Dr. Edvard Bruun joined the faculty in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in August 2024. He completed his Ph.D. (2024) in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. Dr. Bruun is also a licensed professional engineer in Canada and worked as a structural engineer at Arup before pursuing his Ph.D.

Dr. Bruun’s research centers on robotic automation for the assembly and disassembly of large-scale building components. He develops computational methods to design geometrically complex yet material-efficient structures that demand robotic fabrication for their construction. By harnessing the spatial precision and multifunctionality of cooperative multi-robot systems, Dr. Bruun coordinates multiple industrial robotic arms to execute intricate tasks. These include providing temporary structural support and facilitating the addition, removal, or repurposing of building components in collaboration with human operators.

Dr. Graham joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in January 2023. She completed a President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgia Tech, and completed her MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering and Science at Stanford University. Prior to that, she received her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in Chemical Engineering.

Dr. Graham’s research interests focus on the fate and transport of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes in the built and natural environments. Her previous research projects have focused on wastewater-based epidemiology, quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA), and the removal of pathogens in green stormwater infrastructure. Her lab aims to use molecular biology, microbiology, and modeling tools to address issues of water, climate, and health domestically and internationally.

Professor Yavari joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2005. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1997. He continued his studies at The George Washington University where he obtained an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2000. He then moved to Pasadena, CA and obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Applied Mechanics option with minor in Mathematics) from the California Institute of Technology in 2005. Professor Yavari is a Fellow of the Society of Engineering Science and a member of the American Academy of Mechanics.

Professor Yavari's interests are in developing systematic theories of discrete mechanics for crystalline solids with defects. Defects play a crucial role in determining the properties of materials. The development of atomistic methods including density functional theory, bond-order potentials and embedded atom potentials has enabled a detailed study of such defects. However, much of the work is numerical and often with ad hoc boundary/far-field conditions. Specifically, a systematic method for studying these discrete yet non-local problems is lacking. Design in small scales requires solving inverse problems and this is not possible with purely numerical techniques. From a mechanics point of view, defective crystals are modeled as discrete boundary-value problems. The challenging issues are extending the existing techniques from solid state physics for non-periodic systems, new developments in the theory of vector-valued partial difference equations, existence and uniqueness of solutions of discrete boundary-value problems and their symmetries, etc. The other efforts in this direction are understanding the geometric structure of discrete mechanics and its link with similar attempts in the physics and computational mechanics literatures and investigating the rigorous continuum limits of defective crystals

Yang Wang joined Georgia Tech faculty in 2007. With a B.E. and an M.S. degree in civil engineering awarded by Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, he received a Ph.D. in civil engineering at Stanford University in 2007, as well as an M.S. in electrical engineering. Wang’s research interests include structural health monitoring and damage detection, decentralized structural control, wireless and mobile sensors, and structural dynamics. He received an NSF Early Faculty Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2012 and a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in 2013. Wang is the author and coauthor of over 100 journal and conference papers, and currently serves as an associate editor for the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Journal of Bridge Engineering.

Lauren Stewart joined the Georgia Institute of Technology, Civil & Environmental Engineering faculty as an assistant professor in August 2013. She was promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure in 2019. She received her B.S. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2004 and her Ph.D. in Structural Engineering also from the University of California, San Diego in 2010. She is a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow, an US Air Force Summer Faculty Fellow, and a 2017 Rising Star in Structural Engineering. Prior to coming to Georgia Tech, Stewart was a Post Doctoral Scholar at the University of California, San Diego from 2010 to 2013. From 2006 to 2013, she worked a Senior Blast Engineer at Karagozian & Case Structural Engineers in California where she holds a PE license.

Stewart’s research is focused on experimental methods for characterized the response of structures to natural and manmade hazards. She has been involved with many blast, shock, impact and seismic experimental and computational programs. These including blast testing of steel structural columns, blast testing of steel stud wall systems, material testing for ultra high performance concrete for impulsive loads and seismic testing for Los Alamos National Laboratories. She has also conducted advanced finite element analysis for the World Trade Center 7 Collapse, AFRL Munitions Directorate small munitions program and programs supported by the Technical Support Working Group. Her design experience includes blast analysis for the Veterans Affairs and consulting projects for various companies.

Muhanna is an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Damascus in 1972, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the area of Solid and Structural Mechanics in 1976 and 1979, respectively from the Higher Institute for Structure and Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria. He joined the faculty at the University of Damascus, Syria in 1980, and has also served on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio and the University of Maryland (1991-2000). Muhanna has won a number of international prizes, among them: the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, one of the most prestigious international architectural awards, for the his masonry shell system without steel reinforcement (1992); the Golden Prize of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), for the best displayed patent at the International Fair of Damascus (1988); and the Special Prize of the United Nations HABITAT (1989). Muhanna's research activity is in the general area of solid and structural mechanics that includes uncertainty modeling, structural reliability, computational reliability, shell theory, and optimization of masonry building materials in structural systems. This research activity has culminated in the development of the new methods for reliable engineering computing, establishment of the Center for Reliable Engineering Computing (REC), and hosting the bi-annual international NSF sponsored workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing since 2004.

Dr. Aditya Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his doctorate from Illinois.

Dr. Kumar’s main area of research is mechanics and physics of soft materials. Specifically, his research group develops mathematical theories and their computational implementation to study fundamental problems in materials like elastomers, adhesives, and biological tissues. Recent work includes the development of a fracture theory for elastomers that has been able to explain experimental observations that had puzzled scientists for decades. This work has also provided a unifying perspective on fracture in all brittle solids, soft or hard, and has led to an ongoing search for a complete theory of nucleation and propagation of fracture for all solids. Currently, his group is also working on the nonlinear mechanics of material evolution (remodeling) in biological tissues and the multi-physics modeling of 3D printing in polymers.