Dr. Astrid Layton is an assistant professor and Donna Walker Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University in the Mechanical Engineering department. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Her research focuses on bio-inspired systems design, using biological ecosystems as inspiration for achieving sustainability and resilience in the design of complex human networks/systems/systems of systems. She served as member and chair of ASME’s Design Theory and Methodology’s (DTM) technical committee from 2020-23, was a guest editor for IEEE’s Open Journal of Systems Engineering, and is currently an Associate Editor for ASME’s Journal of Mechanical Design. She is the recipient of several teaching and research awards, including a 2024 NSF CAREER Award from the Engineering Design and Systems Engineering program and a 2021 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering conference best paper award in the Systems Engineering, Information, & Knowledge Management technical division (SEIK