Evgueni Filipov, Ph.D.

Evgueni Filipov is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He leads the Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures Lab, where his research is focused on the structural mechanics of thin origami sheets. These unique geometric mechanics are explored and strategically tailored to create deployable, adaptable and functional systems at multiple scales. Through his work, Filipov has created reduced-order analytical models to simulate the mechanics and multiphysics of origami in various scenarios. His research has created origami designs that are stiff and lightweight to enable large-scale origami for applications in civil engineering and architecture. His work has also explored fabrication of functional micro-origami for sensing, robotics and testing of miniature matter.

Through the Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship, Filipov will enter the field of biomaterials, where he will explore regenerative infrastructure made by growing mycelium fungus within a knitted fabric scaffold. He plans to explore the growth of mycelium hyphae (root) networks and their mechanical interactions with substrate materials and the knitted fabrics. He will characterize the fundamental mechanics of these biohybrid systems as they grow, strengthen, fail and self-heal over their life cycle. Filipov will also create mechanics-based models to simulate, design and optimize the behavior of biohybrid systems. Ultimately this effort will create low-cost regenerative infrastructure with a small CO₂ footprint that can grow, strengthen, regrow and self-heal over time.