University of Trento, Italy
Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering

SOLID AND STRUCTURAL MECHANICS GROUP
Laboratory of Bio-Inspired & Graphene Nanomechanics






Nicola Pugno

Professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics at the University of Trento;
Part-time Professor of Materials Science at the Queen Mary University of London;
Member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Italian Space Agency and there responsible of graphene composites at the Ket Lab of the Edoardo Amaldi Foundation.


Address: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Meccanica
Università di Trento, via Mesiano, 77 I-38123 Trento (Italia)
Office location: III piano, Stanza 328
Tel: +39 0461 282525
Mob: +39 338 6275625
Fax: +39 0461 282599
E-mail: nicola.pugno@unitn.it
Skype: nicola.pugno

Publications

Full list of publications

SELECTED PAPERS
  1. A. Carpinteri, N. Pugno. Are the scaling laws on strength of solids related to mechanics or to geometry?, NATURE MATERIALS (2005), 4, 421-423.

  2. S.W. Cranford, A. Tarakanova, N. Pugno, M.J. Buehler. Nonlinear material behaviour of spider silk yields robust webs, NATURE (2012), 482, 72-78. Cover Story and 18 pages of Supplementary Information, DOI 10.1038/nature10739.

  3. P. H. Tan, W. P. Han, W. J. Zhao, Z. H. Wu, K. Chang, H. Wang, Y. F. Wang, N. Bonini, N. Marzari, N. Pugno, G. Savini, A. Lombardo, A. C. Ferrari. The shear mode of multi-layer graphene, NATURE MATERIALS (2012), 11, 294-300.

  4. J. Zang, Q. Wang, Q. Tu, S. Ryu, N. Pugno, M. Buehler, X. Zhao. Multifunctionality and control of the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene, NATURE MATERIALS (2013), 12, 321-325.

  5. S. Lin, S. Ryu, O. Tokareva, G. Gronau, M.M. Jakobsen, W. Huang, D.J. Rizzo, D. Li, C. Staii, N. Pugno, J.Y. Wong, D.L. Kaplan, M.J. Buehler. Predictive modelling-based design and experiments for synthesis and spinning of bioinspired silk fibres. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2015) 6, 6892.

  6. R. Meija, S. Signetti, A. Schuchardt, K. Meurisch, D. Smazna, M. Mecklenburg, K. Schulte, D. Erts, O. Lupan, B. Fiedler, Y.K. Mishra, R. Adelung, N. Pugno. Nanomechanics of individual aerographite tetrapods. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2017), 8, 14982.

  7. G. Nardone, J.O.-De La Cruz, J. Vrbsky, C. Martini, J. Pribyl, P. Skládal, M. Pešl, G. Caluori, S. Pagliari, F. Martino, Z. Maceckova, M. Hajduch, A. Sanz-Garcia, N. Pugno, G.B. Stokin, G. Forte. YAP regulates cell mechanics by controlling focal adhesion assembly. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2017), 8, 15321.

  8. F. Schütt, S. Signetti, H. Krüger, S. Röder, D. Smazna, S. Kaps, S.N. Gorb, Y.K. Mishra, N. Pugno, R. Adelung. Hierarchical self-entangled carbon nanotube tube networks. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2017), 8, 1215.

  9. I. Polishchuk, A.A. Bracha, L. Bloch, D. Levy, S. Kozachkevich, Y. Etinger-Geller, Y. Kauffmann, M. Burghammer, C. Giacobbe, J. Villanova, G. Hendler, C.-Y. Sun, A.J. Giuffre, M.A. Marcus, L. Kundanati, P. Zaslansky, N. Pugno, P.U.P.A. Gilbert, A. Katsman, B. Pokroy. Coherently aligned nanoparticles with a biogenic single crystal: A biological prestressing strategy. SCIENCE (2017), 358, 1294-1298.

  10. S. Elsharkawy, M. Al-Jawad, M.F. Pantano, E. Tejeda-Montes, K. Mehta, H. Jama, S. Agarwal, K. Shuturminska1, A. Rice, N.V. Tarakina, R.M. Wilson, A.J. Bushby, M. Alonso, J.C. Rodriguez-Cabello, E. Barbieri, A. del Río Hernández, M.M. Stevens, N. Pugno, P. Anderson, A. Mata. Protein disorder-order interplay to guide the growth of hierarchical mineralized structures. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2018), 9, 2145.

  

News


Recent past and future invited lectures

Movies

 

Curriculum

Curriculum vitae

Research topics

  1. Bio-inspired hierarchical super nanomaterials (e.g. self-healing)
  2. Super-strong graphene, nanotubes and related bundles and composites (e.g. flaw tolerant)
  3. Smart adhesion of insects, spiders and geckos and related gecko-inspired nanostructured surfaces (e.g. peeling theories)
  4. Self-cleaning & anti-adhesive super-hydrophobic leaves and related lotus-inspired nanostructured surfaces (e.g. anti-ice)
  5. Spider-silk and web and related spider-inspired super-tough materials and structures (e.g. anti-catastrophes)
  6. Design and fabrication of Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (e.g. nanotubes or graphene based)
  7. Hierarchical fibre bundle -or lattice spring- models, ropes, tissues and cellular solids (e.g. role of hierarchy)
  8. Graphene nanoscrolls and related systems (e.g. nanomotors)
  9. Nanomedicine: tumor cellular growth, nanovector therapeutics, scaffolds for the regenerative medicine (e.g. tumor cell dynamic resonances)
  10. Nanoindentation and related size- and shape-effects (e.g. universal scaling laws on hardness)
  11. Quantized Fracture Mechanics, in quasi-static, dynamic and fatigue regimes (e.g. role of defects in graphene)
  12. Nanoscale Weibull & Fractal Statistics and related size-effects on material strength (e.g. nanotubes statistics)
  13. Multiscale fragmentation under impact and explosions and structural dynamics (e.g. universal scaling laws on energy dissipation)
  14. Nanotribology (e.g. of graphene, biological or hierarchical surfaces)
  15. Bionicomposites (e.g. bionic silk spun by spiders fed with nanomaterials)
  16. Metamaterials (e.g. seismic shielding)

Adjunct Scientists
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
         
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
(Responsible of
the animals)

ERC Press

Prof. Pugno at the Solvay Library with Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

Prof. Pugno at the European Parliament with the 5000th grantee Iva Tolic and, at the centre, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council.
 

All photos, images and videos in this website are original and property of the
Solid and Structural Mechanics Group of the University of Trento