Principal Investigator

Short Biography

Dennis M. Kochmann is Professor of Mechanics and Materials in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. He served as Head of the Institute of Mechanical Systems from 2018-2020 (and as its Deputy Head from 2020-2022), and he was Deputy Head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering from 2019-2023. Since 2022, he serves on the ETH Research Commission.

Professor Kochmann received his Diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) in Mechanical Engineering/Applied Mechanics from Ruhr-University Bochum and a Master's degree in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he spent one year as a Fulbright fellow. From Ruhr-University Bochum he also received his Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2009. After his doctorate, he first moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Engineering Physics, after which he went on to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in September 2010 as a postdoctoral scholar in Aerospace and as a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In September 2011, he joined the faculty of Caltech's Aerospace Department (GALCIT) in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science as Assistant Professor of Aerospace and in November 2016 became Professor of Aerospace. He has been Full Professor of Mechanics and Materials at ETH Zurich since April 2017.

Professional Affiliations and Service

• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME):
  Recording Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division (2012-2015)
  Newsletter Editor of the Applied Mechanics Division (2015-2018)
• Society of Engineering Science (SES):
  Member of the Board of Directors (since 2020)
• Swiss Community for Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (SWICCOMAS):
  Vice-Chair (since 2022)
  
• United States Association for Computational Mechanics:
  Vice-Chair of the Technical Thrust Area on Nanotechnology and Lower-Scale Phenomena (2015-2019)
• International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM)
• Member of the European Mechanics of Materials Conference (EMMC) Committee

Editorial Boards

• Associate Editor for ASME Applied Mechanics Reviews
• Associate Editor for Archive of Applied Mechanics
• Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Solids and Structures
  
• Editorial Board Member of Computational Methods in Science and Technology
• Editorial Board Member of Material Design & Processing Communications
• Advisory Board Member of Computational Mechanics
  
• Advisory Board Member of the Journal of Theoretical, Computational and Applied Mechanics
• Editorial Board Member of Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures (2018-2022)

Honors and Awards

• IACM John Argyris Award 2022
  
• Golden Owl 2021 (awarded by VSETH)
  
• ASME Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award 2018
• ERC Consolidator Grant 2017
• Caltech Graduate Student Council's Teaching Award 2013-2014
• Richard von Mises Prize 2013
• NSF CAREER Award 2013
• IUTAM Bureau Prize in Solid Mechanics 2012
• Caltech Graduate Student Council's Teaching Award 2011-2012
• Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Award (ASME's AMD) 2011
• Feodor Lynen Fellowship (Alexander v. Humboldt Foundation), 2010 - 2011
• Fellow, Ruhr-University Research School, 2007 - 2009
• Adam Opel Price 2007 (best graduate degree in ME)
• Fulbright Fellowship, 2005 - 2006
• ThyssenKrupp Student Award 2005 (best undergraduate degree in ME)
• Scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, 2002 - 2006
• Award for the Best High School Graduate 2001, Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium

Conference Plenary Lectures

• Making positive use of mechanical instability in viscoelastic composites (Richard von Mises Prize Lecture), GAMM Annual Meeting 2013, Novi Sad, Serbia, March 19, 2013.
• Linking Mesoscale Plasticity to Atomistics (plenary lecture), XIII International Conference on Computational Plasticity - external page COMPLAS 2015, Barcelona, Spain, September 1, 2015. external page Watch online
  
• Coarse-grained atomistics via meshless and mesh-based quasicontinuum techniques (plenary lecture), IV International Conference on Particle-Based Methods - external page PARTICLES 2015, Barcelona, Spain, September 29, 2015. external page Watch online
  
• On the electro-mechanically-coupled kinetics of microstructural evolution in ferroelectric ceramics (keynote lecture), external page 15th GAMM-Seminar on Microstructures, Paris, France, January 22-23, 2016.
• To switch or not to switch - bridging across scales in ferroelectric ceramics (plenary lecture), external page 16th European Mechanics of Materials Conference (EMMC), Nantes, France, March 26-28, 2018.
  
• Mechanical metamaterials (plenary lecture), external page GAMM Annual Meeting 2019, Vienna, Austria, February 18-22, 2019.
  
• Mechanical metamaterials: from stretchable ceramics to waves in polymers (plenary lecture), external page 42nd Solid Mechanics Conference, Wroclaw, Poland, September 7-10, 2020. (Cancelled due to Covid-19)
• Advances in maximum-entropy-based meshless methods (plenary lecture), VII International Conference on Particle-Based Methods - external page PARTICLES 2021, Hamburg, Germany, October 8-10, 2021.
• Architected materials as a playground for homogenization (semi-plenary), 8th European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering - external page ECCOMAS 2022, Oslo, Norway, June, 5-9, 2022.
• Microstructure of ferroelectric ceramics: simulation meets experiment (plenary lecture), 24th International Conference on Computer Methods in Mechanics & the 42nd Solid Mechanics Conference - external page SolMech 2022, Świnoujście, Poland, September 5-8, 2022.

Other lecture recordings available online:

• Architected Materials, SwissMech Seminar, May 12, 2022. external page Watch online
• Breaking with Symmetry in Architected Cellular Materials, KTH Solid Mechanics Keynote Seminar, March 16, 2021. external page Watch online
  
• When structures become (meta-)materials, Conferencia Online de Ingenieria Mecanica (COIM 2020), June 17, 2020. external page Watch online
  
• Defying the limits of computation: modeling materials & structures across scales, Inaugural Lecture, ETH Zürich, November 2, 2017. Watch online
• Instability-driven nonlinear dynamics: from structural transitions to snapping structures, Warren Lecture, University of Minnesota, April 29, 2016. external page Watch online
  
• When nano meets macro - conceptual and computational challenges of coarse-grained atomistics, EU Regional School - RWTH Aachen, Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science (AICES), Aachen, Germany, June 24, 2014. external page Watch online
• Everyone starts small - where metals learn to behave, Richard C. Biedebach - Ernest C. Watson Lecture, Caltech, Pasadena, February 12, 2014, available on external page itunes (see the item released 02/27/14).