Pavana Prabhakar is the Charles G. Salmon assistant professor in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she leads the Manufacturing and Mechanics Lab (MaMeL). She received her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in May 2013. Her research interests are in the field of mechanics and advanced manufacturing of architected composite materials, with emphasis on damage and failure in extreme environments. Prabhakar has received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER - 2021, ONR Young Investigator Program - 2019, and AFOSR Young Investigator Program – 2015 Awards. She is also the recipient of the 2019 DEStech Young Composites Researcher Award from American Society for Composites. For more information, see http://mamel.engr.wisc.edu.
Lightweight polymer foam composites are known to dissipate energy under extreme conditions such as severe compressive or impact loading when used as cores in sandwich structures. This is often accompanied with permanent damage or set under excessive deformation. A fundamental question we seek to address is - can we achieve shape recovery without external stimulus after load removal? That is, how do we achieve lightweight and resilient polymer composites?