Modern armor

Millions of athletes worldwide will sustain hundreds to thousands of blows to the head every year. Exposure to these repetitive head impacts have been linked to later-life mood disorders, behavioral disturbances, and neurodegenerative disease in retired athletes, but surprisingly little is known about how or why. This talk will describe what advanced neuroimaging can tell us about the physiological mechanisms of how head impacts affect brain tissue, and their implications on brain health and overall safety of athletes.

Survival in nature is a tough business - regardless of whether you are a human, a rabbit or a sunflower. The basic idea of biomimetics is that evolution has come up with many solutions to problems that organisms face in nature, and which can also help us to better deal with challenges we have in our technological world. Less energy consumption? Better solar panels? Intelligent routing of Amazon delivery trucks? We will look at various fields where technology has already profited from biomimetic approaches, and others where such profit might lie in the future.