Mélançon, David

David Melancon is currently an Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnique Montreal. Prior to joining the department, Prof. Melancon did postdoctoral research in the Paulino group at Princeton University, a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in the Bertoldi group at Harvard University, and a M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering in the Pasini group at McGill University. Prof. Melancon is the director of the Polystable lab at Polytechnique Montreal, a research lab that studies the highly nonlinear behavior of multistable materials and structures. Taking inspiration from diverse fields such as architected materials, elastic instabilities in soft materials, and origami/kirigami principles, his group utilizes simple geometric properties to enhance the functionality of engineering systems. His research is applied in the design and fabrication of large-scale deployable systems and nonlinear soft robotic actuators. Prof. Melacon is also a member of the Laboratory for Multi-Scale Mechanics at Polytechnique Montreal.