Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Resident Fellowship Year: 2022-2023

Faculty Profile: Mostafa Yourdkhani

Research Focus: Decarbonization of the U.S. transportation and energy industries requires developing lighter materials and structures while maintaining or improving the cost and efficiencies of current systems. While fiber-reinforced composite materials offer lightweight solutions for developing the next-generation of sustainable technologies, they are currently manufactured via energy-inefficient, time-consuming, and costly processes that have not changed over the past few decades. Additionally, at their end of life, composite products are typically disposed in landfill due to their poor and challenging recyclability, raising major environmental concerns especially when considering the large volume of composites decommissioned each year. This Resident Fellow project will explore potential solutions for developing new materials and processing conditions for rapid, energy-efficient manufacture of recyclable, high-performance composite materials to enable sustainable and affordable production of lightweight composite structures.