Professor Markus J. Buehler and his students focus on understanding the mechanics of deformation and failure of biological and synthetic materials. By utilizing a computational materials science approach, their goal is to understand the mechanics of deformation and failure of nature’s construction materials at a fundamental level. The deformation and failure of engineering materials has been studied extensively, and the results have impacted our world by enabling the design of advanced materials, structures and devices. However, the mechanisms of materials failure in biological systems are not well understood and thus present an opportunity to institute a new paradigm of materials science at the interface of engineering and biology.

Proteins are the main building blocks of life—universally composed of merely about 20 distinct amino acids—realize a diversity of material properties that provide structural support, locomotion, energy and material transport, to ultimately yield multifunctional and mutable materials. Despite this functional complexity, the makeup of biological materials is often simple and has developed under extreme evolutionary pressures to facilitate a species' survival in adverse environments. As a result, materials in biology are efficiently created with low energy consumption, under simple processing conditions, and are exquisite as they often form from a few distinct, however abundantly available, repeating material constituents. Interestingly, these abundant material constituents (such as H-bonds) are often functionally inferior and extremely weak. Yet, materials such as silk, collagen in tendon and bone, or intermediate filament proteins that make up cells and hair are highly functional, mutable, and some even stronger than steel. It is therefore an elementary question how Nature can achieve such functional material properties in spite of severe environmental constraints.

By incorporating concepts from structural engineering, materials science and biology, Professor Buehler’s research has identified the core principles that link the fundamental atomistic-scale chemical structures to functional scales by understanding how biological materials achieve superior mechanical properties through the formation of hierarchical structures, via a merger of the concepts of structure and material. His work has demonstrated that the chemical composition of biology's construction materials plays a minor role in achieving functional properties. Rather, the way components are connected at distinct scales defines what material properties can be achieved, how they can be altered to meet functional requirements, and how they fail in disease states.

Similar to conventional engineering testing of materials (e.g. by exposing them to severe stress to break them) his research approach is based on using the study of materials failure as a tool to elucidate the design principles of how functional material properties are achieved, and how they are lost. He applies an experimentally validated multi-scale modeling and simulation approach that considers the structure-process-property paradigm of materials science and the architecture of proteins at multiple levels, from the atomistic (chemistry, molecular) scale up to the overall structural scale (material, tissue, spider web). His research has resulted in an engineering paradigm that facilitates the analysis and design of sustainable materials, starting from the molecular level, which mimic and exceed the properties of biological ones while being constructed from abundant and intrinsically poor material constituents.

Civil engineering is a broad subfield of engineering that focuses on strategies to develop and maintain the infrastructures to enable and evolve modern civilization. Environmental science is concerned with the complex interaction of synthetic structures with natural environments, and with development of environmentally friendly engineering concepts. In both fields, materials and their properties play an essential role for many applications. Its fundamental, theoretical and scientific understanding is the primary goal of the research carried out in this lab. For example, a better understanding of the failure mechanisms of materials has high impact in preventing failure of existing structures. The development of new materials may lead to better designs and could replace classical approaches, as for example by using environmentally friendly coatings, functional surfaces or new construction materials.

Vladimir Bulovic joined the MIT faculty in 2000 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. His research interests include studies of physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanodot composite thin films and structures, and development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices.

In 2004, Professor Bulovic was named as one of the TR100, the list of top young innovators in technology named annually by Technology Review magazine. In the same year, he also was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), the nation's highest honor for scientists and engineers at the beginning of their research careers.

Yet-Ming Chiang's research focuses on the design, synthesis and characterization of advanced inorganic materials and related devices.

Current topics include new cathode and anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, phase transformations in electroactive materials, electrochemical device design, electrochemical-to-mechanical energy conversion, self-assembling colloids, and the stability and defect chemical properties of interfaces in inorganic materials.

Lorna Gibson graduated in civil engineering from the University of Toronto in 1978 and obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1981. Between 1982 and 1984 she was an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of British Columbia. In 1984, she moved to MIT, where she is currently the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

Her research interests focus on the mechanics of materials with a cellular structure such as honeycombs and foams. Recent projects include the mechanics of fluid-filled open-cell foams for energy absorption; aerogels for thermal insulation; cellular materials in nature and in medicine; the mechanics of porous scaffolds for tissue engineering and the mechanical interactions of biological cells in tissue engineering scaffolds. 

She is the co-author of the books Cellular Solids: Structure and Properties, Metal Foams: A Design Guide and Cellular Materials in Nature and Medicine. At MIT, she has served as chair of the Committee on Women Faculty in the School of Engineering (1999 to 2001), chair of the Faculty (2005 to 2006) and as associate provost (2006 to 2008).

Linn W. Hobbs was the inaugural holder of the John F. Elliott Chair in Materials (1992 to 1999). Prior to joining MIT in 1981, he was associate professor of ceramic science at Case Western Reserve University and before that section leader in the Defects in Solids Group, Materials Development Division, U.K. Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.

Professor Hobbs attended Cranbrook School, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (1956-1962, valedictorian, 1962), and received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Northwestern University in 1966. He holds the DPhil degree from Oxford University (1972), where he was a Marshall Scholar. He continued at Oxford as NSF Postdoctoral Fellow and was elected a Research Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford (1972-1976). He was a visiting professor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1990 and a Coolidge visitor to Balliol College, Oxford in 1990, 2000 and 2002.

Hobbs maintains avid avocational interests in antiquarian horology, cartography, forte pianos, amateur radio (G5AIV, W1LWH), and oenology. He has taught a popular course on wine (In Vino Veritas) for 29 years at MIT and is the former wine steward of Wolfson College, Oxford, and wine columnist for Northern Ohio Live magazine.