Our Team
In 2018, after 5 years spent at the Universite Grenoble-Alpes (France) and at Imperial College London (UK), I returned to ETH Zurich, the university where I have obtained my doctorate degree in 2013. Although my undergraduate studies were in engineering and the PhD in seismology, I directed my research towards the study of mechanical waves in complex media. My interest lies in designing mechanical structures and new materials with an architected microstructure that have special dynamic properties (for instance wave amplification, steering and damping). Because waves and vibrations are everywhere, my projects span from the micro to the geophysical scale. Numerical modelling and lab experiments are my daily bread and butter!
Henrik received his M.Sc. degree from ETH Zürich, TU Delft and RWTH Aachen after completing the IDEA Leagues joint masters program in Applied Geophysics with a thesis investigating the robustness of Marchenko focusing and seismic interferometry. In December 2016 Henrik joined the “Exploration and Environmental Geophysics” group at ETH Zürich as a doctoral student. His research focused on the physical implementation of elastic immersive wave experimentation, a fundamentally new approach to seismic wave experimentation, linking a physical seismic experiment with a virtual, numerical environment. After obtaining his doctoral degree, Henrik joined the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH Zürich as a PostDoc in March 2021. His research transitioned to energy harvesting utilising metasurfaces, wavefield focusing and active boundary control. He further aims to apply the concept of immersive boundary conditions to control laboratory experiments conducted on metasurfaces by e.g. introducing periodic boundary conditions.
Dr. Henrik R. Thomsen
Bao Zhao has received his B.E. degree on Marine Engineering from Harbin Engineering University in 2017 and his M.Sc. degree on Electronics Engineering from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2020, China. In January 2021, he joined the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring as a PhD student at ETH Zürich. His current research interests include energy harvesting, power electronics, mechatronics, and metamaterials.
PhD Candidate Bao Zhao
Director of the UMI Abraham de Moivre; a joint laboratory between the French CNRS and Imperial College London, establishing a long-term partnership which serves as a hub for collaborations between the French and UK mathematics communities. Co-director of the UK Acoustics Network (over 750 members www.acoustics.ac.uk) he has substantial experience of running a scientific network nationally including an annual conference, summer schools for early career researchers and special interest groups (including one on acoustic metamaterials that he leads). Co-author of one of the first books on Acoustic Metamaterials, author of over 200 research articles, an h-index of 46 (Google Scholar), PI of UK EPSRC Mathematical Fundamentals of Metamaterials at 2.5M GBP interdisciplinary grant. Craster is also a member of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial College and has had over two decades of active collaboration with Engineering.
Raffaele Ardito is associate professor of Structural Mechanics at the Politecnico di Milano. He got the M.Sc. in 2000 and the PhD in 2004 at the Politecnico di Milano in Structural Engineering. Since 2004 to 2006 he has been research fellow at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, joining an international research group with focus on solid mechanics in cryogenic conditions. In 2007, he started working on the topic of multi-physics simulations for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). He spent, in 2008 and 2010, two periods of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as visiting scientist. He is co-inventor of four patents, co-author of the scientific book "Mechanics of Microsystems", co-author of more than 100 publications on structural mechanics and numerical methods. His scientific interests are theoretical, computational and experimental aspects of multi-physics behavior of smart material and structures.
Prof. Raffaele Ardito
Jacopo M. De Ponti has received his M.Sc. on Structural Engineering (110/110 cum Laude) from Politecnico di Milano in 2017, with a thesis on auxetic metamaterials as tunable wavefilters. In November 2017, he joined the Chair of Structural, Seismic and Geotechnical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering as an interdisciplinary PhD student. In April 2021 he obtained the doctoral degree with a thesis on graded elastic metamaterials for energy harvesting. His research is focused on metamaterials and smart materials for applications in microsystems, sensing and energy harvesting. He is involved in collaborative research activities between Politecnico di Milano, Imperial College London (visiting PhD student in January-June 2019), and ETH Zürich about energy harvesting devices based on the Rainbow effect.
Dr. Jacopo M. De Ponti
Federico Maspero received the M.Sc. degree in Electronics Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2015. In 2018, he received a Ph.D. diploma in Nanotechnology and Nanoelectronics from Université Grenoble Alpes. He has been working in the development of inertial microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors, both gyroscopes and accelerometers, and the related electronics. He is currently involved in the development and fabrication of MEMS devices at PoliFAB laboratories of Politecnico di Milano.
Dr. Federico Maspero
Luca Iorio has received his M.Sc. on Materials and Nanotecnology (110/110) from Politecnico di Milano in 2021, with a thesis on metamaterials for energy harvesting. In November 2021, he joined the Chair of Structural, Seismic and Geotechnical Engineering as a PhD student. His research is focused on metamaterials and smart materials for applications in microsystems, sensing and energy harvesting.
PhD Candidate Luca Iorio
Michele Rosso received his M.Sc. in Structural Engineering at Politecnico di Milano with a Master’s thesis on piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting at MEMS scale for industrial applications in collaboration with Huawei Technologies. He is currently a PhD Student at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Politecnico di Milano. His research activity is focused on vibration energy harvesting, multiphysics systems, nonlinear dynamics, structural mechanics.
PhD Candidate Michele Rosso
Dr. Andrea Di Matteo
is the manager of the financed programs of the AMS (Analog MEMS and Sensor) division of STMicroelectronics Italia. He is WP leader and exploitation manager of the INSPEX project in H2020 ICT-03 (2019-2019) and SAMENTI ICT-07 (2019-2021) as well as he in charge for STMicroelectronics in several European projects, H2020 and ECSEL. He is also the national coordinator of various national funded projects in the frame of PON MIUR and MISE. Furthermore, he is responsible for the team for the piezoelectric characterization and reliability of PiezoMEMS devices at the R&D Naples's Labs of STMicroelectronics. He has successfully led many development projects in different complex business environments and within multicultural teams that have resulted in numerous publications, proceedings, and patents. Finally, he is member of the Advisor Board of the National District to Polymer and Composite Materials IMAST Scarl (6 Universities, National Research Centres, ENEA and Big Companies ).
Tryfon Antonakakis is co-founder and CEO of Multiwave Technologies AG. He also serves as Chief Technology Ocer leading the companys R&D portfolio. Between 2013-2014, Tryfon worked as a quantitative analyst at 80 Capital, a London-based algorithmic hedge fund and a post-doctoral research associate in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London. Tryfon work as a mechanical engineer at CERN from 2010-2013. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London, where he was awarded the Yael Dawker Centenary Prize. He holds a Masters degree and bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and McGill University respectively.
