News

Many congratulations to Baowen Zhang for winning the JMBC Gallery of Fluid Motion prize! Baowen captured high-speed videos of cuttlefish and biomimetic suction cups failing due to the nucleation and growth of air bubbles. The bubbles cause catastrophic leakage that may even damage biological tissues.

The 4th International Workshop on Insect Bio-Inspired Technologies took place on 19-20 May 2025 with great success! The workshop featured 15 invited speakers, 2 keynote lectures, and 5 talks and 16 posters from junior researchers (PhDs and postdocs). We look forward to the next workshop at Dresden in 2027!

On 28 May 2025, Mila Krikke (BSc student) won the 2nd place poster prize at the NWO Life conference! Mila developed a new polymer material to simulate animal tissue, and obtained the first in vivo evidence of the sucker ring teeth of cuttlefish penetrating tissue during tentacle strikes.

Many congratulations to Severin te Lindert for winning the Art of Life Visualization prize at NWO Life 2024! Severin captured a beautiful 3D picture of the microstructures on the rim of a cuttlefish sucker using scanning electron microscopy.

On 23 May 2024, Alexander Koehnsen won the 2nd place poster prize at the NWO Life conference! Alex presented on the new experimental setup he developed to study the tentacle strikes of cuttlefish using high-speed videography.

We are pleased to announce the 4th International Workshop on Insect Bio-Inspired Technologies being hosted in Wageningen, NL on 19-20 May 2025! Please check this website for more information, registration, and abstract submission (oral presentation or poster): https://insect-bioinspired-wageningen-2025.org/ Students (BSc and MSc) can attend for free! Please contact me if…

We aim to develop Loam Walls with Algorithmically generated 3d Natural Fibre Reinforcement (AlgoLoam), as the first completely biodegradable, made of exclusively natural materials, self-supporting reinforced light loam wall solution, totally or partially prefabricated. AlgoLoam will be developed by an interdisciplinary team of architects, material scientists, textile technology experts, biomimetics…

Hair, or hair-like fibrillar structures, are ubiquitous in biology, from fur on the bodies of mammals, over trichomes of plants, to the mastigonemes on the flagella of single-celled organisms. While these long and slender protuberances are passive, they are multifunctional and help to mediate interactions with the environment. They provide…

Scientific progress within the last few decades has revealed the functional morphology of an insect's sticky footpads—a compliant pad that secretes thin liquid films. However, the physico-chemical mechanisms underlying their adhesion remain elusive. Here, we explore these underlying mechanisms by simultaneously measuring adhesive force and contact geometry of the adhesive…