Prof. Julián Norato has been honored as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Fellow grade of membership recognizes exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession and to ASME. The recognition was announced at the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences held in Washington D.C. in August, 2024.

Prof. Norato received the honor of being listed among the world’s top 2% of scientists in 2024 based on their publication record, according to the Stanford/Elsevier’s Top 2% Scientist Rankings.

Congratulations to Drs. David Cohen and Hongye Gu for successfully completing their Ph.D. degrees, and to Justin Guilfoyle and Ben Chassé for completing their M.S. degrees in 2025! This was a year of several graduations in our group–it is always great to see our students succeed and progress in their careers.

Julián Norato was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Society for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (ISSMO) at the 15th World Congress in Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (WCSMO) held in Cork, Ireland in June of 2023. He was subsequently elected as Treasurer of ISSMO.

Dr. Hollis Smith received the 2023 Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award for his paper on “Feature-Mapping Topology Optimization of a Wing-box with Geometric Constraints” at the 2023 AIAA SciTech Conference held at National Harbor, MD. Congratulations Hollis!

Former Ph.D. student Hollis Smith received in 2022 a prestigious NRC Research Associateship from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. The fellowship funds a postdoctoral position at the Air Force Research Laboratory, where Hollis is currently working. Congratulations Hollis!

Check out our webinar on topology optimization with discrete geometric components made of composite materials, presented by Structural Optimization Lab PhD candidate Hollis Smith (the presentation starts at minute 21). This webinar was part of the TOP Webinar organized by Delft University and the Technical University of Denmark.

Check out our webinar on topology optimization of multi-material lattices using geometry projection, based on the research work of Structural Optimization Lab alumna Hesaneh Kazemi (the presentation starts at minute 25). This webinar was part of the TOP Webinar organized by Delft University and the Technical University of Denmark.

A review paper on feature mapping methods for structural optimization written in collaboration with Dr. Fabian Wein (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität ) and Dr. Peter Dunning (University of Aberdeen) has been published online in Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.  In this review we identify a new category of methods for implementing and solving structural optimization problems that has emerged over the last 20 years, which we propose to call feature-mapping methods. The two defining aspects of these methods are that the design is parameterized by a high-level geometric description and that features are mapped onto a nonbody-fitted mesh for analysis.  You can see our paper here.

Join us on June 1st, 2020 for the first TOP Webinar organized by Delft University of Technology and sponsored by the International Society of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (ISSMO). This venue was created to share the latest research developments in the topology optimization community.

We are honored to have been invited to talk about our work on multi-material topology optimization of lattice structures in the first edition of the TOP webinar–join us if you can!