Event 1: Biomimicry in the Garden

Me with Dr. Gonzalez behind me

I had the opportunity to listen to two different speakers talk about how plants have influenced their understanding of the world around them. They both used their knowledge of plants to change their field of work. I listened to Dr. Nestor Gonzalez talk about how the botanical garden at UCLA brought beauty into his life and changed the way that he processed things. I heard from Dr. Siobhan Braybrook about how her research group tries to understand how shapes and patterns grow in plants and how a self-moving building has been created based off of plants structures.

Diagram of the arteries in our brains

I found what Dr. Nestor Gonzalez talked about to be really fascinating. He is a neurosurgeon who specializes on the arteries surrounding the brain. He has been working on a way to increase blood flow to the brains of patients with high risk of strokes. He fell in love with the botanical garden when his visited it for the first time following his grandmother’s passing. He has watched how the plants thrive and the ways they find water in the ground. He was able to use his knowledge of the roots of plants and apply it to the arteries in our brains. He has discovered that we have to ability to create new arteries so that our blood flow improves. There is still a lot to learn about how this works and it is not an easy process to begin, but Dr. Gonzalez has had a huge breakthrough in helping stroke patients.

Dr. Gonzalez's logo using the tendrils he saw in the garden

It is crazy to think that if Dr. Gonzalez had not fallen in love with nature that we might have never found out that we had the ability to branch arteries off to other arteries. Dr. Gonzalez is a perfect example of how if we collaborate with different subjects we could have huge breakthroughs. Dr. Gonzalez has also created the symbol for his trials, which are called ERSIAS, based off of a plant stem that he saw and thought looked like an E. There is a lot of crossover in life, but a lot of people do not notice until it is pointed out to them directly. Dr. Gonzalez took his love for plants and for science and applied it to different aspects of his life and it turned out for the better. This has opened my eyes to how many different places and things in my life are affected by each other and how I can take advantage of this crossover.