DrGiada Risso

Giada Risso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. She obtained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich, where her research focused on the mechanics and design of architected materials. She subsequently joined Harvard University as a postdoctoral researcher with an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship, working on mechanical metamaterials and reconfigurable structures. Giada joined Imperial College London in August 2026.

Giada’s research lies at the intersection of nonlinear mechanics, mechanical metamaterials, and structural design. Her group investigates how geometry, elastic instabilities, multistability, mechanical switching, and material anisotropy can be exploited to create lightweight, highly integrated structures with programmable mechanical behaviour, including shape change, tunable stiffness, and adaptive functionality. The group combines theoretical and computational mechanics, finite-element modelling, experiments, and design to develop new classes of morphing, deployable, and mechanically intelligent structures. Giada is particularly interested in translating these mechanics-based design principles into robotic, biomedical, and aerospace technologies, where adaptive and reconfigurable structures could enable capabilities beyond those of conventional systems.