Bending Boundaries in Engineering

Stroke is a time-critical condition requiring rapid intervention to restore blood flow and minimize brain damage. However, access to specialized stroke centers is often delayed, especially in rural or underserved areas. This talk presents a novel approach using magnetically steered endovascular robots, enabling remote specialists to perform precise interventions without patient transfer. By leveraging teleoperation and wireless magnetic navigation, these miniature robotic catheters can be guided through complex vasculature in real time. The technology has the potential to decentralize stroke care, reduce treatment delays, and transform the accessibility and efficiency of neurovascular interventions.

Metamaterials are artificial materials that can exhibit superior and unusual mechanical properties thanks to carefully crafted architectures at the mesoscale: a structural level well above the atomic scale but well below the macroscopic scale. Embedding such metamaterials with multistable elements (having several stable states) provides them with reconfigurability, allowing for a reversible change in shape and properties. In this talk, we will discuss two types of reconfigurable metamaterials studied in our lab: one that exploits the multistability of bendy straws and another that uses magnets to imitate the behavior of magnetically ordered materials.