Stephen Howe
Title: Former Biomimicry Fellow
Dept/Program: Biology
Email: sph43@zips.uakron.edu
Biography
My name is Stephen Howe, I was born and raised in California obtained my bachelors degree in biology on the ecology evolution and natural history track from Westmont College in sunny Santa Barbara CA. I am now part of the University’s Biomimicry fellowship program. I will be working with Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems, and am currently part of the Niewiarowski lab in the Biology department. I am excited to be part of this growing community of bio-inspired colleagues as we seek to integrate sustainable biologically inspired design into each of our respective fields. I am interested in a couple of different research areas. My primary and enduring interest is understanding how organisms move through fluids, both aquatic and atmospheric. I am interested in understanding different methods animals use to maneuver through fluids quickly and efficiently. As well as understanding tradeoffs between drag reduction and other traits such as internal volume constraints. I can imagine I will be looking at some of the classic models of fluid movers like dolphins sharks and tuna, but I am also interested in some of the oddball organisms that don't fit the conventional understanding of what makes a "good" aquatic organism. In this vein of research I would hope to develop several different biologically inspired technological solutions to propulsion, maneuvering in fluids, and controlling speed. My second area of interest is behavior. I am interested in some of the emergent behaviors of groups of organisms and how those collective behaviors are mediated by information exchange between individuals. This includes everything from modeling group motion, understanding response patterns to different disturbances, and how these action patterns are transmitted between individuals. In this area I could imagine my dissertation focusing on developing more complex swarm algorithms and or developing inter-vehicular networks and sensors to help groups of automobiles efficiently coordinate movements on the motorway. I figure that these two research fields will not be mutually exclude one another in a dissertation. I selected the I.B. program for my PhD precisely for the integration. I have found that my talents and interests are not confined to the field of biology, I have come to call myself a biologist with design and engineering tendencies. I feel that as the boundaries of science expand we find that the classical boundaries between disciplines are overlapping and it is no longer sufficient to simply be a biologist, or a chemist, or a physicist. As the complexity of the issues we face mount so must we expand our minds to function at an interdisciplinary level.
Education
2015: BS Biology, Westmont College