ABSTRACT: Examples of soft functional composite structures with arrangements of active and passive material segments or soft and stiff segments are widely observed in nature. Biological organisms exploit the swelling and growth mismatch and elastic mismatch inherent in these structures to enable complex shape change.  Our work has been focused on developing computational models of stimuli-responsive composite hydrogel structures and composite liquid crystal elastomer structures to investigate how disparate material segments can be arranged in two-dimensional and three-dimensional structures to achieve targeted shape changes and function. In this presentation, I will describe the experimental and computational modeling investigation of two systems, shape-changing hydrogel devices and liquid crystal elastomer metamaterials.

BIOSKETCH: Thao (Vicky) Nguyen received her S.B. from MIT in 1998, and M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford in 2004, all in mechanical engineering. She was a research scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore from 2004- 2007, before joining the Mechanical Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University, where she is currently a Professor and Marlin U. Zimmerman Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with secondary appointments in Materials Science and Ophthalmology. Dr. Nguyen’s research encompasses the biomechanics of soft tissues and the mechanics of active polymers and biomaterials. Dr. Nguyen has received the 2008 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)  for her work on modeling the thermomechanical behavior of shape memory polymers. She received the 2013 NSF CAREER award for studying the micromechanisms of growth and remodeling of collagenous tissues. She was also awarded the inaugural Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty for the creative development and applications of mechanics, the ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award for research excellence in mechanics and materials in 2013, and the T.J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award from the Applied Mechanics Division in 2015. She was elected Fellow of ASME in 2022 and AIMBE in 2023. of Engineering Science in 2020, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biomechanics