Integrated Calendar

Tessellated patterns, realistic animals, and curved polygonal shapes are all examples of the beautiful and amazing sculptures that can now be made using Origami, the art of paper folding. This art form has experienced tremendous growth with the advent of mathematical techniques that allow the basic structure of any new sculpture to be plotted out before any folding occurs, and laser cutter technologies that have made it easier to create folds in a variety of materials. In addition to their static properties, Origami sculptures can be designed to have a wide variety of mechanical properties making them responsive and tunable. Here, I will present a work-flow pipeline for materials design that uses Origami as a means of devising basic modular building blocks that can be assembled into larger-scale mechanical meta-materials. We start by working with origami artists to identify and generate candidate folding patterns for study. Next, we develop full-scale models using laser cut Mylar and paper sheets for rapid design, testing, and redesign. Mechanical measurements of these prototypes are combined with numerical simulations to identify the key relations between mechanical properties and geometric structure that give rise to the measured properties. Once a desirable pattern is identified, it is scaled down to a sub-mm tri-layer temperature-responsive polymer sheet using photolithographic techniques. The polymer sheet is capable of folding and unfolding as a function of temperature, and moreover, exhibits similar geometry-driven mechanical properties as the bench top prototypes. Stepping-back, we see this work-flow from design to synthesis as a conceptual tool that will help expedite origami-inspired materials.

Biography:

Dr. Sheena McGowan completed her PhD studies in Microbiology (2004, Monash University). She completed a post-doctoral research position in the laboratory of Prof James Whisstock, undertaking a complete change in research fields from her postgraduate training in Microbiology. In 2010, Dr. McGowan was awarded both an National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Award (relinquished) and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship. In 2011 she established her own laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University. She is a structural microbiologist with extensive experience in protein crystallography, molecular biology, biochemistry and biophysics. Her has a keen interest in the development of novel therapeutics to combat malaria, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the globe.