FAQ ‘Blogionik’… or: introducing our blog!

The name of our blog combines two words: Blog & Bionik … and this is exactly what we are planning to do: to blog about Bionik! ‘Bionik’ itself is also a combination of two (german) words: Biologie & Technik – and what this actually means will also be discussed in this article. But before we go there, we have some more important points on our agenda: we would like to introduce ourselves to you and point out our motivations. Why is the field of Bionik worth blogging about? What will you actually be able to read here? Kindly find a short ‘FAQ’ list below, which will hopefully give you some insights in what’s awaiting you on www.blogionik.org

 

Who we are

If you have a glimpse at our introductions you might find out that the four of us do not have very much in common in our vitas. Our only obvious link is the Master program ‘Bionik/ Biomimetics in Energy Systems’, which we all attended from 2012-2014 at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Villach/ Austria. We came from different fields of science and from different stages in our lives to complement our education with the young, innovative and exciting subject of ‘Bionik/ Biomimetics’. Besides studying together for two years we got to know each other well, became friends and learned to cooperate and work together very efficiently (and to have fun doing it)! Therefore we decided to keep up our ‘work symbiosis after finishing our studies in 2014 via this blog – a cooperative project of us to share and spread our ideas and thoughts about Biomimetics and infect you with our fascination of this subject!

 

What we do

You can read about what the four of us do in our daily lives in our introductions , but what do we want to do in this blog? We have to admit at this point, that for now we can only speculate about this. We have plans and intentions … but where we are going to end up once we start to fill this blog with some content is still quite unsure. But somehow this is also part of our adventure to write this blog and we are looking forward to finding out, where this road is going to take us. Maybe you as our readers/ followers/ visitors have some ideas or input of any kind for us, which will take us in a new direction? For now we are planning to do the following:

  • Throughout our Master program we did numerous interesting projects to learn new methodologies and apply them, to work on interesting subjects from different fields of science or to actually conduct a biomimetic research. All of this was part of our study program and was submitted to be graded for a course – but what happens now with all these interesting reports/ presentations/ essays? We are planning to select our most successful and exciting topics and reconstruct them here in our articles, to get them out of the book shelf (or a rusty folder on an external hard drive) and make them public!
  • All of us have different backgrounds (concerning our education, but also our culture and interests) and this will also be reflected in our articles. You will recognize that each one of us has a different specialty and fields of interest and therefore we hope to provide a broad portfolio of topics from our individual know-how
  • After finishing university approximately one year ago, every one of us took a different path and gained new insights and experiences from new projects or work experiences. Without connecting this blog too much to our work live (we would like to avoid this), these new inputs are also going to pop up in our articles.

 

How does our blog work?

As probably most of you can empathize – life can get quite busy and a blog is something which needs lots of care and time. To avoid neglecting our new born blog, we formed a group of four people with the hopeful assumption to provide at least one new article per week. We are hoping to get into some interesting and lively discussions with you and therefore would like to encourage comments, criticism, feedback of any kind, request for explanations, clarifications, corrections or follow-up articles.

 

What is Bionik/ Biomimetics

‘Bionik’ (or English: Biomimetics) is a field of science, which has as a goal to analyse, understand and abstract a natural system/ object or technique to extract its principle and implement it in technology. Famous examples are ‘Velcro’ (inspired from limpets), the ‘Lotus effect’ or – as the most obvious example: designing planes or ships with the help of fish or bird shapes or structures. If you want to learn more basic facts about Biomimetics – we would like to refer to the homepages on the start site.

Hopefully we could give you an overview of what we are planning to do on www.blogionik.org and maybe got curious and will visit our blog again – to find our first articles here during August!

 

See you then!

Anja, Jan, Kathi & Waseem

Katharina Bunk

My name is Katharina Bunk, I am 26 years old and work as a PhD student in the ‘Plant Biomechanics Group’ in the beautiful city of Freiburg. I studied Biology at the University of Munich followed by the Master program ‘Bionik/ Biomimetics in Energy Systems’ in Villach/ Austria. I am especially interested in Botany and therefore chose Plant Biomechanics as my main field of research.

2 Kommentare

  1. Victoria   •  

    This is a wonderful blog! I have been passionate about biomimicry for years now! I look forward to reading your articles! I also have many questions about your studies- How does one get involved in biomechanics? What background do you have?

    • Katharina Bunk   •     Author

      Hi Victoria, thank you for your comment and your interest! You can read about our backgrounds and how we got into the field of Biomimetics on our blog: we have small introduction pages about each of us (Anja, Waseem, Jan, Katharina). Additionally every one of us wrote about personal experiences with Biomimetics (Anja’s story, Waseem’s story, Jan’s story, Katharina’s story).
      We are looking forward to reading your thoughts and comments about our articles and Biomimetics generally in the future!

Schreibe einen Kommentar

Deine E-Mail-Adresse wird nicht veröffentlicht. Erforderliche Felder sind mit * markiert