讲座时间：2025.9.1 下午15：00-17：00 

讲座地点：创新港巨构二6023会议室

Fold, Snap, and Jump in Nature and Beyond: Toward Adaptive Matter

Mingchao Liu

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Abstract

Folding, snapping, and jumping are striking manifestations of how structures in nature and engineering harness mechanics for adaptability. In this talk, I will present recent advances in understanding and designing such phenomena: from plant-inspired leaves that morph through differential actuation, to thin sheets and ribbons that fold and snap via geometric instabilities, and to insect-scale robots that jump by cascading elastic instabilities. Taken together, these studies illustrate a unified perspective on how folds, snaps and jumps—observed in nature and recreated in the lab—can be transformed into design principles for building adaptive matter with shape-changing and motion-enabling capabilities.

Speaker

Dr. Mingchao Liu is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, UK. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2018 and his B.Eng. in Engineering Mechanics from Shandong University in 2013. Before joining Birmingham, he was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (2022–2023) and a Newton International Fellow at the University of Oxford, sponsored by the Royal Society (2018–2021). He was also an Endeavour Research Fellow at the University of Sydney in 2017. His contributions have been recognized by the Extreme Mechanics Letters Young Investigator Award (2023) and the University of Birmingham Founders’ Award for Outstanding Early-Career Academic (2025). Dr. Liu’s research explores slender-structure mechanics for adaptive structures, at the interface of solid mechanics, soft robotics, and intelligent systems.