reveal certain messages and you would see a dynamic color change as natural conditions change. 270 00:35:16,11 --> 00:35:20,34 Or the windows, yet another project that we like, 271 00:35:20,64 --> 00:35:30,74 would have this ability to control the light intensity so we really think about as not anywhere close yet, 272 00:35:30,74 --> 00:35:44,05 but we think about building, that's why I'm probably coughing, because it's so far away, 273 00:35:44,05 --> 00:35:47,3 but it's difficult to imagine that we're anywhere close, 274 00:35:47,3 --> 00:35:56,46 but what if our future would be materials that combine smart solutions from completely different organisms, 275 00:35:56,46 --> 00:35:59,93 and that gives us environments, materials, 276 00:35:59,93 --> 00:36:14,9 and entire architecture that is capable of most efficient way control airflow, to control resistance of ice formation, 277 00:36:15,31 --> 00:36:26,69 to control optical properties, reconfigure, change depending on which side it is. 278 00:36:26,99 --> 00:36:34,65 Depending on what part of the world this building is going to be built in. 279 00:36:34,98 --> 00:36:46,37 So that's, if I were to dream big, this is what I hope we can make this building out of interesting puzzles 280 00:36:46,37 --> 00:36:56,59 and interesting ideas that nature has created and nature has evolved and probably waiting for us to uncover. 281 00:36:56,59 --> 00:36:59,25 Speaker 1: When did you discover this sponge? 282 00:36:59,25 --> 00:37:00,59 Speaker 2: Sponge, um- 283 00:37:00,59 --> 00:37:02,92 Speaker 1: How did you find it? 284 00:37:02,92 --> 00:37:11,8 Speaker 2: So, it's, I was very interested in sponges long time ago 285 00:37:11,8 --> 00:37:22,00 when I was a student in the Weizmann Institute. Should I- where do you want me to hold it? 286 00:37:22,00 --> 00:37:28,74 Speaker 3: You can come as close as you want to the camera, it's nice for me. Yup, okay. 287 00:37:28,74 --> 00:37:29,36 Speaker 2: Okay. 288 00:37:29,36 --> 00:37:31,62 Speaker 1: So the glass fiber, how does that work? 289 00:37:31,62 --> 00:37:39,27 Speaker 2: So this sponge, when it's alive, it's coated with a thin layer of brownish cells, 290 00:37:39,58 --> 00:37:49,17 but all these windows are actually open for bumping water through it, but it's attached to ocean floor right here, 291 00:37:49,17 --> 00:37:55,25 what is called holdfast apparatus, but it has multiple function. 292 00:37:55,25 --> 00:38:04,00 So not only holds it inside the floor, but at the end of each of these fibers, so these are optical fibers. 293 00:38:04,00 --> 00:38:10,64 There's a crown of optical fibers surrounding this bunch, just this crown is, 294 00:38:11,39 --> 00:38:23,13 has the wavelengths of light associated with the bioluminescent material that lives in the ocean floor, 295 00:38:23,53 --> 00:38:28,76 and the light produced by this bacteria is coupled into these fibers 296 00:38:29,46 --> 00:38:34,13 and it shines really similar to these fiber-optical lens. 297 00:38:34,13 --> 00:38:39,13 Speaker 1: Can you take it, 'cause I can't go there with my camera. 298 00:38:39,13 --> 00:38:47,96 Speaker 2: A lot coming from bacterias, coupled to these lenses, and the end of each of these, of this fiber, 299 00:38:48,64 --> 00:39:00,33 there is a lens for efficient coupling of light, and it shines very similar to these optical fibers that we all know 300 00:39:00,33 --> 00:39:08,74 and we think that we invented fiberoptics just 60 years ago or so, but in fact, 301 00:39:09,19 --> 00:39:16,09 this is one of the oldest organisms that exist and they knew how to make fiber-optical things back then, 302 00:39:17,39 --> 00:39:27,86 so it's really the same principle, is the structure of these fibers would have a higher index core 303 00:39:28,12 --> 00:39:35,83 and lower index cladding, and the signal goes through the center of the fiber and shines at the end. 304 00:39:35,99 --> 00:39:42,23 It actually shines many places, because it actually shines almost like Christmas tree, 305 00:39:42,52 --> 00:39:56,93 because it has major point where light coming off is on the tip that some of these fibers have branches,. 306 00:39:49,58 --> 00:39:56,71 and these also highlight it due to the out-coupling of light in these [rotations 00:39:56] 307 00:39:56,93 --> 00:39:58,28 Speaker 1: 'Cause it's very deep. 308 00:39:58,28 --> 00:40:01,11 Speaker 2: It's deeper in the ocean, there is no sunlight there, 309 00:40:01,44 --> 00:40:07,07 so the only light that is coming are from the ocean floor. 310 00:40:07,07 --> 00:40:16,4 Now maybe you could see, I hope you could see, one second, there are two, here's inside this sponge, 311 00:40:16,4 --> 00:40:28,93 these two wide things. If you see them, if you can focus on them, or I can try to wiggle them around. 312 00:40:28,93 --> 00:40:35,16 These are claws of the shrimp that lives inside. 313 00:40:35,83 --> 00:40:45,22 So one may say that, compared to shrimp that is freely swimming, it is a disadvantage because they cannot swim 314 00:40:45,22 --> 00:40:50,33 and find food, but it's actually an advantage. 315 00:40:50,55 --> 00:40:58,04 First advantage is pretty much nothing can crunch this extremely strong material, so the mechanic will protect it. 316 00:40:58,04 --> 00:41:09,89 There is no enemies, really, for the shrimp. They may want to, but they cannot crash the glass. 317 00:41:10,54 --> 00:41:22,64 Now food comes from the fact that this is, as a fiber-optical lamp, it's enough light in this area, 318 00:41:22,64 --> 00:41:27,97 in the ocean so that anything living is always attracted to light, 319 00:41:28,53 --> 00:41:38,35 and the density of food that the shrimp can eat is pretty high, and in this way, 320 00:41:38,51 --> 00:41:52,8 it is a nice combination of symbiotic life between bioluminescent material, sponge, and the shrimp that lives inside 321 00:41:52,81 --> 00:42:03,06 and none of them alone would be able to survive especially in the conditions where there is almost no light 322 00:42:03,5 --> 00:42:10,16 and food is really depleted as you go deeper and deeper in the ocean, 323 00:42:10,16 --> 00:42:14,00 but together it produces a very interesting system. 324 00:42:14,7 --> 00:42:23,75 So that's how we think about new materials, new designs of combining things together 325 00:42:23,75 --> 00:42:38,36 and thinking how different organisms can teach us something that current materials or current devices don't use yet.. 326 00:42:34,29 --> 00:42:38,02 Just because it's, you see how- [inaudible 00:42:40] 327 00:42:38,36 --> 00:42:50,42 I wouldn't recommend fetching this to you up close because it would immediately attack. 328 00:42:50,42 --> 00:43:00,21 It's amazing, it's another feature, it has an incredible ability better than velcro to attach anything. 329 00:43:00,21 --> 00:43:06,00 Speaker 1: So could you, you have three labs. 330 00:43:06,00 --> 00:43:12,52 Speaker 2: Yes. I have one lab in three different locations. 331 00:43:12,52 --> 00:43:18,84 Speaker 1: Okay, and when you describe the three different locations, what are the differences? 332 00:43:18,84 --> 00:43:27,75 Speaker 2: So the difference really, I would still probably prefer everything to be in one location, 333 00:43:28,09 --> 00:43:34,94 so that people talk to shells, that even a lot, we almost have a lot of activities together. 334 00:43:35,37 --> 00:43:43,86 In some ways, it's divided by topics, maybe. 335 00:43:43,86 --> 00:43:57,28 Not many topics, but generally speaking, I would say in my lab, the lab that is here in the engineering building, 336 00:43:57,28 --> 00:44:07,25 there's a lot of projects that are related to dynamic materials to self-assembly to making colorful materials, 337 00:44:07,85 --> 00:44:20,42 responsive materials, and it has a lot of work with more than pigments, optical devices, and so on. 338 00:44:20,63 --> 00:44:33,95 It's one lab, thinking about the ways one can, for example, just another paper that was on the cover of a journal, 339 00:44:34,38 --> 00:44:40,21 How to Make Materials Assemble, absolutely interesting patterns. 340 00:44:40,21 --> 00:44:52,07 So that is in one lab, and it's very generally described, I would say, as self-assembly and dynamic response materials, 341 00:44:52,07 --> 00:44:54,94 a lot of synthesis is done in this lab. 342 00:44:54,94 --> 00:45:08,48 My, another lab is doing a lot of research in filing materials, but specifically, more biological materials, 343 00:45:08,48 --> 00:45:15,03 so using pitcher plant as an inspiration to make materials that repel ice, 344 00:45:15,03 --> 00:45:28,14 materials that can be used in heat exchanges, prevent fouling, generally, but it's a lot of studies of what is it, 345 00:45:28,14 --> 00:45:33,74 why they people like that, what would be the fundamental science and physical 346 00:45:33,74 --> 00:45:44,54 and chemical principles to understand which one should do, talk to my stem, where does performance come from, 347 00:45:44,54 --> 00:45:56,06 and it's really fluidics and materials' characterization related to wetting phenomenon. 348 00:45:56,06 --> 00:46:05,8 Will these surfaces, will these structures that may be wet by different media. 349 00:46:05,8 --> 00:46:15,31 And the third lab is somewhat related to second, but it's more on biological fouling. 350 00:46:15,89 --> 00:46:24,02 So not necessarily fouling, it would be a wrong thing to say fouling. I would say by a, NANA interfaces. 351 00:46:24,02 --> 00:46:36,61 So in some cases, we want to repel things, for example, we want to repel bacteria, we want to repel mussels 352 00:46:37,27 --> 00:46:42,59 and barnacles from ships in the ocean, but in other cases, 353 00:46:42,59 --> 00:46:50,6 it could be to create materials on which we can harvest algae for [anaegic 00:46:48] production, but it's again, 354 00:46:50,6 --> 00:46:53,5 there's a lot of questions one can ask. 355 00:46:54,06 --> 00:46:57,7 One you need to harvest them so they feel comfortable, 356 00:46:57,7 --> 00:47:07,3 but then you need to have ways to release them from the structures and surfaces that are used for their production, 357 00:47:07,3 --> 00:47:16,81 so the third lab is mostly related to growing bacterial cultures, growing algae in the laboratory solutions, 358 00:47:16,81 --> 00:47:26,9 laboratory conditions, and identifying the structure, how they interact with materials that we make 359 00:47:26,9 --> 00:47:35,00 and to really come up with recipes for different applications. 360 00:47:35,00 --> 00:47:43,23 So one can say that we have a general approach that we learned from the pitcher plant. 361 00:47:43,85 --> 00:47:46,92 It's what's called platform technology. 362 00:47:47,66 --> 00:47:53,68 I's really, there are parts of that that can be combined in different ways, 363 00:47:54,07 --> 00:48:01,67 depending whether you want to do it on glass or on metal, and depending whether you want to repel marine things, 364 00:48:02,2 --> 00:48:11,04 we want to repel ice so one can use it as a system design with different components depending what you want to do 365 00:48:11,04 --> 00:48:28,08 and we study a lot, how different combinations of materials together give the best outcome for specific target.. 366 00:48:22,5 --> 00:48:28,42 Speaker 1: It's so strange that we, you, or other scientists .. [inaudible 00:48:29] 367 00:48:28,42 --> 00:48:31,75 Speaker 2: Oh my god, you are very sensitive. 368 00:48:31,75 --> 00:48:43,68 Speaker 3: His microphone is sensitive. I'm less sensitive. 369 00:48:43,68 --> 00:48:47,05 Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting, a cough, but it's, a lot of it's a real endurement. There are cars. 370 00:48:47,05 --> 00:48:51,71 Speaker 1: But it's so strange, when you look for metal, that metal and corrosion. 371 00:48:51,71 --> 00:48:56,93 Speaker 2: There's some things, obviously. Now I'm becoming sensitive. 372 00:48:56,93 --> 00:48:59,81 Speaker 3: We're almost done here. That's good, that's good. 373 00:48:59,81 --> 00:49:04,02 Speaker 1: They're like metal and corrosion which we accepted for tens of, hundreds of years or more, 374 00:49:04,19 --> 00:49:17,54 that you've found this material that you could prove only that it changes. 375 00:49:17,54 --> 00:49:19,89 It's so strange that now we are finding these and not earlier. 376 00:49:19,89 --> 00:49:27,66 Speaker 2: That's true, but I think that we will make a lot of interesting, we as a science in general, 377 00:49:27,87 --> 00:49:30,14 and not talking about my lab only. 378 00:49:30,14 --> 00:49:38,35 If we open our eyes and think in the very non-traditional terms about what we can learn from nature, 379 00:49:38,35 --> 00:49:44,92 we can suddenly realize there are many interesting solutions that we have no idea exist, 380 00:49:44,92 --> 00:49:48,91 and many of them in fact are extremely simple. 381 00:49:48,91 --> 00:49:59,88 In particular, the pitcher plant idea is very simple, but it is counter-intuitive, so if we talk about it and 382 00:49:59,88 --> 00:50:06,63 when I'm trying to explain the system, when I say it's counter-intuitive, 383 00:50:07,25 --> 00:50:17,86 because everything is against the rules that are commonly used in current technologies and well-established rules. 384 00:50:18,59 --> 00:50:33,46 For example, if we think about how to make a material that has as little friction as possible, so the way we do it now, 385 00:50:33,46 --> 00:50:34,51 we polish everything. 386 00:50:34,51 --> 00:50:43,87 We polish so that the surface has a minimum number of defects, because every defects produces friction. 387 00:50:44,5 --> 00:50:51,49 So if we talk about pipes, everything is polished, because otherwise they would create turbulence 388 00:50:51,49 --> 00:50:54,56 when we transport oil or water. 389 00:50:55,8 --> 00:51:05,16 If anywhere else, if we think about the materials that need to get to lowest friction as possible, 390 00:51:05,16 --> 00:51:06,76 we need to get rid of roughness. 391 00:51:07,26 --> 00:51:16,55 Now what pitcher plant is doing is that it actually creates an extremely rough surface. 392 00:51:16,55 --> 00:51:21,53 It is extremely structured surface, which by all laws of physics, 393 00:51:21,93 --> 00:51:31,42 is supposed to be extremely bad if you wanted to produce friction for your material. 394 00:51:31,78 --> 00:51:38,01 However, it is high friction when it's dry, so that ants 395 00:51:38,01 --> 00:51:47,64 or insects are capable of moving around on the surface of this pitcher plant, on a dry day, 396 00:51:48,18 --> 00:51:54,42 being hap- having no idea what may happen when there is rain, but what happens 397 00:51:54,42 --> 00:52:04,7 when there is rain is that this structured surface picks up water because it's hydrophilic, it likes water, 398 00:52:04,7 --> 00:52:16,06 and by picking up water, it creates layer over layer of a liquid that is trapped inside the structure solid. 399 00:52:16,76 --> 00:52:26,49 The outcome of that that you have a structured material, a rough material, but the roughness has a second role. 400 00:52:26,83 --> 00:52:37,71 Its role is to hold water, and at the end, what insects would experience is not the rough surface, 401 00:52:38,21 --> 00:52:47,66 you use rough surface to create ultra smooth surface because your final outcome is the surface of water, 402 00:52:48,28 --> 00:52:50,09 and liquid has no defects. 403 00:52:51,16 --> 00:52:58,83 So that's why I'm saying it's counterintuitive, because we use roughness to get rid of roughness in a way, 404 00:52:59,43 --> 00:53:08,7 and also we use liquid as a material. There is not that many places where liquid can be considered as a material. 405 00:53:09,05 --> 00:53:18,91 It could be used, let's say in 3d printing or anywhere else, to make something out of it, 406 00:53:18,91 --> 00:53:30,33 but the final outcome is a solid. So materials are solids. In this case, liquid is part of it. 407 00:53:30,33 --> 00:53:39,73 Together with solid, it makes a new concept. Liquid alone doesn't do it, solid alone doesn't do it. 408 00:53:40,23 --> 00:53:44,44 But combining these together gives an interesting outcome 409 00:53:44,88 --> 00:53:50,35 and that's why I'm saying it's counterintuitive because we use roughness to get rid of roughness, 410 00:53:50,7 --> 00:54:03,84 and we use liquids stored in a way inside structured surfaces that hold it nicely inside to take advantage of liquids 411 00:54:03,84 --> 00:54:08,00 that otherwise cannot be shaped, cannot, they won't run away. 412 00:54:08,00 --> 00:54:14,85 But now they're inside your material, and they lend the material with its properties. 413 00:54:16,82 --> 00:54:24,51 So this is brittle star, used to have five arms, I just removed one arm for analysis. 414 00:54:24,51 --> 00:54:29,59 So it changes color, not all brittle stars do that but this species does, and during the day it's black. 415 00:54:32,1 --> 00:54:43,5 And the reason it's black during the day is that it has lenses on its surface that regulate the light intensity 416 00:54:43,53 --> 00:54:52,97 depending how much light outside and the receptors under the lens can work only in certain range. 417 00:54:52,97 --> 00:54:58,82 So when it's too bright, they cover the lens with a black pigment 418 00:54:58,82 --> 00:55:05,75 and therefore the entire organism changes color to black, and at night, when actually they are active species, 419 00:55:05,75 --> 00:55:16,01 they are doing everything at night, when it's not enough light, they withdraw the pigment back into the structure, 420 00:55:16,28 --> 00:55:20,14 opening the lenses for more efficient collection of light, 421 00:55:20,15 --> 00:55:29,09 so the color change here is due to the dynamic nature of bringing a liquid in, in this case, pigment, 422 00:55:29,41 --> 00:55:31,41 and then withdrawing it back. 423 00:55:31,41 --> 00:55:40,54 So the idea of bringing liquids in into materials is now a very common theme in many of my projects 424 00:55:40,54 --> 00:55:49,28 and some of them are completely unrelated but it's thinking about liquids in and on materials. 425 00:55:49,28 --> 00:55:57,56 Speaker 1: One question about that brittle fish- why is it during the day, why black and not white, I should say. 426 00:55:57,56 --> 00:56:06,71 Speaker 2: So it's not mimicry, it's not mimicking the environment, and in fact, this is what the beginning, 427 00:56:07,03 --> 00:56:13,96 biological literature was using this as another example of mimicking the environment 428 00:56:13,96 --> 00:56:21,05 and changing the color accordingly. It's actually opposite of what you would expect, and that was a big mistake. 429 00:56:21,05 --> 00:56:26,22 That was what attracted me to this topic, is it's not hiding. 430 00:56:27,35 --> 00:56:32,85 Because it's just being even better seen during the day, and even more so during the night. 431 00:56:32,85 --> 00:56:42,84 The function here is to optimize light collection and therefore during night, you want to get rid of pigment, 432 00:56:42,84 --> 00:56:48,67 and during the day, you want to screen your lenses from excessive light. 433 00:56:48,68 --> 00:56:57,12 So it's not mimicking the color of the environment, it's optimizing its technology, which is in this case, 434 00:56:57,12 --> 00:56:57,85 dynamic lenses. 435 00:56:57,85 --> 00:57:02,02 Speaker 1: That's exactly what you are doing, and biologists is not [inaudible 00:57:02] 436 00:57:02,02 --> 00:57:11,49 Speaker 2: That's correct, so biologists always look for common, they are comfortable, terminology that they used to, 437 00:57:11,88 --> 00:57:17,96 suddenly to tell the story, but no, the entire color change has a completely different function, 438 00:57:18,4 --> 00:57:26,2 and it's to optimize and improve the performance of optical elements, and it's optics, it's not on the skeleton, 439 00:57:26,52 --> 00:57:36,93 and overall thinking that skeleton can also be an optical element is really interesting idea. 440 00:57:36,94 --> 00:57:42,01 Think about buildings that, of course, mechanically strong, 441 00:57:42,2 --> 00:57:52,62 but also have built-in optical structure so the same construction is actually its own optical element that collects 442 00:57:52,62 --> 00:57:58,13 light or reflects light, so it's pretty interesting. 443 00:57:58,13 --> 00:57:58,58 Speaker 1: Yeah. 444 00:57:58,58 --> 00:58:04,94 Sort of the difference between you and a biologist is that when you look at the animals and the organisms, 445 00:58:04,94 --> 00:58:09,99 you look at the characteristics or the functions? 446 00:58:09,99 --> 00:58:18,33 Speaker 2: I say I look more for, if I may say, high-tech properties. 447 00:58:18,33 --> 00:58:23,36 If it's, I'm less interested, 448 00:58:23,36 --> 00:58:32,32 although it's extremely important to understand what are the specific cellular mechanisms that are involved in making 449 00:58:32,32 --> 00:58:39,74 the specific biological structures or what is the biological cell or biology or proteins 450 00:58:39,74 --> 00:58:48,55 or polysaccharides that are involved in these functions. I am more interested in technology. 451 00:58:48,55 --> 00:58:59,78 I'm more interested in devices that became an outcome of the evolution that performed high-tech function, 452 00:58:59,78 --> 00:59:07,46 so I'm interested in mechanics, I'm interested in optics, and I'm interest- but optics beyond eyes. 453 00:59:07,46 --> 00:59:14,66 We're not all about our eyes because we need to know about it, but other interesting optical solutions, 454 00:59:14,67 --> 00:59:21,38 and I'm looking for magnetic structures in nature, how nature makes magnetic materials that are different from us, 455 00:59:21,38 --> 00:59:28,1 so it's really, I would say technical characteristics of biological materials. 456 00:59:28,1 --> 00:59:35,36 Speaker 1: When you look in near future, where are we humans with our technological brain 457 00:59:35,36 --> 00:59:39,54 and technological possibility, where are we going to? 458 00:59:39,54 --> 00:59:43,37 Speaker 2: That's a tough question. 459 00:59:43,37 --> 00:59:50,49 I'm not sure I can say where we're going, I can tell you what I feel would be very important 460 00:59:50,49 --> 01:00:00,67 and what I feel really interesting and which area would be to create technologies, 461 01:00:00,67 --> 01:00:05,89 materials that have the ability to self-assemble, self-assemble, 462 01:00:05,89 --> 01:00:17,66 it uses environment as a trigger for behavioral changes, not to overuse energies, 463 01:00:17,67 --> 01:00:26,32 every time everything is run by hinges, by chain you switch on and off, they may have and this is what organisms do 464 01:00:26,32 --> 01:00:29,05 and I hope the future might be, 465 01:00:29,28 --> 01:00:40,84 to create a range of interesting materials that know how to switch behavior from letting sun in or not, from being, 466 01:00:43,97 --> 01:00:53,04 from accepting water to repelling water. Because in some cases, one is too dry, you really want the water to come in. 467 01:00:53,04 --> 01:00:59,11 You want the building to breathe, but when it's extremely wet, and there's rain every day, 468 01:00:59,58 --> 01:01:01,3 you actually want to repel it, 469 01:01:01,3 --> 01:01:09,51 so how can one create the same material that will change its own function in response to what happens outside? 470 01:01:09,52 --> 01:01:13,23 I think this is the future, it might take on the future. 471 01:01:13,23 --> 01:01:16,42 Speaker 1: Our program is cool to the mind of the universe, 472 01:01:16,42 --> 01:01:27,44 the idea that it's our barriers in accessibility to knowledge are going down through the internet where you're born 473 01:01:27,44 --> 01:01:29,54 and you can learn everything about quantum mechanics. 474 01:01:29,54 --> 01:01:34,78 What do you think about that, have we somehow created cognosphere around our biosphere? 475 01:01:34,78 --> 01:01:41,02 Speaker 2: That's a difficult question. 476 01:01:41,02 --> 01:01:50,51 I watch my grandson, he's almost six years old, but even when he was two, 477 01:01:50,51 --> 01:01:57,93 he was already trying to look on the cellphone and he knew how to move things around and that you, 478 01:01:57,93 --> 01:02:04,54 and he at certain moment, he came to our TV and was trying to open window on the TV and TV was, 479 01:02:04,54 --> 01:02:10,78 he was so surprised that it's not doing it, so there are problems, 480 01:02:10,78 --> 01:02:18,63 maybe with the fact that you don't even need to learn anything, you can have access to any information, 481 01:02:18,63 --> 01:02:20,63 any moment you want it. 482 01:02:20,63 --> 01:02:32,65 However, at the same time, I still hope that there is something that these days, is easier to do than before, 483 01:02:33,03 --> 01:02:44,67 and I hope that we will benefit from that and this is multidisciplinarity, in a way. 484 01:02:44,86 --> 01:02:48,21 So I'm physical chemist by training. 485 01:02:48,21 --> 01:02:55,5 Not an engineer, I'm not a biologist, I'm not a medical doctor, so then I'm a physical chemist. 486 01:02:55,73 --> 01:03:04,69 However, I do a lot of physics, math, architecture and biology and medicine research. 487 01:03:05,08 --> 01:03:07,11 Why that is possible, 488 01:03:07,56 --> 01:03:18,56 is that I feel that none of these disciplines alone are capable of addressing tomorrow's questions adequately, 489 01:03:19,79 --> 01:03:25,23 or have the tools to do it in the most efficient way. 490 01:03:25,65 --> 01:03:39,8 So I feel that when I combine in my group, I try to bring mathematicians, physicists, chemists, medical doctors 491 01:03:40,29 --> 01:03:51,38 and designers together, the goal for that is to think about the way these people would address science in unusual ways. 492 01:03:51,55 --> 01:03:56,29 Just to give you a very simple demonstration of that, 493 01:03:57,81 --> 01:04:08,89 if one wants to describe why this butterfly has these beautiful colors, actually, you pretty much need to know optics. 494 01:04:09,63 --> 01:04:16,05 Physics and optics alone will describe what is happening for this butterfly. 495 01:04:16,33 --> 01:04:25,23 However, all our technological changes, all the improvements that we had, were due to the fact that- okay, 496 01:04:25,23 --> 01:04:26,56 we understand optics. 497 01:04:26,56 --> 01:04:37,33 But what if I now use my chemistry knowledge and I encrypt chemical information inside this structure? 498 01:04:37,8 --> 01:04:44,84 What if now, this optical device would have different chemistries in different locations. 499 01:04:44,98 --> 01:04:51,54 So without chemistry, pretty much anything that we've done with this material, would be absolutely impossible. 500 01:04:51,54 --> 01:05:01,54 Suddenly, chemistry gave a nice spread of applications and possibilities that optics, physics alone couldn't do. 501 01:05:01,54 --> 01:05:09,84 Chemistry alone also couldn't do it, so chemistry with physics, with optics, gave an interesting outcome, 502 01:05:09,84 --> 01:05:15,82 but then yet another area, having a fluid mechanicist in my group, 503 01:05:17,52 --> 01:05:27,96 brought the ideas of how liquids would infiltrate these structures, can move around in interesting ways, 504 01:05:27,96 --> 01:05:39,47 and in this way to create interesting unusual changes in color in response to environment, so in my opinion, 505 01:05:39,97 --> 01:05:52,2 it's very important for kids, for our future, still have very clearly depth in some traditional disciplines. 506 01:05:52,2 --> 01:06:02,5 I would, if I were now to have a high school student choosing what to do, I would say, 507 01:06:02,5 --> 01:06:10,44 begin with choosing one discipline that you will learn very deeply as your first degree. 508 01:06:10,44 --> 01:06:18,25 But then, especially for those who are interested in science and will stay in science, I as a PhD, work 509 01:06:18,25 --> 01:06:24,07 or I would then create teams of different backgrounds coming together 510 01:06:24,07 --> 01:06:29,54 and learning something from another community that you alone wouldn't know otherwise, 511 01:06:29,55 --> 01:06:42,39 so this bringing together expertise, is, I think, the future, and I hope that we will see more and more papers 512 01:06:42,39 --> 01:06:52,74 and technologies that were a clear outcome of multiple disciplines contributing to the aural design.