Hamed Shahsavan

Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering

Research interests: polymers science and engineering, liquid crystalline materials, programmable and smart materials, small-scale and soft robotics, 3D and 4D micro-additive manufacturing, micro/nanotechnology, surfaces and interfaces

Biography

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.

Education

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

Hamed Shahsavan

Research

Throughout the evolution, living organisms have developed a so-called "embodied intelligence", by which they have mastered the art of survival. Such evolutionary success in many of small-scale soft-bodied organisms is rooted in their adaptation and response to environmental cues through a chain of sensing and actuating reactions. These reactions manifest themselves in various shape-transformation, locomotion, and propulsion mechanisms facilitated by the soft, anisotropic, and stimuli-responsive nature of their body.

Small-scale bioinspired, soft robots and devices are deemed as artificial analogs of such organisms that can perform predetermined tasks. The design, fabrication, manipulation, and the application of small-scale soft robots and devices are elements of a new interdisciplinary paradigm linking several research fields, such as materials science, synthetic biology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Professor Shahsavan's group aims to address particular sets of challenges in the design and development of small-scale, bioinspired soft robots with focus on three main research directions: 1) Development of Smart Materials, 2) Small-scale Fabrication and Assembly, and 3) Responsive Soft Robots and Devices. Each of these research themes are described in full on his website.

Publications
  • 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, 117(10), 2020, 5125 - 5133
    Link
  • 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, 5(11), 2019
    Link
  • 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, 11(39), 2019, 36110 - 36117
    Link
  • 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, 28(37), 2018
    Link
  • 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, 11(1), 2017, 675 - 683
    Link
  • 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, 29(3), 2017
    Link
  • 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, 27(43), 2015, 6828 - 6833
    Link
  • Shahsavan, Hamed and Zhao, Boxin, Bioinspired Functionally Graded Adhesive Materials: Synergetic Interplay of Top Viscous-Elastic Layers with Base Micropillars, Macromolecules, 47(1), 2014, 353 - 364
  • Shahsavan, Hamed and Zhao, Boxin, Conformal Adhesion Enhancement on Biomimetic Microstructured Surfaces, Langmuir, 27(12), 2011, 7732 - 7742
  • Guo, Yubing and Shahsavan, Hamed and Sitti, Metin, 3D Microstructures of Liquid Crystal Networks with Programmed Voxelated Director Fields, Advanced Materials
    Link
  • Guo, Yubing and Shahsavan, Hamed and Sitti, Metin, Microscale Polarization Color Pixels from Liquid Crystal Elastomers, Advanced Optical Materials
    Link

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