In 2009, The Wyss Institute was founded based on the belief that science has uncovered enough information about how Nature builds, controls, and manufactures that its biological principles can be leveraged to develop new engineering innovations to solve some of the worldﾒs most intractable problems.

This approach has become known as “Biologically Inspired Engineering.” The Institute’s founders envisioned a research organization that combined fundamental research into Nature’s innermost workings, down to the nanoscale, with out-of-the-box thinking and a focus on translation, which could turn those evolution-tested ideas into useful new products, technologies, and approaches.