MEMS Seminar: Carmel Majidi (Carnegie Mellon), “Soft-Matter Engineering for Robotics and Wearables” 

Presenter: Carmel Majidi

Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS) Spring 2026 Distinguished Seminar Speaker Series welcomes Carmel Majidi (Carnegie Mellon) to present the MEMS Seminar, "Soft-Matter Engineering for Robotics and Wearables."

ABSTRACT: Progress in soft lithography and soft materials integration have led to extraordinary new classes of soft-matter sensors, circuits, and transducers. These material technologies are composed almost entirely out of soft matter - elastomers, gels, and conductive fluids like liquid metal - and represent the building blocks for machines and electronics that are soft, flexible, and stretchable. Because of their intrinsic compliance and elasticity, such devices can be incorporated into soft, biologically-inspired robots or be worn on the body and operate continuously without impairing natural body motion. In this talk, I will review recent contributions from my research group in creating soft multifunctional materials for wearable electronics and soft robotics using these emerging practices in "soft-matter engineering." In particular, I will focus on soft robots powered using shape memory materials and soft material architectures for highly stretchable digital electronics, wearable energy harvesting, and electrically-responsive actuation. This includes material systems with novel combinations of soft elastomers, self-healing polymers, liquid crystal elastomer (LCE), eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn) liquid metal alloy, and various filler materials (e.g. Ag flakes, MXenes). In addition to describing the synthesis and properties of these materials, I will highlight several systems-level implementations that demonstrate their practical use in robotics, bioelectronics, and human-computer interaction.

BIO: CARMEL MAJIDI is the Clarence H. Adamson Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Soft Machines Lab. His lab is dedicated to the discovery of novel material architectures that allow machines and electronics to be soft, elastically deformable, and biomechanically compatible. Currently, his research is focused on modeling, design, and control of soft robotic systems as well as the development of multifunctional materials that exhibit unique combinations of mechanical,
electrical, and thermal properties and can function as "artificial" skin, nervous tissue, and muscle.

Contact

Spaulding, Amy
919-660-5310
amy.spaulding@duke.edu