We are delighted to welcome three outstanding researchers who have joined the Computational Mechanics Group this year. Together they bring complementary expertise spanning fracture mechanics of soft materials, molecular dynamics, and AI-driven modelling — and will push the boundaries of computational mechanics across several exciting frontiers.
On July 14th, Angela Fajardo Lacave successfully defended her doctoral thesis titled “Multiscale modelling of short fiber‑reinforced polymers through a multi‑cohesive phase‑field model for fracture.” Her work tackles one of the central challenges in predicting failure in injection‑molded polymer components: the hidden, direction‑dependent fiber architecture that governs how these materials break.