NSCDS-1

1st Northeast Symposium on Computational Design of Structures
University of Connecticut

May 29, 2026

The sun rises on the UConn Storrs campus on Monday, July 28, 2025. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)
The sun rises on the UConn Storrs campus on Monday, July 28, 2025. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)

Program

9:00 9:30 PWE Lobby Registration and Breakfast
9:30 9:40 PWE 150 Welcome
9:40 9:52 PWE 150 Lingfeng Gao Stony Brook University Achieve More With Less: A Geometry-Driven Topology Optimization Framework for Designing Electromagnetic Systems
9:52 10:04 PWE 150 Prabin Pradhananga UConn Topology Optimization of Thermofluids Problems using Geometric Primitives
10:04 10:16 PWE 150 Chuan Luo UMass Dartmouth Multi-Length Scale and Multi-Material Topology Optimization for Additively Manufactured Structures
10:16 10:28 PWE 150 Sobhan  Honarvar Drexel University Machine Learning Surrogates for Homogenization and Buckling in Multiscale Topology Optimization
10:28 10:40 PWE 150 Shunyu Yin Brown University Design of a Specimen to Train Path-Dependent Deep Learning Material Models from a Single Uniaxial Test: Eliciting Strain Diversity Via Automatically Differentiable Elastoplastic Topology Optimization
10:40 11:00 PWE Lobby Break
11:00 11:12 PWE 150 Zane Schemmer MIT Designing for Fabrication: Manufacturing Constrained Topology Optimization for Concrete 3D Printed Structures
11:12 11:24 PWE 150 Anna Dalklint Harvard Shape Optimization of Pneumatic Soft Robots
11:24 11:36 PWE 150 Zhengkun Feng UConn  Explainable Feature-Steered Diffusion for Nature-Inspired Periodic Metamaterial Design from Stochastic Microstructures
11:36 11:48 PWE 150 Weijun Lei Stony Brook University Quantum-Clasical Topology Optimization Framework
12:00 1:00 ESB 121 Lunch
1:00 1:12 PWE 150 Samik Mukhopadhyay Brown University Differentiable Gradient-Based r-Adaptivity for 2-D Linear Elasticity
1:12 1:24 PWE 150 Jonathan Gorman Drexel University A Virtual Temperature Constrained Topology Optimization Framework for Bi-continuous Structural Battery Design
1:24 1:36 PWE 150 Nicolas Cuevas Carvajal UConn A topology optimization  method for the design of multi-component structures made of composite materials
1:36 1:48 PWE 150 Hoomin Lee MIT Shape optimization of 4D printed morphing structures for improved stability performance
1:48 2:00 PWE 150 Keerthivaasan Matheswaran UConn The Fifth Dimension of Wave Control: Exploring Temporal Modulation in Piezoelectric Metasurfaces
2:00 2:12 PWE Lobby Break
2:12 2:24 PWE 150 Bruno Alves Ribeiro Brown University Geometry-Enriched Token Representations for Scalable Neural Surrogates in Computational Mechanics
2:24 2:36 PWE 150 Mohammad Mundiwala UConn Probabilistic, System-level Cost Modeling Framework for Design for Remanufacturing
2:36 2:48 PWE 150 Ran Zhuang Stony Brook University Nonlinear Level-Set Topology Optimization of Hyperelastic Soft Robots with Design-Dependent Pneumatic Actuation
2:48 3:00 PWE 150 Kazuya Urata UConn A Minimum Thickness Constraint for Topology Optimization
3:00 3:15 ESB 121 Poster session setup
3:15 4:30 ESB 121 Poster Session
5:00 6:00 TBD Dinner (optional)

Location

Technical talks:
Pratt & Whitney Engineering (PWE) Building, Room 150
191 Auditorium Road, Storrs, CT 06269

Lunch and Poster Session:
Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 121
67 N Eagleville Rd, Storrs, CT 06269

Parking

The closest public parking (paid) is at the

North Parking Garage
2152 Hillside Rd, Storrs, CT 06268

Parking must be paid upon entry for the expected duration of the visit, using the PayByPhone or Flowbird apps. For more information, visit https://park.uconn.edu/visitors/storrs/.

Public Transportation

UConn can be reached by bus from Hartford’s Union Station through the 913 Hartford-Storrs Express Bus, which runs multiple times a day. Likewise, you can return to Union Station from UConn using the same bus route. See here the 913 weekday schedule. The approximate travel time is 1 h 4 min.

Lodging

For participants arriving the day before the event, the closest hotel is the Graduate Hotel in Storrs. There are other hotels in the vicinity, as well as in nearby towns.

Dinner

Dinner is optional and at the participant’s expense. A location is yet to be determined, and more specific plans will be communicated closer to the event when we have a firmer count of participants.

Program Format

Students will make a short presentation and prepare a poster of their research. The presentations will be 10-minutes long, with a 2-minute buffer for setup and, time-permitting, for one question from the audience. More time for questions/discussion will be provided during the poster session.

Presenters

You are expected to make a 10-minute presentation and a poster presentation. For the presentation, you can bring a laptop (with a USB-C, HDMI, or USB-A port); or, if you prefer, you can send us the presentation ahead of time and we will upload it to the room’s computer. The poster should be of 24” x 36” or smaller. There is no template for the presentation or for the poster. Time-permitting, we will entertain one question during the presentation, but the idea is that in-depth questions and discussions on your work happen during the poster session.

Local Organizing Committee

Julián Norato
Hongyi Xu
Horea Ilies
Morad Behadish
Jiong Tang
Chao Hu