Shu Yang looks at her research through the lens of biomimicry: life forms and natural shapes have inspired her unique engineering solutions that span agriculture, building cooling and heating and reversible adhesives. For Yang, each of her innovations starts with changes on a fundamental level that can then grow into scalable and impactful products. Her creative approach, breadth of topics, and overwhelming number of applied inventions have named her this year’s Penn Center for Innovation Inventor of the Year.