Matt Shawkey

I am an evolutionary biologist who recently moved to Belgium from the US. I have studied structural (non-pigmentary) colors in animals (mostly birds and other dinosaurs) for the past 14 years mostly because I find them ridiculously fascinating, but in the back of my mind I have always hoped that they may be of some practical benefit as well. Biomimetic structural colors have numerous potential applications, and non-iridescent colors are particularly promising because they may someday serve as replacements for costly and environmentally unfriendly pigments. Here we can take a real step forward in our understanding of how to reduce iridescence of structural colors and potentially move closer towards this goal.

November 2014