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MEAM Seminar: “Discrete and Continuous Modeling of Fibrous Biological Materials: Compressible Large Deformations, Damage, and Crack Propagation”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Random fiber networks are integral to biological materials such as the extracellular matrix, cytoskeleton, and blood clots. A random fiber network is the main structural component of the extracellular matrix, the cytoskeleton, and our blood clots. The mechanical behavior of these materials is characterized by large deformations, non-linear stress-strain response, and large compressibility. Experimental and […]

MEAM Seminar: “Mechanical Interfaces for Health: From Mechanobiology to Tactile Perception”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Our lab combines adhesion and tribology with modern polymers and surface coatings to understand soft interfaces in biology towards improving human health and accessibility. On the scale of cells, mechanical stiffness of cells and tissue can indicate diseases like fibrosis or osteoarthritis. On the scale of the human body, mechanical forces generated by friction form […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Elastomeric Strain Limitation for Design of Soft Pneumatic Actuators”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Modern robots embody power and precision control, yet as robots undertake tasks that apply forces on humans this power brings risk of injury. Soft robotic actuators use deformation to produce smooth, continuous motions and conform to delicate objects while imparting forces capable of safely pushing humans. This thesis presents strategies for the design, modeling, and […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Mechanical Robust Biocompatible Polymeric Networks for Repetitive Loading”

Towne 319 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, United States

Crosslinked biocompatible polymer networks offer unique potential for biomedical applications that demand high resilience under repetitive load-bearing conditions. However, conventional hydrogels often exhibit poor mechanical strength and irreversible damage under cyclic deformation. To address these challenges, this work presents a class of engineered polymer network designed for enhanced mechanical robustness: cryogel-based double-network (DN) hydrogels. In […]

MEAM Seminar: “Modularity Strategies for Pneumatic Control in Soft Robotic Systems”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Soft robotic systems, defined as both compliant robotic platforms and mechanically adaptive structures, offer unique advantages such as safe human-machine interaction, structural flexibility, and environment-driven reconfigurability. By relying on deformable materials and embedded physical intelligence, these systems can achieve complex motions and responsive behaviors that are difficult for conventional rigid robots. Pneumatic control, including actuation, […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis: “Geometric Methods for Efficient and Explainable Control of Underactuated Robotic Systems”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Robots are complex, high-dimensional systems, governed by nonlinear, underactuated dynamics and evolving on non-Euclidean manifolds, posing numerous challenges for control synthesis and analysis. While optimization-based methods of control can flexibly accommodate diverse dynamics, costs, and constraints, they often demand coarse approximations or powerful onboard processors (infeasible for many aerial and space systems) due to their […]

MEAM Seminar: “Exploring Jet-Propelled Soft Robots: Design, Experiments, and Theory”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Understanding how marine animals migrate is critical for assessing the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems—and yet current Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), with their noisy propellers and rigid hulls, are ill-suited to operate alongside sensitive species. Bio-inspired robots offer a promising alternative by emulating the natural locomotion strategies of fish, cephalopods, and other marine […]

MEAM Seminar: “Leveraging Robot-Based Haptic Dyads to Improve Community-Based Stroke Rehabilitation”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Disabilities related to aging and stroke impact functional independence and quality of life for millions of older adults, creating a growing need for scalable, accessible rehabilitation solutions. Community-based robotic therapy that leverages social interaction and haptic feedback offers a promising approach, particularly for individuals with motor and cognitive impairments. This seminar presents work exploring how […]

MEAM Seminar: “Predicting Infant Center of Pressure through Physics and Data Driven Modeling”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Affecting roughly 2 in 1000 infants in the USA, Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common cause of motor impairment in children. CP has no cure, but motor therapy is an effective tool for providing rehabilitation. Although therapy is most effective before the age of 2, early CP detection is difficult and labor-intensive, making the […]

MEAM Seminar: “Temperature Dependent Offset for Spin Lattice Dynamics Modeling”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Spin lattice dynamics (SLD) modeling is an approach to modeling magnetic interactions at the nanoscale. Current spin lattice dynamics models do not model magnetoelastic effects well, giving non-physical lattice parameters and poorly modeling behavior like forced volume magnetostriction. A new model, based on a temperature dependent offset that subtracts out the part of the magnetic […]