November 22, 2024

Oliver Giraldo-Londoño, assistant professor and James W. and Joan M. O’Neill Faculty Scholar, received one of five Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grants from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Applied Mechanics Division.

Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grants are awarded to young faculty in tenure-track positions who are engaging in theoretical and applied mechanics research. The grant is named after Robert Haythornthwaite, founder and first president of the American Academy of Mechanics.

“I’m honored to have received this prestigious award,” Giraldo-Londoño said. “I’m eager to apply it to my research on self-healing materials, where we are exploring the use of 3D printing to fabricate intricate structures made from self-healing materials while also creating numerical modeling techniques to simulate how these materials fracture and heal over time.”

At Mizzou, Giraldo-Londoño serves as the director of research for the 3D Printing Research & Experiences Lab, where he promotes advancements in 3D printing. His research centers on computational mechanics, with a particular emphasis on topology optimization and computational fracture mechanics, and their intersection with 3D printing.

“Our work aims to shape a future where structures and mechanical components can self-repair and regain functionality, similar to how skin or bones heal,” he said. “Imagine robots that can ‘feel pain’ and repair themselves, or buildings that can detect damage and alert their occupants before catastrophic failures occur—this is the future we are striving toward.”

Giraldo-Londoño’s contributions to computational mechanics have earned national recognition. He has delivered invited talks at major conferences, including SES and EMI, presented a plenary lecture at IMAC XLI, given an invited talk at the Boeing Structural Optimization Community of Excellence and was invited to be the 2024 William Pierson Field Lecturer at Princeton University.

Learn more about civil engineering at Mizzou.