iMechanica

A post-doctoral research fellow position is available in IDEA-Lab of Professor Aleksander Czekanski at York University. This position is part of a project to design and build a 3D printer for super soft tissue. The perspective postdoc is expected to have a PhD in biomechanics, biomedical engineering, or a relevant field. The ideal candidate should have experience in the 3D bioprinting of soft tissue (low stiffness), mathematical modelling of soft tissue, and biocompatibility requirements of bioinks. The prospective applicants should be available to start immediately.

Vacancy exists for high calibre one postdoctoral fellow to join the Innovative Design and Engineering Analysis Laboratory at York University, starting immediately.

The position’s primary area of research will focus on characterization and modelling of elastomers subject to high strain rates.

Requirement:

https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-651X/ab2d16

Abstract

The Mechanics of Biological Materials/Structures Laboratory at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is seeking to fill a Postdoctoral Research Associate position working on a NIH supported research project. In this five-year research project, we intend to elucidate the effect of proteoglycans on the age-related deterioration of bone quality and to develop therapeutic strategies for preventing or deterring such adverse effect.

In the Materials and Technology Center of Robotics at Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), we are looking for a Ph.D. student in Robotic Materials to perform a pioneering research in bio-hybrid materials for Aerial Robotics.

Chemo-thermal model and Gaussian process emulator for combustion synthesis of Ni/Al composites

We invite applications for Postdoctoral Research Fellow positions with the Bio-inspired Robotics & Design Laboratory (http://brd.sutd.edu.sg) at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

The project will investigate modelling, simulation and optimisation of soft robots and structures using computational mechanics.
Research areas include: structural and morphological optimisation and multi-physics optimisation. 

In this study, we developed a micromechanical model for the growth and remodeling of a soft tissue based on the concurrent action of collagen deposition and degradation. We assumed in the model that collagen degradation causes a reduction in the fiber radius, while collagen deposition can increase both the radius and length of the collagen fibers growing under load. The latter arises from the assumption that collagen is deposited in an unstressed state, which increases the reference length of a fiber growing under mechanical load.

The stretchability of metal materials is often limited by the onset and development of necking instability. For instance, necking of lithium metal often occurs at low strains and thus hinders its practical applications in stretchable lithium batteries. Substrate/metal bilayers are emerging as a promising solution to the stringent stretchability requirement of metal electrodes and current collectors in flexible and stretchable batteries.

Location

Khalifa University of Science and Technology, main campus, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Website: www.ku.ac.ae

Duration

The position is available from September 2019 for up to 34 months. 

About the role

Ph.D. position

Smart soft materials, because of their mechanical flexibility and quick response to multi-physics stimuli, have drawn considerable attention over the past few years. Here, we present controllable wrinkling patterns of a liquid crystal polymer film attached on a soft substrate, controlled by laser illumination that holds unique optical characteristics of high coherence and irradiance.

The mechanical behavior of athermal random fiber networks embedding particulate inclusions is studied in this work. Composites in which the filler size is comparable with the mean segment length of the network are considered. Inclusions are randomly distributed in the network at various volume fractions, and cases in which fibers are rigidly bonded to fillers and in which no such bonding is imposed are studied separately.

Amit Acharya          Shankar Venkataramani

Growth processes in many living organisms create thin, soft materials with an intrinsically hyperbolic
geometry. These objects support novel types of mesoscopic defects - discontinuity lines
for the second derivative and branch points - terminating defects for these line discontinuities.
These higher-order defects move "easily", and thus confer a great degree of
flexibility to thin hyperbolic elastic sheets. We develop a general, higher-order, continuum mechanical framework
from which we can derive the dynamics of higher order defects in a thermodynamically consistent
manner. We illustrate our framework by obtaining the explicit equations for the dynamics
of branch points in an elastic body.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333877242_Continuum_mechanics_of_moving_defects_in_growing_bodies

Abstract: We hypothesized that ingested warm fluids could act as triggers for biomedical devices. We investigated heat dissipation throughout the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract by administering warm (55°C) water to pigs and identified two zones in which thermal actuation could be applied: esophageal (actuation through warm water ingestion) and extra-esophageal (protected from ingestion of warm liquids and actuatable by endoscopically administered warm fluids).

The group on “Mechanics of soft and living interfaces” (https://www.lacan.upc.edu/mechanics-of-soft-and-living-interfaces/) lead by Marino Arroyo (https://www.lacan.upc.edu/arroyo/) is looking for a highly motivated and creative postdoctoral researcher to study the mechanical organization of epithelial cells and tissues, and how this understanding can lead to a precise control of tissue structure, mechanical properties, and dynamics.

We've recently published our new study about Uncertainty Quantification in Molecular Dynamics (MD) Simulations. Due to the selection of functional forms of interatomic potentials or the numerical approximation, MD simulations may predict different material behavior from experiments or other high-fidelity results. In this study, we used Stochastic Reduced Order Modeling (SROM) to achieve

(1) mechanical behavior of graphene predicted by MD simulations in good agreement with the continuum model which has been calibrated by experiments;

Composite materials are increasingly used in industry due to the possibility of tailoring their properties based on the applications. Their greatest advantage is strength and stiffness combined with lightness. However, their optimal design and performance is still limited by the lack of knowledge of physical mechanisms that control their fracture behavior. Machine learning and big data driven approaches have not been extensively studied for fracture behavior predictions.

The focus of this symposium is to discuss current research and key developments in theory, computational and experimental methods to study and predict the mechanical properties of materials in application-orientated environments. These environments may include, but are not limited to high temperature, cryogenic temperature, electrical and magnetic field, gas, radiation, chemical, pressure extremes, and humidity.

Many of modern life activities involve the risk of fire, explosions, and impacts. In addition, natural extreme events are becoming more and more common. us, robustness, the ability to avoid disproportionate collapse due to an initial damage, and resilience, the ability to adapt to and recover from the effects of changing external conditions, represent two important characteristics of current structures and infrastructures.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Institution: University of Windsor, Canada ( https://youtu.be/RuAxubYgKcM )

Professor: http://www.uwindsor.ca/engineering/mame/440/cherniaev-aleksandr

Salary:

I hope this work be of interest to some of you, in particular, those in the field of tribology, contact and damage mechanics. We examined the opposite contribution of interfacial adhesion into the process of surface material removal during adhesive wear. https://journals.aps.org/prmaterials/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.063604

In this paper, a computational hierarchical multiscale method is presented to investigate the effect of temperature on mechanical behavior of heterogeneous nanomaterials. The embedded-atom method many-body interatomic potential is employed to investigate the complex interaction between the atoms of copper–aluminum (Cu-Al) alloy at various temperature levels. The thermo-mechanical properties of Cu-Al alloy are studied at various percentages of Cu-Al. The Nose-Hoover thermostat is proposed for the molecular dynamics analysis.

We have one postdoc position on soft matter tribology (focused on theory and simulations) at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Lecce, Italy (Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies, CBN, https://cbn.iit.it/). The activities will be performed in strict collaboration with the University of Salento, located in the same city, as well as with an international industrial partner. The salary is highly competitive and depends on scientific skills. 

[https://www1.unisalento.it/bandi-concorsi/-/bandi/view/64558739]

The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Arnesano-Lecce, Italy (Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies, CBN, https://cbn.iit.it/) is financing five PhD openings at the University of Salento, Lecce.

Research topics:

- Flexible piezoelectric micro elelctro mechanical systems (MEMS)

- Nano-bio-interactions

- Nanomedcine

- Neurotechnologies

- Optogenetics