Flavia Libonati is a young faculty member at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Polytechnic University of Milan and a visiting research scholar at MIT. Her research focuses on the origin of toughening and failure mechanisms of biological structural materials, such as bone and nacre, from molecular to engineering scale and on the design of novel composites. She uses a material-by-design approach, combining Nature and engineering principles to improve the mechanical properties of materials, achieving an optimal combination of them. Drawing inspiration from Nature and adopting different innovative techniques, from 3D-printing to composite laminations, she has developed various bioinspired materials. She also has previous experience in damage assessment of composite materials.
Awards:
1. Outstanding Paper Award, 2013 ASME Global Congress on Nano Engineering for Medicine and Biology, awarded for Flavia Libonati, Arun K. Nair, Laura Vergani, and Markus J. Buehler. Effects of oim-mutations on the mechanical behavior of collagen-hydroxyapatite nanocomposites. Paper Number NEMB2013-93310. Proceedings of the 2013 ASME Global Congress on Nano Engineering for Medicine and Biology, February 4-6, 2013, Boston, MA, USA.
2. MISTI seed funds: “Bone-Inspired Materials” (2014-2016)
3. MISTI seed funds: “Tailor-made composites: using engineering design&manufacturing, modeling and experiments to create new functional materials” (2017-2019)
In the news:
http://www.advancedsciencenews.com/bone-inspired-materials-design/
https://www.galileonet.it/2016/06/nuovi-materiali-ispirati-alle-ossa/
https://cee.mit.edu/bone-inspired-materials-by-design/
Publications:
[1] F. Libonati, A.K. Nair, L. Vergani, M.J. Buehler, Fracture mechanics of hydroxyapatite single crystals under geometric confinement, Journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials 20 (2013) 184-191.
[2] F. Libonati, A.K. Nair, L. Vergani, M.J. Buehler, Mechanics of collagen–hydroxyapatite model nanocomposites, Mechanics Research Communications 58(0) (2014) 17-23.
[3] A.K. Nair, F. Libonati, Z. Qin, L. Dimas, M.J. Buehler, Mechanical and interface properties of biominerals: Atomistic to coarse-grained modeling, in: E. DiMasi, L.B. Gower (Eds.), Biomineralization Handbook: Characterization of biomineral and biomimetic materials, CRC Press2014, pp. 337-351.
[4] F. Libonati, G.X. Gu, Z. Qin, L. Vergani, M.J. Buehler, Bone-Inspired Materials by Design: Toughness Amplification Observed Using 3D Printing and Testing, Advanced Engineering Materials 18(8) (2016) 1354–1363. – press release and journal cover
[5] F. Libonati and M.J. Buehler, Advanced structural materials by bioinspiration, Advanced Engineering Materials, 2017 – accepted/in press. – press release