Amir Gat 

Prof. Amir Gat obtained his B.Sc. (2005, Summa Cum Laude) and Ph.D. (2010, direct track) from the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and then proceeded to a postdoctoral position at Caltech (2010-2013). Amir Gat's field of research is fluid dynamics, focusing on low-Reynolds-number fluid-structure-interaction, soft robotics and metafluids. He is at the Technion since 2013, and published so far 50 research articles at leading peer-reviewed journals including JFM, PRF, Soft Robotics, PNAS, PRL and Nat. Comm. 

Deployable structures that significantly alter their shape and volume are used for a wide variety of applications ranging from emergency shelters to space exploration. We present an approach for realizing a long-sought-after goal of structures that can deploy onto multiple stable complex 3D surfaces. To achieve this, we utilize director-field theory to model and design the deployment process of inflatable multistable structures. In order to fabricate such deployable structures, we use multistable straw-like elements, interconnected by rigid links. The use of viscous fluid actuation allows us to not only achieve controllable and predictable deployment but also to obtain a wide variety of deployed configurations through a series of inflations and deflations of the structure while requiring only a single input