Together with Dr. Gebeshuber, a student of technical physics will work on a pilot study in the field of bioinspired models of thermoregulation.

Ms. Gebeshuber has years of experience in the field of biomimetics, and has a habilitation in experimental physics.

In the project, tropical and native butterflies with black wing parts will be investigated with respect to their thermoregulatory abilities.

In a first step, suitable butterflies will be identified and acquired (project objective 1). In the second step, a thermal camera will be used to measure the temperature signature of the butterflies, under controlled environments at different temperatures (project objective 2). In the next step, the micro- and nanostructures of the butterfly wing scales will be imaged using scanning electron microscopy (project objective 3), and initial structure-function relationships will be established.

The results of the project will be summarized in a final report, and submitted to STO.

If the results of this pilot study are promising, a large-scale research project based on this will follow in collaboration with STO.