Jun Wang
Santa Clara University, CA·Engineering
Materials built from tiny cells, like a 3D-printed lattice, can have mechanical properties that solid materials cannot match, such as extreme lightness or the ability to change shape on demand. These engineered structures are called mechanical metamaterials, and they could improve products from ultra-light energy devices to soft robots that morph their shape.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Computer Science
- Topics
mechanical metamaterials
architected materials
cellular materials
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Extend the known theoretical limits of the mechanical property space reachable by aperiodic architected cellular material (AACM) units using a computational discovery framework.
- Map the geometry-property relation of cellular structures and use it to derive a computationally efficient data-driven inverse mapping that generates diverse AACM structures with prescribed properties.
- Develop combinatorial design methods for assembling aperiodic cell patterns that keep neighboring cells compatible and keep the whole structure additively manufacturable.
More about the research
The catch is design: the number of possible cell geometries is enormous, no one knows the outer limits of achievable properties, and any design must still be printable. Working backward from a desired property to a structure that has it is an especially hard problem.
Why it matters
Faster, reliable design of printable lattice materials could help manufacturers build ultra-light energy devices and shape-morphing soft robots with tailored mechanical behavior. Replacing trial-and-error with AI-guided design that respects what 3D printers can actually produce could support advanced manufacturing across the materials and energy sectors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Xiaojia Zhang
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Engineering·Early-career
Test whether local constitutive behavior, meaning how a small region of material responds to force, links local structural deformation to global fracture, using theory and simulation of homogeneous, defected and heterogeneous metamaterial networks.
Katia Bertoldi
Harvard University, MA·Engineering
Develop quantitative measures of entanglement by testing 3D-printed textile architectures and woven metamaterials, which are structures whose properties come from their designed geometry, in both mechanical experiments and simulations.
Glenn Daehn
Ohio State University, OH·Engineering
Develop numerically controlled deformation sequences and equipment to produce complex components currently made as closed-die forgings, where metal is pressed into shaped tooling, with the goal of shorter lead times and improved part performance.
The school
Santa Clara University: 8 labs on PI Pages, $8M a year on research, 24 research doctorates a year.
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