New semester, new school year, and the lab is welcoming new blood and some almost new blood. Welcome to the undergrads Cara and Caroline, who will perform data acquisition on pregnant subjects, and to Sara, who will measure the radial actuation of LCEs. And welcome to Fuad who is starting his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering this semester and will be working on the 4D printing … Continue reading Welcome!

Congratulations Sakib! After two years of negotiating with the printer, Sakib successfully defended his work on the 4D printing of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to his committee. We wish you all the best for your future as a Ph.D. student. Continue reading Sakib graduated!

Leila’s paper has been accepted and published in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids. The article entitled Coupling between viscoelasticity and soft elasticity in main-chain nematic liquid crystal elastomers deals with the modeling of soft elasticity and viscoelasticity in polydomain main-chain LCEs, introducing a phenomenological model for soft elasticity with a slider for mesogen reorientation. The paper discusses the coupled and decoupled … Continue reading New paper in JMPS

Sahar Riazi Tabrizi is joining the lab as a new direct Ph.D. student! Sahar will be working on the small scale deformation mechanisms in Liquid Crystal Elastomers. Welcome Sahar, we are happy to have you! Continue reading Welcome Sahar!

Our awesome team of undergraduate researchers is reforming! Continue reading Welcome to Cassandra, Caroline, and Luella!

Nazmus Sakib is starting his Masters on 4D printing of LCEs. We are so happy to have him in the lab! Continue reading Welcome to Sakib!

Leila just passed her quals and is one step closer to becoming a Doctor! Continue reading Congratulations Leila!

Nissrine defended her Master’s thesis “Rheological properties of a liquid crystal polymer ink for 4D printing”. She is now a Ph.D. student at UIUC! Continue reading Congratulations to Nissrine!

Dr. Azoug received an NSF CAREER award. The project, entitled: “Dissipation mechanisms and damping in smart elastomers with intermolecular organization”, will start on August 1st and will allow the lab to explore in details the deformation mechanisms of Liquid Crystal Elastomers at microscopic and macroscopic scales. The project also entails a large education component focused on bringing more girls and women to Mechanical Engineering. We … Continue reading Dr. Azoug receives the NSF CAREER award

Abby successfully defended her Masters thesis yesterday. Her project, “A smart skin to treat and prevent pressure ulcers”, was supported by the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. We are sad to see her go but extremely confident that she will find more success in her new adventures! Continue reading Congratulations to Abby Haddox!