pastewka's blog

Dear colleagues,

the University of Freiburg (Germany) is currently looking for a new
faculty member in the field of Soft Machines. This is a tenure track
position in the Department of Microsystems Engineering. We are looking
for someone to represent research and teaching in the field of machines
made of soft, deformable materials such as gels, elastomers / liquid
crystalline elastomers (LCEs) and responsive materials.

The full job advertisement can be found here:

Adhesion and friction involving fluids or viscous matter, such as encountered in adhesives or in lubrication, are processes that determine everyday life, from human interaction with the environment to the function and reliability of machinery.

In this project, you will develop and apply numerical methods to gain insights into the mechanics of triboelectric nanogenerators and metamaterials. For both systems, the mechanical response is essential for the system’s function. In triboelectric generators, rough or patterned surfaces make contact and the mechanics of the interface determines contact area and stiffness and hence the charging efficiency. For metamaterials, the structural design of the individual unit cell determines the constitutive macroscopic response that can be designed in silico.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Together with Tevis Jacobs, Ju Li and Qian Yu, I'd like to invite you to submit an abstract to Symposium CM3: Mechanics and Tribology at the Nanoscale: In situ and In silico Investigations at the Spring MRS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, from March 28-April 1, 2016.

We are pleased to announce a 4-day CECAM/Psi-k Workshop on

"Chemical and structural transformations in materials under mechanical load",

 that will take place at the EPFL campus in Lausanne from Tuesday 1st September to Friday 4th September 2015.

The focus of the workshop will be on materials’ structural and chemical transformations that are caused by external loads and in turn determine the materials macroscopic mechanical response. Particular attention will be devoted to the following thematic areas: