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Symposia Invited Speakers
continue to surpass engineered unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. SYMPOSIUM 6
Nature often exploits local elasticity and adaptiveness to simplify global
actuation and control. Unlike engineered systems, which rely heavily on SOFT RECONFIGURABLE MATERIALS INSPIRED BY
active control, natural structures tend to also rely on reflexive and passive CELLULAR MECHANICS
control. This approach of diverse control strategies yields multifunctional
structures. Two examples of multifunctional structures will be presented in Eric Freeman
this talk, namely avian-inspired deployable structures and click beetle- Assistant Professor
inspired legless jumping mechanism. The concept of wings as University of Georgia
multifunctional adaptive structures will be discussed and several flight
devices found on birds’ wings will be introduced as a pathway towards Abstract
revolutionizing the current design of small-unmanned air vehicles.
Experimental, analytical, and numerical results will be presented to Cellular organisms have the ability to respond and adapt to changes in
discuss the efficacy of such devices. The discussion of avian-inspired their environment, coordinating activities that provide a foundation for
devices will be followed by an introduction of a click beetle-inspired the natural world. This is in part accomplished by regulated exchange
jumping mechanism that exploits distributed springs to circumvent muscle across a network of membranous barriers within a fluidic environment,
limitations, such a mechanism can bypass shortcomings of smart actuators often through membrane-embedded stimuli-responsive biomolecules
especially in small-scale robotics applications. operating as valves or gates between subcompartments of the cell.
These membranous barriers are able to adapt and rearrange, modifying
Biography the transport both within the cellular interior and with the surrounding
environment and providing unparalleled spatiotemporal control over
Aimy Wissa is an assistant professor at the Mechanical Science and the cytosol contents. Fully replicating these capabilities within a
Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. material is infeasible, but it is possible to approximate reconfigurable
She is also the director of the Bio-inspired Adaptive Morphology (BAM) cellular architectures through a combination of droplet mechanics and
Lab. Before arriving at the University of Illinois in 2015, she was a biological membranes.
post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University. Wissa earned her doctoral
degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2014 In this talk, replicating these capabilities is accomplished using the
and B.S. degree in the same field from the Pennsylvania State University. droplet interface bilayer approach. Networks of droplets containing
Wissa’s work primarily focuses on the design and dynamics of adaptive dissolved lipids are adhered together in oil reservoirs, forming
bioinspired structures and systems, such as morphing wings and robots biomimetic membranes at their intersections. Depositing droplets with
with multiple modes of locomotion. She has distinguished herself and her varying compositions in desired patterns produces tailored networks of
research by publishing and presenting several conference papers and stimuli-responsive membranes that approximate biological tissues. The
peer-refereed journal papers for which she received several best paper droplets exhibit a weak elasticity due to minimization of their interfacial
awards. Wissa is a McNair Scholar. She is the recipient of the Air Force energies and may rearrange or adapt in response to external forces or
Research Laboratory Summer Faculty Fellowship and the Air Force Office constraints. These adjustments of the droplets in turn influence the
of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program award. properties of the biological membranes, coupling droplet mechanics and
membrane activity.
This talk investigates how these coupled phenomena may be used to
develop new generations of bioinspired materials as well as providing
novel tools for investigating biophysical phenomena. It will provide an
overview of our recent discoveries and innovations related to droplet-
based bioinspired smart materials. Topics include droplet-based materials
and bioinspired devices, an overview of droplet elasticity, and ongoing
research on droplet manipulation and reconfiguration towards the
development of a magnetically responsive bioinspired material.
Biography
Eric Freeman is an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at the
University of Georgia. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering
20 from Geneva College in 2006, M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering
and Material Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009 and 2012.
He then worked as a postdoctoral associate in the Biomolecular Materials
