Research can basically be divided into two different categories – hypothesis-driven and curiosity-based. Materials scientist Joanna McKittrick of the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has done her share of both.

"We had an NSF grant to study the abalone shell, different mechanical properties, and so naturally, we were curious about other shells and we looked at other shells and so that went off on a track that it was hypothesized, so we could go along in that way. And then there is just some curiosity-based research which is something like we had looked at feathers and I got interested in the woodpecker because the woodpecker drives its head into a piece of wood without brain injury…so the skull is a very nice impact-resistant shell and now we are looking at their skulls. If you like nature and you are curious about animals – almost everything you see you’d say, “why that?”