SMART-Lab
Smart Materials for Advanced Robotic Technologies
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Principal Investigator
Hamed Shahsavan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
Education
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PhD, University of Waterloo, 2017
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MASc, University of Waterloo, 2012
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BSc, Sharif University of Technology, 2009
Appointments
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Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo , Canada (2020-present)
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NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany (2017-2020)
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Visiting Scholar, Tampere University, Finland (2018)
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Visiting Scholar, Kent State University, USA (2015-2017)
Dr. Hamed Shahsavan is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering and nanotechnology from the University of Waterloo in 2017. In his graduate studies, Dr. Shahsavan's research was focused on the fabrication and characterization of bioinspired micro/nanostructured surfaces and their implications in fundamental studies of contact mechanics, and interfacial phenomena, such as adhesion, friction, and wetting. Fascinated by the rapidly growing fields of soft robotics and smart materials, he moved to Stuttgart in Germany, to embark on his postdoctoral research as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. In this period, he mainly focused on the synthesis of different types of liquid crystalline elastomers, networks and gels to deploy them as shape-change programmable materials in soft robots and devices at millimeter to micrometer scale. During his PhD studies, Dr. Shahsavan was a visiting scholar in the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University, OH, USA. He was also a visiting scientist in the Smart Photonic Materials (SPM) research group at the University of Tampere in Finland. His current research interests revolve around the development of a variety of soft, stimuli-responsive, and programmable materials, and different fabrication methods for the manufacturing of small-scale mobile robots and devices.
Research Associates

Rasool Nasseri, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Dr. Rasool Nasseri is a Research Associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He obtained his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2018. His Ph.D. research was focused on biodegradable and bio fragmentable polymer composites. After his Ph.D., he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Michael Tam’s research group at the University of Waterloo and focused on developing a new approach for the metal coating of cellulose nanocrystals. He then started his research in the field of sustainable smart materials and since then his focus has been developing new stimuli-responsive hydrogels. He is currently working as a research associate in SMART-Lab where he aims to employ stimuli-responsive hydrogels in soft robotic applications.
Graduate Students

Yasaman Maddah
PhD Student
Yasaman has received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Polymer Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology in 2019. Her master’s project was based on synthesizing a new hyper-branched structure of polyolefins and its subsequent rheological characterization. She currently works on synthesis and characterization of novel liquid crystal elastomers as her Ph.D. project.

Negin Bouzari MASc
Research Acossiate
Negin received her B.Sc. in Polymer Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in 2020. She has previously worked on modeling and analyzing different types of spiral dies used in blown film extrusion. She received her MASc from University of Waterloo in 2023 and her research was focused on self-healing, programmable hydrogels for soft robotic applications.
Undergraduate Students

Melanie Bouzanne
Undergraduate RA
Melanie Bouzanne is an undergraduate student in the Nanotechnology Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. Her current research is focused on the optimization and characterization of programmable stimuli-responsive foam hydrogels for applications in soft robotics.

Cole Fredericks
Undergraduate RA
Cole Fredericks is currently an undergraduate student in the Chemical Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. His research experiences have involved the development and characterization of commercial thermoplastic and protective nanoceramic coating formulations.