Research

Our department blends and bends the traditional research areas in mechanical and civil engineering to create and support sustainable, autonomous, and resilient machines and infrastructure, and by tackling the fundamental scientific and technical enablers. We invent technologies from nano-architected materials, to cyber-physical systems with guaranteed safety, to the multi-physical behavior of porous materials. We offer state-of-the-art laboratories for experimental, computational, and data-driven scientific discovery and training at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels. We are an inclusive research community committed to collaboration and equitable treatment and support of each member.

Our research is organized into three themes–systems engineering, mechanics, and energy and thermal-fluids science, discussed in more detail below. While these component disciplines are traditional, projects in each area span a host of interdisciplinary applications and pressing societal imperatives from medicine to climate change to autonomy. Detailed descriptions of research projects can be found by following links to research centers and group websites.

From bipedal robotics to neural interfaces to extraterrestrial exploration, our systems research seeks to build autonomy, resilience, and guaranteed safety into complex machines and infrastructure from the ground up. From developing efficient motion-planning algorithms to deploying sensors to detect deformation and failure during earthquakes, our researchers cover the pipeline from fundamental scientific and mathematical breakthroughs to software and hardware, often through collaborations and joint appointments with Catech's departments of Computational and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, as well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Center for Autonomous Systems and Technology (CAST).

• Advanced Mechanical Bipedal Experimental Robotics Lab (AMBER Lab)
• Asimaki Research Group
• The Burdick Group (Robotics)
• Kohler Group
• Murray Group
• Space Structures Laboratory

Our work centers around the design, fabrication, and modeling of the mechanical behavior of materials across scales. From architected materials at the nano and micro scales, to modeling heterogeneous, multiscale, and multiphase materials, we apply theory, data-driven modeling, and experiments to characterize materials and simulate structures and systems. Diverse and interdisciplinary applications run the gambit from soft tissues to geomaterials to multiphase flows. We have collaborations and joint appointments with Caltech's departments of Applied Physics and Materials Science, the Graduate Aerospace Laboratory (GALCIT), Medical Engineering, as well as the Division of Geology and Planetary Science (GPS) and the associated Seismological Laboratory.

• Complex Systems Modeling Group (Cosymo)
• Asimaki Research Group
• Avouac Group
• Bhattacharya Group
• Computational and Data-Driven Fluid Dynamics
• Daraio Research Group
• Fu Research Group
• Greer Group
• Hunt Group
• Lapusta Group
• Space Structures Laboratory
• Mechanics of Materials Group
• Rosakis Group

Complex problems involving the transport of heat, mass, and momentum are at the heart of an array of pressing applications from sustainable energy to aircraft noise to the growth and processing of electronic and quantum materials. Whether the focus is turbulent combustion, particulate flows, our porous media flow, our research fuses experimental, computational, and data sciences to probe complex flows across scales. We study both natural and engineered systems, with close links to Caltech's departments of Environmental Science and Engineering, Applied Physics and Materials Science, the Graduate Aerospace Laboratory (GALCIT), and the Division of Geology and Planetary Science (GPS).

• Turbulent Flow Oriented Research in Combustion and Energy (The FORCE)
• John F. Brady Group (Brady Group)
• Computational and Data-Driven Fluid Dynamics
• Dabiri Lab
• Fu Research Group
• Hunt Group
• Minnich Group
• Explosion Dynamics Laboratory (EDL)
• Troian Research Group: Laboratory of Interfacial & Small Scale Transport {LIS²T}