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Engineering professor Narasimha Boddeti receives NSF career Award

He uses novel 3D printing process to create soft, architected materials that incorporate liquids within a soft solid matrix, similar to the way skin or other organs contain water.

Narasimha Boddeti. / Image - WSU

The Berry Family Assistant Professor in Washington State University's (WSU) School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering Narasimha Boddeti has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. 

This five-year grant, worth approximately $600,000, supports Boddeti's pioneering research on creating and understanding novel materials that combine solids and liquids using advanced 3D printing techniques.

Boddeti’s award-winning project will utilize a novel 3D printing process to create soft, architected materials that incorporate liquids within a soft solid matrix, similar to the way skin or other organs contain water. This approach aims to produce materials that can be tuned and respond to stimuli in diverse ways, enhancing their functionality for specific applications.

“One kind of architected material is a soft composite that combines solids with liquids in a periodic fashion, and through this periodicity, you can access some interesting mechanical properties that you don’t find in nature,” Boddeti explained. 

The innovative materials developed through this method could be used in various applications, such as realistic organ models, energy-absorbing structures, and flexible actuators or sensors. These materials are designed to emulate the flexibility and toughness of biological tissues, potentially advancing healthcare and robotics technologies.

Beyond his research, Boddeti is committed to integrating computational science and engineering into mechanical engineering education at WSU. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder and a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. 

Before joining WSU in 2020, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Manufacturing and Design Center at Singapore University of Technology and Design. The NSF CAREER award is intended to support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.  
 

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