Jonathan B. Hopkins, Ph.D., is a Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Director of the Flexible Research Group. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Society for Precision Engineering (ASPE) in recognition of his outstanding educational outreach and his development of the Freedom and Constraint Topology (FACT) method of flexure design.
The ASPE Fellow distinction acknowledges Hopkins’s pioneering contributions to precision engineering: his FACT framework provides a powerful, visual, and mathematically rigorous way to conceptualize and synthesize flexible mechanisms. FACT has become a foundational tool in teaching the kinematics of flexure systems and is widely adopted in both research and industry.
Prof. Hopkins directs a research group focused on the design, analysis, and fabrication of compliant structures, which are systems that achieve precise and complex motions through elastic deformation. His work spans elastic energy storage, high-repeatability motion generation, soft robotics, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and architected metamaterials. A particularly notable area of his recent research is the development of mechanical neural networks (MNNs), a class of architected materials capable of learning and adapting their behavior by modulating stiffness within a lattice framework, thereby integrating concepts from machine learning with advanced flexure-based design.
To make his research broadly accessible, Hopkins also runs a YouTube channel, The FACTs of Mechanical Design, which provides free lecture series on compliant mechanism design and traditional mechanisms.
Hopkins’s career has been distinguished by major national and international honors, including the ASME Leonardo Da Vinci Award, election as a Fellow of ASME, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and the JMR Best Paper Award, recognizing the breadth of his contributions to research, innovation, and professional service.
He was formally inducted into the ASPE College of Fellows at the society’s 40th Annual Meeting in San Diego in November 2025.