Team

Kunal Masania

About Kunal

The lab is headed by Kunal Masania (CV) and was founded in Jan 2020. Kunal obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering on the fracture mechanics of multi-scale composites from Imperial College London, UK in 2010. In 2011 he joined the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, to develop innovative manufacturing of new high-performance materials at industrial scale. In 2015 at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, he turned focus to the development of hierarchical structured materials with inspiration from the natural world using additive manufacturing. His work has been recognised by various prizes such as an ERC Consolidator Grant, MaP Career Seed Award from the ETH Foundation, and JEC Innovation Award.

Our team

Motivated to join us?

We continually seek talented, motivated people that are keen to be a part of our research team. A willingness to hang out near the coffee machine and/ or being left-handed is a plus! Researchers at all levels are invited by contacting us.

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Sarah Schyck

Mycelium materials
Nanoparticle functionalization
Advanced microscopy techniques

Saurav Sharma

Computational solid mechanics
Electromechanical coupling
Active metamaterials

Sourav Patranabish

w/ L. Jourdin & C. Boutry

Liquid crystal polymers
Multi-axis printing
Functional materials

Shardul Bhusari

Engineered living materials
3D bioprinting
Mycelium materials

Sang-Joon Ahn

Additive manufacturing
Functional materials
Liquid crystal polymers

Amin Hodaei

3D printing of functional systems
DNA-of-things
Materials chemistry

Hang Yu

w/ G. de Croon

Computer vision
Vision-based additive manufacturing
Robotics

PhD Candidates

Mark Ablonczy

w/ C. Boutry

Functional mycelium materials
Engineered wood composites
Bio-inspired material design

Christopher Lankhof

w/ C. Dransfeld

3D printing of ceramics
Advanced composites
Field-assisted additive manufacturing

Swaliha Binth Hamza

w/ R. Groves

Optical properties of matter
Optical modelling
NDT methods

Alex Luijten

w/ J. Wu

Discrete metamaterials
Hierarchical composites
Lightweight structures

Shanthalakshmi Kilambi

w/ B. Caglar

Physics-informed machine learning
Mathematical modelling
Artificial intelligence

Gustavo Asai

w/ J. Morlier & F. Lachaud (ISAE-SUPAERO)

Topology optimisation
Computational mechanics
Eco-design of composites

Jimmy Cheng

w/ J. Jovanova

Adaptive structures modelling
Bio-inspired gripper design
Robotics system integration

Nikon Rooghani-Ochdakan

w/ J. Teuwen

Bio-based composites
Protein-based materials
Circular design

Valentin Lorenzen da Silva

w/ M. Popescu (MIT)

Fabrication-aware segmentation
CNC-knitting
Membrane structures

Tejas Iyer

w/ M. Fotouhi

Composite manufacturing
FRP design
Composite architectures

Master's Students

Stefan Brunner

Multi-axis printing
Topology optimisation
Liquid crystal polymers

Greta Skorupska-Ruiz

Multi-axis printing
Additive manufacturing
Mechatronics

Alida Schokker

Engineered living materials
Plant tissue formation
Cell wall biochemistry

Pim van der Molen

Metamaterials
Topology optimisation
Machine learning

Daan Engelman

Short carbon fibre alignment
Additive manufacturing
Mechatronics

Lena Marjanovic

Bio-based composites
Tuning self-assembly
Circular design

Quinn Almeida

Fungal bioelectric sensing
Smart biohybrid materials
Functional mycelium

Noe Nicolas Medina

Engineered living materials
Mycelium materials
Material functionalisation

Gabriël Ozo

Discrete metamaterials
Computational mechanics
Topology optimisation

Daniela Bîrcă

Topology optimisation
Additive manufacturing
Continuous fibre reinforced composites

Cheyenne de Mees

Bio-based composites
Interfacial adhesion
Natural fibres

Oliwia Ksiazek

Topology optimisation
Electromechanical coupling
Additive manufacturing

Midas Deen

Additive manufacturing
Mechatronics
Volumetric printing

Bachelor's Students

Yana Mezeklieva

Plant mechanosensing
Cell wall composition
High-resolution imaging

Artiom Evstigneev

Mechanical morphogenesis
Cellular mechanics
Biophysical modeling

Amedeo Sandrucci

Hybrid printing
DNA-of-things
Storage architectures

Alumni

David Canosa Ybarra

Matteo Messetti

Zhiyuan Xu

Marco Ferretti

Leonard Besse

Chintan Jansari

Giulia Leda Spinelli

Winston Lindqwister

Radha Dave

Matas Venckauskas

Chiara Battistelli

Jasper Groen

Kathrin Weiland

Satya Krishna Ammu

Silvan Schai

Mischa Alexander Trüb