Shaping Matter Lab

Snow in Delft! Gustavo and Jimmy made a new friend :)

Piezoelectric truss metamaterials: data-driven design and additive manufacturing - npj Metamaterials npj Metamaterials - Piezoelectric truss metamaterials: data-driven design and additive manufacturing

Thrilled to share that our paper on piezoelectric truss metamaterials is finally out in npj Metamaterials. 🚀

The backstory: Anisotropy of natural piezoelectric ⚡️ materials is limited by their crystal symmetry. We break this limit — not with chemistry, but with geometry. 📐

doi.org/10.1038/s444...

Happy Halloween from SML! The only contamination we're allowing in the biolab this season is ectoplasm! 👻🧫

Check out this cool paper from @sschyck.bsky.social that answers an unexpected question: How fast can hematite swim?! 🌊

#ActiveMatter #Microswimmers #SoftMatter #AppliedMaterialsToday ~IN

🍁🍂🍁 Autumn has arrived at @shapingmatterlab.bsky.social #TUDelft #AerospaceEngineering 🍄🍄‍🟫🍄

Saurav presented his latest work, developed with Sid Kumar, Prakash Thakolakaran, and Jovana Jovanova, at ESMC 2025 in Lyon and MARSS 2025 at Purdue! He showed how mechanics, machine learning, and additive manufacturing create the next-gen piezoelectric metamaterials 🦾👨‍💻
@saurav-sharma.bsky.social

🌳 Check out these two happy faces! Kimon and Elijah finished their bachelor's theses last week! 🌿

It was a lot of fun to guide them in the process and to have them working on my project. All the best with the next step, guys! 🪴

#PhDlife #plantscience #engineeredlivingmaterials

🏐✨ Cheers to the 2 champion teams (winner & runner up) of the ASM Dept.'s Volleyball Tournament on June 4! 🎉 It was a day of friendly rivalry, but they're back to being awesome labmates now. We had lot of fun in their day out with sports & BBQ🤝💪 #Sportsday #LabLife
@kmasania.bsky.social

🧬✨ Massive props to Jasper & Kunal for their DNA-coated 3D knitted installation at Venice Biennale 2025 🇮🇹🏛️!
Teaming up with SO–IL, Mariana Popescu & TheGreenEyl, they’ve spanned the historic Arsenale Corderie columns with next-gen natural fibers 🌿🧵🌌 #VeniceBiennale #DNAKnits

@kmasania.bsky.social

SML'ers won the Lustrum Photo Challenge for the Aerospace Faculty's 85th Anniversary! We 3D printed fungi for this super fun challenge. Here's some behind the scenes action as well. 📸🍾🎉🍄

@kmasania.bsky.social #AerospaceEngineering

SURFdrive - A service by SURF Library_PDF Satya.pdf is publicly shared

Check out his thesis here: surfdrive.surf.nl/files/index....

#additivemanufacturing #engineeredlivingmaterials #materialscience

🔬Many congratulations to Satya, who defended his PhD "Shaping Mechano-Responsiveness: 3d-Printing of Piezoelectric and Living Materials"! ⚡

Of course, we made him a funny PhD-hat which included the many yoga poses which kept him sane through the journey! 😉

#PhDlife #ELMs #additivemanufacturing ~IN

🔬Always nice to help out a fellow scientist... I suspect that the tensile testing of some of Gonçalo's homemade TPU filament with Kimon will not end up in a figure...

#3Dprinting #PhDlife #AdditiveManufacturing

Milestone alert 🥂
SML's Knight in Shining Armour, Sarah, officially knighted her ChemE comrade Reece on April 15th — from labs to vows, what a plot twist 💒🎉 Big cheers to the newlyweds and lots of good luck and happiness for your future!

@kmasania.bsky.social @sschyck.bsky.social

Last week, @alexluijten.bsky.social passed his go/no-go moment of his PhD! 🏆 This means we can expect more cool work in discrete lattice fabrication and more cool videos of robots doing stuff! 🤖

@kmasania.bsky.social #robotics #science #PhDlife #additivemanufacturing ~IN

A big shoutout to @saurav-sharma.bsky.social, @sourav-p.bsky.social, @ingonettersheim.bsky.social, Jasper, Stefan, Chris, and all the others involved in making it happen! 🚀 🥳

Last week was a lot of fun—we helped organise workshops for #TUDelft Girls' Day!

High school girls tried 3D printing chocolate on cookies, made Prince Rupert drops, isolated DNA, and loads more cool stuff.

Hopefully, we sparked some curiosity and maybe even inspired a few future #WomenInSTEM ✨ ~IN

It was fun to pitch my work on 3D printing of lab-grown wood at the EPS Annual Meeting!

The people from @epsgraduateschool.bsky.social are an amazing brainy bunch with a lot of great input and ideas. 🌱

Thanks for the support @julianverdonk.bsky.social @kmasania.bsky.social! #plantscience

You can find the paper by Caroline Houriet, Boris Ulyanov, John-Alan Pascoe, @kmasania.bsky.social on #additivemanufacturing here:

doi.org/10.1016/j.ad...

🌳How do trees ensure their branches are not blown off by the wind, and can we harness this for 3D-printed structures?

Caroline's paper explores how wavy fibre patterns inspired by trees can toughen 3D-printed materials.🪴

Check it out! #3DPrinting #Bioinspired #MaterialsScience #PlantScience ~IN

Sourav, Silvan, and Jimmy had a great time trying out our new Shaper Origin hand-held CNC mill.

Of course, we divided the work like true #academics!

#CNC #milling #woodworking #PhDlife ~IN

Have you already checked out this cool paper in Composites Part A, which explores how you can use topology optimisation to make fibre-reinforced composites more eco-friendly?

doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

#composites #machinelearning #ecodesign

@cvjansari.bsky.social @kmasania.bsky.social ~IN

Just another day at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft...

We're sad to see our garden piece go, but the @koninklijkemarine.bsky.social apparently want their Westland Lynx back. #aerospace #tudelft ~IN

🌳Mu and Alex saved the tree outside our office window from slow strangulation, just in time for the spring! 🌴

Great job guys, saving this #engineeredlivingmaterial!

@m-amani.bsky.social @alexluijten.bsky.social @tudelft.bsky.social #plantscience #ELMs

Welcome Winston Lindqwister (Post-Doc) and Jimmy Cheng (as phD) to SML! Winston (left) will be making multi-scale computational models of hierarchical fungal engineered living materials 🍄 👩‍💻 while Jimmy is going to be researching Bioinspired Grippers 🤖
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#bioinspiredgrippers #Multiscalemodelling

Congratulations on your super successful MSc graduation Aster Tournoy, with a cum laude! 🎉🥂Aster developed a fault detection system for small-scale 3D printers that can identify 12 common printing errors using computer vision with up to 97% accuracy.
📸courtesy - Aster Tournoy
@kmasania.bsky.social

This week saw SML taking a well-deserved recharge on the slopes of the beautiful french alps!🏂 The beginning of a new tradition... With freshened heads we're now back to work! 👩🏼‍🔬🔬🧪🌱

How are wind turbine blades manufactured? Last week, we had the opportunity to find out how the Suzlon group manufactures their wind turbine blades on a visit with the NXTGEN Hightech Composites 3-Zero Defect consortium. It was super enlightening, thanks to everyone involved!

We have two new vacancies to join our research team at TU Delft! @shapingmatterlab.bsky.social

1. postdoc on 🐝 insect inspired 3D printing! lnkd.in/eDigGhRY
2. phd/postdoc to develop a new sustainable bio-inspired material based on 🦠 bacteria & 🧬 protein.
lnkd.in/enK8-UKj
lnkd.in/eS3USYxX

LICHEN-BLADES consortia members have transformed wind turbine blade sections into a bike pump track! 🚴‍♂️😮It was on display at the IDE faculty square last few weeks.
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@DenizSayinbas, also a project member, had a great day at work thanks to it. 🍃

@kmasania.bsky.social #windenergy #circulareconomy