Blog posts

There is a Ph.D. position ( guaranteed paid research assistant for two years ) in Energy, control, and Optimization (ECO) lab for Spring 2021 in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stevens Institute of Technology.

The project is related to the fundamental study of radiation heat transfer in thin-film nanomaterials. Prior computational knowledge and experience with heat transfer in nanomaterials are required. Being familiar with FDTD, COMSOL, MATLAB, and Optimization algorithms is a Plus.

A postdoctoral and graduate student openings with the main focus on the mechanics of composites materials are available immediately in Shakiba's group. We are looking for strongly motivated candidates to work on an AFOSR supported project on 1) thermo-mechanical damage coupling in FRPs, 2) simulation of additively manufactured composites and 3) sensitivity and machine learning for damage predictions.

Several postdoctoral and graduate student openings with primary focus on biomechanics is available immediately in the Shenoy Research Group at the University of Pennsylvania. We are looking for strongly motivated candidates to work on NIH supported projects on 1) cell-matrix interactions in fibrosis and cancer, 2) nuclear mechano-transduction and 3) mechanical mechanisms of traumatic brain injury.   

A fully supported Ph.D. position is available starting Jan 2021 in Advanced Hierarchical Materials by Design Lab at the University of Alabama on multiscale modeling of materials and processes. The objective of this project is to model the synthesis of 2D materials to design new processes to improve synthesis efficiency, as well as synthesis by the design of these materials, and to use machine learning algorithms to design materials and their synthesis process. 

Stiffening of graphene oxide films by soft porous sheets, Mao, et. Al., Espinosa, Han, Nguyen, Huang, Nature Communications, 2019

Novelty/impact/significance:

Counter-intuitively, adding some porous graphene oxide (GO) sheets can significantly enhance the modulus of the bulk multilayer GO films compared with those constructed by pristine ones (twice the tensile modulus), although the individual porous GO sheets are drastically weaker than the pristine ones.

Damage-tolerant architected materials inspired by crystal microstructure, Pham, Liu, Todd, Lertthanasarn, Nature, 2019

Novelty/impact/significance:

Unlike most architected materials with periodic identical units and thus immediate collapse upon yielding, novel crystal-inspired structures by utilizing the toughening/strengthening mechanisms of crystalline metals (e.g., grain boundaries, precipitates and phases) are developed to possess superior robustness and damage-tolerance.

Tribological behavior of graphene layers has been a focus of intensive research interest since its crystal lattice structure can be exploited to achieve incommensurate contact, leading to nearly zero friction, namely structural superlubricity. However, wrinkling undulations are omnipresent on graphene and difficult to be completely eliminated, which inevitably resists superlubricity in reality. Here, we explore how the presence of surface wrinkles affects nanotribological behavior of graphene sliding systems.