101741 news 1266195600 1475896273 Drs. Bert Bras (Mechanical Engineering) and Marc Weissburg (Biology) were recently award a 3 year grant to examine how the application of ecological principles leads to more sustainable resource networks in industries that exchange goods and services. The research collaboration will identify properties of ecological networks (such as food webs) that can be applied to networks of co-dependent industries, determine whether existing industrial networks are organized in ways similar to ecological ones, and examine whether industrial networks that incorporate features of their ecological counterparts function more efficiently and produce lower environmental burdens than current organizational schemes. A major goal is to examine how ecological principles may allow for the construction of future industrial symbioses to result in sustainable closed loop industrial network design. Dr. Bras is the head of the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Program and member of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design at Georgia Tech. Marc Weissburg is co-director and founding member of the Center for Biologically-inspired Design (www.cbid.gatech.edu). This novel engineering-biology effort will involve substantial student collaboration and co-advisement, and was funded by the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems Division of NSF.

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