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The physical topology is emerging as the next frontier in an ongoing effort to render communication networks more flexible. While first empirical results indicate that these flexibilities can be exploited to reconfigure and optimize the…
Network representations can help reveal the behavior of complex systems. Useful information can be derived from the network properties and invariants, such as components, clusters or cliques, as well as from their changes over time. The…
The tenfold classification provides a powerful framework for organizing topological phases of matter based on symmetry and spatial dimension. However, it does not offer a systematic method for transitioning between classes or engineering…
Predicting the rheological behavior of associative polymers bridging colloidal particles into transient networks is fundamentally challenging because the coupled spatiotemporal scales prevent efficient molecular-fidelity modeling. We…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
Robots' behavior and performance are determined both by hardware and software. The design process of robotic systems is a complex journey that involves multiple phases. Throughout this process, the aim is to tackle various criteria…
The structural complexity of metamaterials is limitless, although in practice, most designs comprise periodic architectures which lead to materials with spatially homogeneous features. More advanced tasks, arising in e.g. soft robotics,…
Accurate early congestion prediction can prevent unpleasant surprises at the routing stage, playing a crucial character in assisting designers to iterate faster in VLSI design cycles. In this paper, we introduce a novel strategy to fully…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
Natural systems, such as tendons and spider silk, demonstrate how the combination of strength and stretchability can be effectively achieved by integrating stiff and flexible network structures. Inspired by these systems, we developed a…
The ability to design and fabricate materials with tailored mechanical properties, combined with immunity to damage, is a frontier of materials engineering. For example, materials which are characterized by elastic properties that depend on…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelastcity of…
Self-propelled droplet jumping during condensation has attractive prospects for energy harvesting, water collection and thermal management, but its real-life applications are greatly limited to the challenge of enabling a sustainable…
For real-world complex system constantly enduring perturbation, to achieve survival goal in changing yet unknown environments, the central problem is constantly adapting themself to external environments according to environmental feedback.…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
Natural materials often feature a combination of soft and stiff phases, arranged to achieve excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and toughness. Many natural materials have even independently evolved to have similar…
Force-driven chemical reactions have emerged as an attractive platform for diverse applications in polymeric materials. However, the network topologies necessary for efficiently transducing macroscopic forces to the molecular scale are not…
Membranes are ubiquitous in nature with primary functions that include adaptive filtering and selective transport of chemical and molecular species. Being critical to cellular functions, they are also fundamental in many areas of science…
Polymer networks invariably possess topological inhomogeneities in the form of loops and dangling ends. The macroscopic properties of such materials are directly dependent on the local cyclic topology around nodes and chains. Here, a new…