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Pedro M. Reis |
Pedro Miguel Reis is a Full Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he moved to on November 1st, 2017. His research group, the Flexible Structures Laboratory, is dedicated to the fundamental understanding of the mechanics of slender structures and their intrinsic geometric nonlinearities.
Prof. Reis received a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Manchester, UK (1999), a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics (Part III Maths) from St. John’s College and DAMTP, University of Cambridge (2000) and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Manchester (2004). He then moved as a Post-Doc at the City College of New York (2004-2005). Between 2005 and 2007 he was a CNRS Post-Doc at the ESPCI in Paris. He joined MIT in 2007 as an Instructor in Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics. In 2010 he moved to MIT’s School of Engineering, with dual appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering, first as the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor and, since the summer of 2014 as Gilbert W. Winslow Associate Professor. In October 2013, the Popular Science magazine named Prof. Reis to its 2013 “Brilliant 10” list of young stars in Science and Technology. He has also received the 2014 CAREER Award (NSF), the 2016 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award (Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME), the 2016 GSOFT Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research (APS) and he is a Fellow of the APS.
When not playing with slender structures, Prof. Reis spends his time being silly with his twins and enjoying the Swiss Alps.
A more detailed Curriculum Vitae can be found here.
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Paul Johanns |
Paul Johanns is a Ph.D. student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), starting from April 1st, 2018. He got his B.Sc. and M.Sc. both in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Paul performed his Master Thesis in Prof. Chiara Daraio’s lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) working on tensegrity-inspired structures for impact protection. His research at EPFL’s fleXLab focuses on the fundamental understanding of the topological influence on the mechanics of complex knots, and is supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg 12439430.
Paul likes to play music – trumpet and organ – and to go scuba diving in his free time.
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Arefeh Abbasi |
Arefeh Abbasi is a Ph.D. student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she moved to on February 15th, 2019. Arefeh got her B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Solid Mechanics) from Shiraz University, Iran, in 2014, and her M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Applied Design) from Shiraz University of Technology, Iran, in 2017. During her graduate study in Iran, she worked on finite element analysis of plates, shells, and smart structures. Now, her area of interest at the fleXLab focuses on the buckling of shells.
In her free time, Arefeh enjoys cooking, biking and traveling.
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Fani Derveni |
Fani is a Post-Doc at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she moved to on June 1st, 2021. She obtained her Diploma (5-year degree) in Civil Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2017), and she spent six months studying at Cracow University of Technology, Poland. Fani completed her M.S. and Ph.D. studies in Structural Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US (2019 and 2021, respectively), focusing on the mechanics of thin-walled metallic structures: from plate-lattice architected materials to cold-formed steel shear walls. At EPFL’s fleXLab, she is mainly interested in shell buckling.
When she is not in the lab, Fani enjoys traveling, running and hiking.
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Michael Gomez |
Michael is a Post-Doc at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), having joined in August 2021. He completed a BA in Mathematics at Christ Church, University of Oxford in 2013, followed by a MSc in Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing in 2014. Michael then moved to Pembroke College, Oxford where he completed a DPhil in Mathematics in 2018, supervised by Dominic Vella and Derek E. Moulton. He was also an awardee of the EPSRC Doctoral Prize scheme for six months based in the Mathematical Institute, Oxford. Prior to joining the fleXLab, Michael was a Research Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge between 2018-2021, where he was a member of the Biological Physics and Mechanics research group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). Michael’s main interest is in elastic instabilities and the dynamics of slender elastic structures. His PhD research was dedicated to ‘snap-through’ instabilities; other projects he worked on in Oxford include the behaviour of spherical shells under point indentation and electrostatic ‘pull-in’ instabilities in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). More recently, Michael has studied the role played by elastic instabilities in biological contexts such as bacterial locomotion. His current research at the fleXLab focusses on developing reduced-order descriptions of slender objects (rods, plates, or shells) with complex internal structure.
In his free time, Michael enjoys walking, fantasy literature and checking how many views his cat video has on YouTube.
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Eduardo Gutiérrez Prieto |
Eduardo is a Ph.D. student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), starting from October 1st, 2021. He got his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Valladolid. He then worked for a year and a half for the company SEADM, developing a device to determine the size and count the number of nanoparticles emitted by combustion engines. He then moved to the Netherlands, to TU Delft, to pursue an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering specializing in fluid mechanics. During his master thesis under Prof. Daniel Tam supervision, he developed a mechanical model to explain how the beating of eukaryotic cilia and flagella naturally emerges from the internal structure. His research at fleXLab focuses on the exploitation of flexible materials properties to develop tools for fluids control.
When not in the lab, Eduardo continues experimenting -but culinarily- in his kitchen, and enjoys doing any kind of outdoors sport -especially if it rains.
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Luna Lin |
Luna is a Post-Doc at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), starting on November 1st, 2021. She received her B. A. in physics from Barnard College of Columbia University, in 2015. In 2021, she received her Ph. D. in applied mathematics, supervised by Prof. Chris Rycroft, from the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. During her Ph. D. studies, she modeled and developed numerical methods for a wide range of systems, including fluid—structure interactions between highly deformable solid structures and incompressible fluid, and bacterial competitions facilitated by subcellular nanostructures that directly inject toxin to kill neighboring cells. From 2016 to 2020, she was a fellow of the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, which allowed her to research in high performance computing numerical methods at the Berkeley National Lab, supervised by Dr. Ann Almgren. She was also a graduate fellow of the Harvard Quantitative Biology Initiative from 2020 to 2021. Now at fleXLab, she is interested in using experimental approaches to investigate the functions of porous, elastic, slender structures in locomotion such as flying and swimming.
Outside of the lab, Luna enjoys being outdoors, petting animals, reading a good book, and playing ukulele.
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Noelia Simone |
Noelia is the Administrative Assistant of the Flexible Structures Laboratory at EPFL. From 2016 to 2020, she also managed the administrative and finance coordination part of an H2020 European project with Prof. A. Radenovic (EPFL STI IBI-STI LBEN). In March 2020, she joined the management of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. In 2014, and after her Commercial Business apprenticeship at EPFL (EPFL SB ISIC LCOM), Noelia received her Federal Certificate of Proficiency (CFC) in Commercial Business. In 2020, she received her Federal Diploma of Higher Education (brevet fédéral) of Executive Assistant. She also got the chance to work in the private domain, for the startup Abionic.
Apart from her varied and exciting job, Noelia loves traveling and would dream to travel around the World.
Alumni from the fleXLab
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Dong Yan |
Florian Choquart |
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Nicolas Minazzo |
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William Gueissaz |
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Samuel Poincloux |
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Claudio Boni |
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Paul Grandgeorge |
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Tian Chen |
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Tomohiko Sano |
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Pierre Leroy-Calatayud |
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Armelle Keiser |
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Matteo Pezzulla |
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Changyeob Baek |
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Caroline Gay |
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Lilian Cruveiller |
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Anna Lee |
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Benjamin Rahm |
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Mazen Al Achkar |
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Mark Guttag |
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Tomohiko Sano |
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Bartosz Kaczmarski |
Alumni from the EGS.Lab (our former home at MIT)
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Changyeob Baek |
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Mark Guttag |
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Anna Lee |
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Joel Marthelot |
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Francisco López Jiménez |
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Hussain Karimi |
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Grace Goon |
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Elizabeth (Liz) Strong |
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Rashed Al-Rashed |
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Claudio Falcon |
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Latoya Oliver |
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M. Khalid Jawed |
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Laelia Kim-Lan Vaulot |
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Connor McMahan |
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Rebecca Fowler |
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Connor Mulcahy |
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Noor Khouri |
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Ryan McDermott |
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Alice Nasto |
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Marie Rice |
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Peter Dieleman |
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Sharon Lacey |
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Romain Lagrange |
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James Miller |
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Denis Terwagne |
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Joao Lopes |
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Amy McGuire |
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Tianxiang Su |
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Arnaud Lazarus |
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Miha Brojan |
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Adrien Bresson |
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Carmen Castanos |
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Matthew Santer |
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Matt Metlitz |
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Sarah Southerland |
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Tommy Tran |
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Nicolas Bravo |
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Miho Kitagawa |
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Breanna Berry |
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Bastiaan Florijn |
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Aurelie Fargette |
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Jibo Wen |
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Joséphine Mannent |
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Claude Perdigou |
Owusu Ansah |
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Trevor Shannon |