The first NSF sponsored Bio-Inspired Design Workshop was held in March 2011, here’s a follow-on:
Bio-inspired design (BID) or biomimicry is an emerging research area in engineering design, computer science and biology that seeks to systematically mine biological knowledge to solve existing engineering problems.  However, the community of BID researchers at present is fragmented with no professional society, unifying funding source, or recurring conference meeting. Continued at http://designengineeringlab.org/BID-workshop/Workshop_2.html