Nikola Bosnjak

Biosketch:
I am conducting my research at Cornell University as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Mechanics for Material Design group. Prior to this appointment, I obtained my PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where I served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Laboratory for the Mechanics of Advanced Materials.

The wider scope of my research involves mechanics of materials, with a particular interest in the coupled multiphysics behavior of polymers and polymer gels. Polymeric materials are ubiquitous, from diverse biomedical applications to sensors and actuators in soft robotics. To bridge the gap between the growing demand for polymeric materials, structures and devices, and the lack of predictive capabilities, I focus my research on developing experimentally motivated multiphysics simulation tools. Towards this goal, my approach includes:

(1) characterizing material response under various stimuli
(2) developing and calibrating multiphysics constitutive models
(3) implementing and verifying the models for use in numerical simulations
(4) validating the developed numerical tools

More information about my work can be found under the Research tab.