Dayna Baumeister
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Mail code: 2701Campus: Tempe
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Dayna Baumeister is a co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8 and professor of practice. With a devotion to applied natural history and a passion for sharing the genius of nature, she has worked in the field of biomimicry with business partner Janine Benyus since 1998, traveling the world as a biomimicry thought-leader, business consultant, and professor. Together, they founded the Biomimicry Guild consulting practice, The Biomimicry Institute 501c3, and Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise that helps clients find innovation inspired by nature and offers the highest level of biomimicry training to professionals worldwide.
Her foundational work has been critical to the biomimicry movement, establishing it as a fresh and innovative practice, as well as a philosophy to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. She has helped more than 100 companies consult the natural world for elegant and sustainable design solutions, including: Nike; Interface; General Mills; Boeing; Herman-Miller; Kohler; Seventh Generation and Procter & Gamble. She's been a featured speaker at the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, International Congress on Biodiversity of the Guyana Shield 2016, GreenBiz 2016, SXSW Eco 2015, and more.
In 2008, she designed (and continues to teach) the world’s first Certified Biomimicry Professional Program, an in-person, two-year master-level course that trains, certifies, and connects biomimicry professionals with practitioners worldwide. She also co-designed the Biomimicry Specialist Program. Biomimicry 3.8 and ASU partnered in 2015 to create an online graduate certificate program and the world’s first Master of Science in biomimicry. She serves as co-director of ASU’s Biomimicry Center.
She is senior editor of "Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices" (2014), where she compiled more than a decade’s worth of practical biomimicry experience into a comprehensive biomimicry handbook. She is also a Dana Meadows Fellow with the Sustainability Institute.
Her fascination with the natural world began with daily forays into the woods and mountains around her childhood home in Colorado. Since, she has fused a lifelong fascination with nature into a career that began after she received a B.S. in marine biology from New College in Sarasota, Florida. After several years exploring the intricate relationships of coral reefs, she turned in her wetsuit and headed back to the mountains. She earned an M.S. in resource conservation and a Ph.D. in organismic biology and ecology from The University of Montana in Missoula, where she specialized in the dynamics of positive interactions among animal and plant life.
