Seminar on Designing with Nature, Building with Intelligence

University of California, Berkeley, United States

This seminar will be chaired by A/P Huang Changjin.

Future engineering systems, from autonomous aerial vehicles to infrastructure operating in harsh environments, must satisfy increasingly demanding and often competing requirements, including noise reduction, electromagnetic interference shielding, environmental resilience, payload maximisation, and reduced weight. This talk will present how our group integrates biological design principles, architected materials, machine intelligence, and additive manufacturing to address these challenges. First, we will discuss bioinspired aeroacoustic design, in which a three-dimensional sinusoidal-serration drone propeller inspired by owl feathers and cicada wings enables quieter flight while improving propulsive efficiency. Next, we will highlight advances in engineered electromagnetic materials, where mechanical metamaterial lattices and chameleon-inspired reconfigurable architectures provide lightweight, load-bearing electromagnetic interference shielding with switchable absorption and transmission. Finally, we will explore intelligent additive manufacturing, where computer vision and deep learning detect and correct fused filament fabrication anomalies in real time, enabling robust and adaptive manufacturing beyond controlled laboratory environments. Together, these advances demonstrate a new paradigm in which geometry, intelligence, and manufacturing co-evolve to accelerate the development of next-generation multifunctional systems.