Bilayer Topo

News

November 2023: New PhD opening in the group. See details here.

October 2023: Just finished hosting the SES 2023 Annual technical Meeting. Thank you to all who have contributed to make it a huge success! 

September 2023: Congratulations to group alumnus Weijian Jiao, new faculty member at Tongji University 

September 2023: Excited to begin my sabbatical year as William R. Kenan Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University

September 2023: Welcome to Sergio V.B. Santos, new PhD student in the group

July 2023: Honored to receive the James L. Record Professorship, in the footsteps of many UMN CEGE greats.

March 2023: Our paper Dynamics of self-dual kagome metamaterials and the emergence of fragile topology has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

December 2022: We have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation titled Metamaterial architectures for programmable droplet motion. Our collaborator is Sungyon Lee (U of Minnesota) 

October 2022: Congratulations to group member Caleb Widstrand, recipient of CEGE Cale Anger Best MS Thesis award

October 2022: Our paper Omnimodal topological polarization of bilayer networks: Analysis in the Maxwell limit and experiments on a 3D-printed prototype has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. LINK

May 2022: Our paper Bandgap tuning in kerfed metastrips under extreme deformation has been published in Extreme Mechanics Letters. LINK

December 2021: Our paper Topological Flexural Modes in Polarized Bilayer Lattices has been published in Physical Review Applied. LINK

July 2021: Our paper Wavenumber-space band clipping in nonlinear periodic structures has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. LINK

June 2021: Our paper Tunable band gaps and symmetry breaking in magnetomechanical metastructures inspired by multilayer 2D materials has been published as a Letter in Physical Review B. LINK

June 2021: Our paper Soft topological lattice wheels has been published in Extreme Mechanics Letters. LINK

March 2021: Congratulations to group alumnus R. Ganesh, new faculty member at IIT Bombay 

December 2020: We have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation titled Collaborative Research: Cellular Metamaterials That Localize Stress. Towards A Topological Protection against Fracture. Our collaborators are Joe Labuz (U of Minnesota) and Xiaoming Mao (U of Michigan)

Overview

Welcome to the webpage of my research group at the University of Minnesota. Our research interests revolve around the modeling, simulation and testing of complex dynamic phenomena in unconventional structures and materials, with emphasis on architected solids, phononic crystals and elastic metamaterials. In our work, we strive to blend theoretical, computational and experimental work to develop ideas holistically from initial theoretical considerations to proof of concept. Some of our most recent efforts have been directed towards the investigation of nonlinear waves in periodic media, topological mechanical and dynamical phenomena, and soft mechanical metamaterials. In parallel, we are also interested in techniques for material diagnostics and structural health monitoring based on the structural mechanics adaptation of selected ideas originated in the fields of machine learning and computer vision.

Contact Information

  • Email: sgonella(at)umn.edu
  • CEGE webpage: https://cse.umn.edu/cege
  • Office: CivE Building, Room 154
  • Phone: (612) 625-0866