Venerdì 14 Febbraio si terrà un seminario presso l’aula Grandori (Edificio 4) dalle ore 11:30 dal titolo “Auxeticity,hierarchy and imperfections in mechanics of living matter “.

Il seminario sarà tenuto dal Prof. Massimiliano Fraldi, professor of Mechanics of Structures, Nonlinear Mechanics and Biomechanics at the University of Napoli Federico II, Italy.

Abstract:

Mechanics of continua and structures is playing an indispensable role for deeply understanding how growth, remodeling and morphogenesis in living matter do all interact with internal stresses and uid ow at the macro-scale to optimize selected tissues and organs functions. This coupling is often crucial to unveil complex underlying mechanisms originating from cascades of events occurring at lower scales. Cell-cell competitive dynamics incorporating chemomechanical feedback can be for instance projected at the continuum level and helpfully coupled with elasticity and mass balance equations in order to obtain faithful outcomes about growth and to predict cells fate as well. Through some selected paradigmatic examples of biological systems, we show how auxeticity, elastic instability, microstructure hierarchy and even geometrical imperfections may all contribute to shed light on still unclear mechanobiological phenomena, including tissue differentiation, regeneration, wound healing and cancer diseases. We also highlight the reciprocal benets of integrating mechanics and biology for envisioning new therapeutic strategies for precise medicine and designing new classes of bio-inspired, self-repairing “active” composites. This is a joint work with contributions by A.R. Carotenuto, A. Cutolo, S.Palumbo, and N.M. Pugno.

Speaker’s bio:

MASSIMILIANO FRALDI (magna cum laude and PhD in Structural Engineering at University of Napoli Federico II, post-doc and visiting researcher at Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University, and Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at City College of New York, USA) is full professor of Mechanics of Structures, Nonlinear Mechanics and Biomechanics at the University of Napoli Federico II, Italy, where he is head of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Structural Composites (SCIC) and the Laboratory of Integrated Mechanics and Imaging for Testing and Simulation of bio-systems (LIMITS), delegate of the Rector for the Infrastructure for Research in Oncology, member of the Task Force on Quantitative and Computational Biology and the Doctoral College of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering and Seismic Risk at the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture (DIST). Since 2022, he is visiting professor at the LPENS – Department of Physics, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (France). He is/has been PI, co-PI and/or Research Unit coordinator for many funded research projects, being responsible in the last five years for a personal contribution of about 2.5 million euros. He also served as scientific consultant for public research institutes and international R&D departments of leading companies working in the fields of aerospace and mechanical engineering and pipelines, and as technical expert for mechanics of structures for the Court/Judicial Authority as well. In the last years, he has been invited speaker, among other, at University of Oxford, “Mathematics and Mechanics: Natural Philosophy in the 21st Century”, summer school on Advances in Functional Materials organized by the “Ettore Majorana Foundation”, INdAM Meeting on “Active materials: from mechanobiology to smart devices” in Cortona (Italy), International Conference on Waves and Stability in Continuous Media (WASCOM), Institute Isaac Newton of Cambridge, UK, and XXVI International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Daegu, Korea, in 2024. He was co-organizer of the NSF-supported USA-Italy workshop “Biomechanics Outlining New Disciplines” (U&I:BOND) and Chair of the XXVI Congress of the Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (AIMETA), in 2024. He is author of more than 120 scientific papers published on international journals, whose themes cover a broad range of topics, from theory of elasticity and analytical methods in stability, plasticity and dynamics to optimization of composites and mechanics of living systems. At the University of Napoli, he is group leader, coordinating the research activities of six young researchers and several PhD students and post-docs.