Horacio Dante Espinosa Group Leader

Professor Espinosa received his Civil Engineering degree in December of 1981. From 1982 to 1985 he practiced the profession by designing foundations of multi-story buildings, reinforced concrete plates, beams, columns used in multi-story buildings, and shells used in elevated reservoirs. Another activity he pursued was the design of city pavement and draining systems. In September of 1985 he started graduate studies at the Polytechnic of Milan until completion of a Master Degree in Structural Engineering. In August of 1987 he moved to the USA and started graduate studies at Brown University. In January of 1992 he joined the faculty at Purdue University in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Since January of 2000, he has been associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. MORE

Ravi Agrawal Ph.D. Student

Ravi Agrawal was born in Bareilly near New Delhi, India. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree (Mechanical Engineering) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2002. He has worked in General Electric's Aircraft Engine division from 2002 - 2004, where his work involved doing stress analysis and optimizing geometries of various components of turbines/compressors of a jet engine. Ravi joined Prof. Espinosa's group in the fall of 2004, pursuing research in the area of conductive AFM and size scale plasticity.

Dr. David Grégoire Post-Doctoral Fellow

Dr David Grégoire was born in Nancy, in the east of France. After receiving his Bachelor and Master in Mechanical Engineering from the ENS Cachan (France), he moved to INSA-Lyon (France) to start a PhD under the supervision of Pr. Combescure and Dr. Maigre. After his PhD completion (October, 2008), he joined the research group of Pr. Espinosa at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral fellow thanks to a grant from the French Ministry of Defense (DGA/D4S - 0860021). His main research studies concern the failure of materials trough different aspects: the dynamic brittle fracture, the mechanics and fracture behavior of biomaterials and bioinspired materials and the fluid-structure interaction and failure of composite sandwich panels submitted to underwater blast loads.

Dr. Felix Latourte Post-Doctoral Fellow

Felix was born in Ris Orangis near Paris, France. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, France, in 2002. He started his graduate studies in the Université Montpellier 2, France in 2003 in Prof. Andre Chrysochoos group. He received there a Master in Science in 2004 and a Ph.D. in 2007 and was focused on the identification of heterogeneous inelastic materials constitutive parameters when full field kinematics measurements are available. In January 2008 he joined Prof Espinosa's group at Northwestern University. He is involved in the dynamic behavior of materials and structures at the Dynamic Inelasticity Laboratory, and he is also studying the behavior of nacre and its potential to inspire the design of bioinspired nanocomposites.

Mark Locascio Ph.D. Student

Mark Locascio was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. He received his Bachelor of Science in engineering from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His primary areas of study were control systems and VLSI design. While at HMC, Mark collaborated on a number of research projects, including work with Intel and the Oregon Medical Laser Center. He joined the Espinosa group in September, 2005 and has since begun work on the atomistic modeling of carbon nanotube failure.

Owen Loh Ph.D. Student

Owen was born in Princeton Junction, New Jersey and grew up in Okemos, Michigan. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2005. As an undergraduate, he worked as a research assistant in the Locomotion in Mechanical and Biological Systems (LIMBS) Laboratory where he designed biologically-inspired sensors for mobile robots. He joined the Espinosa group at Northwestern University in 2005 to pursue PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His current research interests include development of large-scale arrays of carbon nanotube-based devices for sensing and electronic applications and evaluation of failure modes common to this class of nanoelectromechanical systems.

Bei Peng Ph.D. student

Bei Peng was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Beijing, China, in 1999. In the fall of 1999, he was granted a full fellowship to pursue a doctorate degree at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. However, after one year's studying at the Precision Instruments Department of Tsinghua University he decided to transfer to Northwestern University and pursuing a Ph.D. degree. He received his master degree of Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2003. In the summer of 2004, he received an international student competition award for advanced materials research in Brazil. His interests of research are micro and nano mechanics, MEMS and NEMS devices.