Hamed Shahsavan

Hamed Shahsavan is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering - Nanotechnology from University of Waterloo in 2017. Before joining University of Waterloo at 2020, he was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. During his PhD studies, he was a visiting scholar in the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University, Ohio, USA. During his post-doctoal fellowship, he was a visiting scientist in the Smart Photonic Materials (SPM) research group at the University of Tampere in Finland. Hamed's current research interests revolve around the development of a variety of soft, stimuli-responsive, and programmable materials. In addition, he is interested in emerging fabrication strategies for the manufacturing of small-scale mobile robots and devices, such as direct laser writing, and micro-scale 4D printing.

• Smart Polymers
• Liquid Crystal Elastomers
• Soft Robotic Materials
• Micro Additive Manufacturing
• 4D Printing
• Surface and Interfacial Engineeirng

• 2017, Doctorate Chemical Engineering (Nanotechnology), University of Waterloo, Canada
• 2012, Master of Applied Science Chemical Engineering (Nanotechnology), University of Waterloo, Canada
• 2009, Bachelor of Science (BSc) Chemical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran

• CHE 241 - Materials Science and Engineering
  • Taught in 2024
• NE 335 - Soft Nanomaterials
  • Taught in 2024

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Shahsavan, Hamed and Aghakhani, Amirreza and Zeng, Hao and Guo, Yubing and Davidson, Zoey S. and Priimagi, Arri and Sitti, Metin, Bioinspired underwater locomotion of light-driven liquid crystal gels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5125, 2020
• Davidson, Zoey S. and Shahsavan, Hamed and Aghakhani, Amirreza and Guo, Yubing and Hines, Lindsey and Xia, Yu and Yang, Shu and Sitti, Metin, Monolithic shape-programmable dielectric liquid crystal elastomer actuators, Science Advances, , 2019
• Guo, Yubing* and Shahsavan, Hamed* and Davidson, Zoey S* and Sitti, Metin (*Equal Contributions), Precise control of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal alignment through surface topography, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 36110, 2019
• Yu, Li and Shahsavan, Hamed and Rivers, Geoffrey and Zhang, Che and Si, Pengxiang and Zhao, Boxin, Programmable 3D Shape Changes in Liquid Crystal Polymer Networks of Uniaxial Orientation, Advanced Functional Materials, 1802809, 2018
• Shahsavan, Hamed and Salili, Seyyed Muhammad and Jákli, Antal and Zhao, Boxin, Thermally Active Liquid Crystal Network Gripper Mimicking the Self-Peeling of Gecko Toe Pads, Advanced Materials, 1604021, 2017
• Jahed, Zeinab and Shahsavan, Hamed and Verma, Mohit S and Rogowski, Jacob L and Seo, Brandon B and Zhao, Boxin and Tsui, Ting Y and Gu, Frank X and Mofrad, Mohammad RK, Bacterial networks on hydrophobic micropillars, ACS Nano, 675, 2017
• Shahsavan, Hamed and Salili, Seyyed Muhammad and Jákli, Antal and Zhao, Boxin, Smart Muscle-Driven Self-Cleaning of Biomimetic Microstructures from Liquid Crystal Elastomers, Advanced Materials, 6828, 2015
• Shahsavan, Hamed and Zhao, Boxin, Bioinspired Functionally Graded Adhesive Materials: Synergetic Interplay of Top Viscous–Elastic Layers with Base Micropillars, Macromolecules, 353, 2014
• Shahsavan, Hamed and Zhao, Boxin, Conformal Adhesion Enhancement on Biomimetic Microstructured Surfaces, Langmuir, 7732, 2011
• Guo, Yubing and Shahsavan, Hamed and Sitti, Metin, 3D Microstructures of Liquid Crystal Networks with Programmed Voxelated Director Fields, Advanced Materials, 2002753, 0000

• Researchers create plant-based microrobots for medical use
• Prof honoured for one of 2020’s top research papers