Faculty
Donald M. Alstadt Chair

L. Catherine Brinson
Sharon C. and Harold L. Yoh, III Distinguished Professor
Research Interests: Study of advanced material systems and developing new methods to characterize and to model material behavior. Her lab’s research objective is to characterize and model advanced materials systems, at scales spanning the range of molecular interactions, micromechanical and...
Associate Chair

Christine K. Payne
Yoh Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms by which cells interact with materials, specifically nanoparticles and conducting polymers, with applications in nanomedicine and environmental exposure
Assistant Chair

George Delagrammatikas
Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Engineering Education, Automotive Engineering, Design Optimization, Thermal Fluid Sciences, Experimental Methods, Prototyping
Primary Faculty

Wilkins Aquino
Anderson-Rupp Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Computational mechanics, finite element methods, computational inverse problems and their applications in engineering and biomedicine, scientific computing, computational acoustics and acoustics-structure interaction, coupled chemo-mechanics (e.g., electrochemistry-mechanics).

Gaurav Arya
Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Molecular modeling, molecular simulations, statistical mechanics, coarse-graining, machine learning, polymer and colloidal physics, polymer-nanoparticle composites, chromatin biophysics, DNA nanotechnology, viral DNA packaging, single-molecule force spectroscopy, nanoscale...

Matthew L Becker
Hugo L. Blomquist Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
Research Interests: Polymer chemistry; bioconjugate chemistry; molecular imaging and additive manufacturing; materials for bone, soft tissue, neural and vascular tissue engineering; drug and protein delivery; degradable materials for flexible electronics

Adrian Bejan
J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Research Interests: Thermodynamics, applied physics, life & evolution in nature, constructal law.

Donald B. Bliss
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, acoustics, and structural dynamics

Volker Blum
Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Computational predictions and understanding of new materials related to energy and electronics, as well as molecular structure and spectroscopies, based on the "first principles" of quantum mechanics. Much of this work is directly connected to ongoing developments of new...

Leila Bridgeman
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Robust and optimal control, linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), model predictive control (MPC), delayed systems, input-output stability, passivity.

Chuan-Hua Chen
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Research Interests: Experimental and theoretical research coupling physicochemical hydrodynamics with interfacial engineering

F. Hadley Cocks
Professor Emeritus in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: A wide variety of areas in materials science, including crystal growth, mechanical properties of kidney stones, lunar science, diffraction optics, materials for radiation detection, and radiation shielding.

Stefano Curtarolo
Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence Materials Science; Autonomous Materials Design; Computational materials science; High-Entropy Disordered Systems; Materials for Energy Applications; Materials for Aerospace Applications. Prof. Curtarolo multidisciplinary research makes use of state-of-the...

Olivier Delaire
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Olivier Delaire investigates atomic dynamics in materials, focusing on problems at the interface of Materials Science, Physics and Chemistry. His research group utilizes a range of experimental and computational approaches, including neutron and x-ray scattering techniques,...

John Everett Dolbow
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Modeling quasi-static and dynamic fracture of structural components, the evolution of interfaces with nonlinear constitutive laws, and developing models for stimulus-responsive hydrogels

Earl H. Dowell
William Holland Hall Distinguished Professor
Research Interests: Aeroelasticity, acoustics, nonlinear dynamics, structural dynamics, and unsteady aerodynamics.

Linda Franzoni
Professor of the Practice in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Acoustics of enclosures, underwater acoustics, structural dynamics and vibration.

Ken Gall
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Materials science, mechanical properties, metals and polymers. Specialties: Shape memory materials, biomaterials, 3D printing.

Kenneth C. Hall
Julian Francis Abele Distinguished Professor
Research Interests: Unsteady aerodynamics, structural dynamics, and aeroelasticity of turbomachinery and aerospace vehicles. Novel approaches to modeling complex physical phenomena using computational fluid dynamics. Optimization and sensitivity analysis. Fluid dynamics of animal propulsion.

Nico Hotz
Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Research Interests: Interfacial transport phenomena and thermodynamics in energy technology, including phenomena at the micro- and nanoscale. Thermodynamics aspects of photovoltaics, novel sustainable energy conversion technologies, and chemical reactions are an essential part of my research. My...

Laurens E. Howle
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Hydroelastic modeling of deformable structures, transport in thermal and chemical systems, experimental and computational fluid dynamics, nonlinear and complex systems, heat and mass transport in biological systems, stability of fluid motions, machine learning, data mining,...

Po-Chun Hsu
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Smart multifunctional textiles, camouflage fabrics, stimuli-responsive polymer, wearable electronics, photon management, radiation heat transfer, solar desalination and water harvesting, electrochemical devices, electrospinning and fiber fabrication

Tony Jun Huang
William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Acoustofluidics, microfluidics, lab-on-a-chip, biomedical micro-electro-mechanical systems (BioMEMS), optofluidics, plasmofluidics.

Robert Kielb
Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Research Interests: Unsteady aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, mistuning, damping, and probabilistic methods. Principal investigator on AFOSR, DARPA, NASA, and industry-funded research projects.

Josiah D. Knight
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and dynamics

Genevieve Lipp
Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Brian Mann
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Nonlinear dynamics and vibration utilizing analytical, numerical, and experimental techniques. Fundamental investigations of phenomenon and application areas where dynamical systems theory plays an important role.

Piotr E. Marszalek
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Investigating relationships between structural and mechanical properties of biopolymers (polysaccharides, DNA, proteins), at a single molecule level.

David Mitzi
Simon Family Distinguished Professor
Research Interests: Making emerging photovoltaic materials more effective, cost-efficient and competitive for the energy market.

David Needham
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Needham’s research and development is nothing if it is not collaborative. Highlights: Anti-cancer drug delivery inspired by how cancer's survive and spread due to their consumption of Lipoprotein particles from the blood-stream (LDLs and VLDLs) hence his approach: Make the drug...

Xiaoyue Ni
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Flexible electronics, precision measurement, non-destructive testing, deformation physics of random media, mechanical metamaterials, robotic materials and smart structures, machine learning

Michael Rubinstein
Aleksandar S. Vesic Distinguished Professor
Research Interests: Polymer theory and computer simulations

Sophia Santillan
Associate Professor of the Practice in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Engineering education, nonlinear systems, structural mechanics and numerical methods.

Walter Neal Simmons
Gendell Family Professor of the Practice

Rebecca Simmons
Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Shyni Varghese
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and Orthopaedics
Research Interests: Musculoskeletal tissue repair, disease biophysics and organ-on-a-chip technology

Lawrence N. Virgin
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Study of the behavior of nonlinear dynamical systems, including the investigation of the fundamental nature of nonlinear systems based on a mathematical description of their underlying equations of motion and the application of recent results from nonlinear dynamical systems...

Benjamin Yellen
Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Development of single cell analysis tools using magnetic circuits, and multiparticle assembly of colloidal crystals

Stefan Zauscher
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Nano-mechanical and nano-tribological characterization (elasticity, friction, adhesion) of materials including organic thin films; self-assembled monolayers, polymeric gels, and cellulosics; Fabrication of polymeric nanostructures by scanning probe lithography; Colloidal probe...

Michael Zavlanos
Yoh Family Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Control theory, optimization, and learning; in particular, robotics and autonomous systems, networked and distributed control systems, and cyber-physical systems.

Pei Zhong
Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Mechanistic investigation and technology development in shock wave and laser lithotripsy; Ultrasound-elicited mechanotransduction, neuromodulation and sonogenetics; HIFU and immunotherapy for cancer treatment; Acoustic and optical cavitation.
Secondary Faculty

Cameron R. Bass
Associate Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Blast-related brain injury and injury mechanisms.
Daniel Buckland
Assistant Professor of Surgery
Research Interests: Medical device development, acute care technology, space medicine, remote medicine, autonomous medical devices.

Ashutosh Chilkoti
Alan L. Kaganov Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Focused on biomolecular materials and biointerface science and emphasizes the development of applications that span the range from bioseparations, biosensors, biomaterials, and targeted drug delivery.

Patrick James Codd
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
Research Interests: Minimally invasive neurosurgical device development and neurosurgical robotics.

Mary "Missy" Cummings
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Human-unmanned vehicle interaction, human-autonomous system collaboration, human-systems engineering, public policy implications of unmanned vehicles, and the ethical and social impact of technology.

Louis Edwin DeFrate
Professor in Orthopaedic Surgery

Dennis Onyeka Frank-Ito
Associate Professor in Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences
Research Interests: Modeling the effects of human airway anatomy on respiratory airflow patterns, deposition of inhaled gases and particle transport using computational fluid dynamics.

Henri P. Gavin
Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, seismic hazard mitigation for building contents, nonlinear dynamics, system identification, optimal control with application to systems with controllable damping.

Jeffrey Glass
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Electronic materials and the associated devices/instruments improved by these materials, especially electrode applications in miniature mass spectrometry, energy conversion and storage and liquid waste disinfection for developing regions. Electrochemical measurements and...

Johann Guilleminot
Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Computational mechanics, mechanics of heterogeneous materials, molecular dynamics simulations and atomistic-to-continuum coupling, stochastic solvers, statistical inverse problem and model validation, stochastic analysis, uncertainty quantification in science and engineering

Sara Haravifard
William M. Fairbank Assistant Professor of Physics
Research Interests: Exploring novel collective phenomena in quantum materials by means of neutron and x-ray scattering techniques; Investigating quantum critical phenomena at extreme environmental conditions of ultra-low temperature, high magnetic field, and high pressure; Materials by Design:...

Tomasz Hueckel
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Mechanics of materials, theoretical soil mechanics, rock mechanics, theory of plasticity, multi-physics processes in geomechanics, nuclear waste disposal, energy and environmental geomechanics.

Akhenaton-Andrew Dhafir Jones
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Biofilms, cardiovascular infections, infectious diseases, biomaterials, antibiotics, porous media flows, fate and transport of nanomaterials in biofilms, water quality sensors, environmental systems analysis, environmental equity, environmental justice
Shivanand Lad
Professor of Neurosurgery
Research Interests: Neurotrophin biology, neuroregeneration, medical device design

Roberto Jose Manson
Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery

Rendon C. Nelson
Reed and Martha Rice Distinguished Professor of Radiology
Research Interests: Diagnostic imaging of the liver, detection and characterization of focal and diffuse processes by US, CT and MRI; percutaneous image-guided thermal ablation of hepatic and renal tumors.

Amanda Randles
Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences
Research Interests: Biomedical simulation and high-performance computing

Guglielmo Scovazzi
Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Interests: Finite element methods, computational fluid and solid mechanics, multiphase porous media flows, computational methods for fluid and solid materials under extreme load conditions, turbulent flow computations, instability phenomena.

Benjamin J. Wiley
Professor of Chemistry
Research Interests: In the Wiley Group, we make new nanomaterials by controlling the assembly of atoms in solution, and explore applications for nanomaterials in medicine, catalysis, plasmonics, and electronics. Our goal is to precisely control the size, shape, and composition of materials on the...

Thomas P. Witelski
Professor in the Department of Mathematics
Research Interests: My primary area of expertise is the solution of nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations via perturbation methods. Using asymptotics along with a mixture of other applied mathematical techniques in analysis and scientific computing I study a broad range of...
Sabino Zani
Associate Professor of Surgery
Research Faculty

Michael J Mehl
Assistant Research Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Francis Rose
Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sci

Jeffrey P. Thomas
Assistant Research Professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Computational aeroelasticity.

Cormac H Toher
Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Computational materials science, with a focus on the development of high-throughput computational materials design frameworks such as AFLOW (Automatic FLOW).
Adjunct Faculty

Regis Kopper
Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: 3D user interfaces, novel interaction techniques and immersive display systems.

Tod A. Laursen
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Engineering computing and engineering science, continuum mechanics, engineering analysis, finite element methods, and the use of finite element methods for the solution of nonlinear problems, with a special interest in the modeling of physical systems exhibiting contact and...

Sylvie Lorente
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Lorente's research interests encompass vascularized materials, constructal theory, porous media, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer.

Robert Twiss
Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Product design and design-thinking practices, with a particular focus on the role of improvisation and prototyping in product development; presentation and visualization skills, and improving customer-experience design.

Jennifer L West
Fitzpatrick Family University Distinguished Professor of Engineering
Research Interests: Biomaterials, nanotechnology and tissue engineering that involves the synthesis, development, and application of novel biofunctional materials, and the use of biomaterials and engineering approaches to study biological problems.
Visiting Faculty

Eduardo Saucedo
Visiting Scholar in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Emeritus Faculty
Devendra P. Garg
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: The main emphasis of research in the Robotics and Manufacturing Automation Laboratory is on the control of multiple robots that can work together. Multiple robotic control of the two ABB industrial robotic arms was sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The sensor...

Edward J. Shaughnessy
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Analytical, experimental, and computational studies of flow problems arising in biology, medicine, and biotechnology as well as in more traditional mechanical engineering applications.

Teh Yu Tan
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Research Interests: Impurity diffusion mechanisms and point defects in silicon and III-V compounds; line defects; precipitation and gettering; kinetic processes of defect evolution; x-ray scattering and electron microscopy; crystal growth in nano-scale

Donald Wright
Associate Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science