2025 SES Huajian Gao Young Investigator Medal Lecture 2

Cloaking-enhanced metastructure for tunable vibration control and energy harvesting

A multifunctional vibro-acoustic metastructure is designed by combining nonlinear magneto-elastic piezoelectric oscillators with cloaking technique. The structure, called a metabeam, contains evenly spaced voids filled with piezoelectric beams that create local resonance bandgaps and convert vibrations into electrical energy. A cloaking method using boundary reinforcement and mass redistribution surrounds these voids to keep the dynamic properties of the structure stable while improving tunability and strength. Magnetic forces allow the system to adjust its frequency range and show different behaviors (bistable, monostable, or chaotic) by changing the distance between magnets. Experimental tests confirm the predictions, showing strong performance in chaotic conditions, where the system produced 5.3 V and 46.6 μW at 8 g, enough to power seven LEDs. This metastructure offers promising applications in energy harvesting, vibration control, and power supply for small electronic devices such as wireless sensors and OLED displays.

Bio of the speaker: Diego Misseroni is a Professor of Aerospace Structures at the University of Trento, Italy. He obtained his Ph.D. in Structural and Solid Mechanics from the University of Trento in 2013. His international academic journey includes a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher position at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool (2014), a Fulbright Visiting Scientist appointment at Princeton University (2023), and a Westlake Distinguished Fellowship at Westlake University, China (2025). Dr. Misseroni has received several awards, including the 2025 Huajian Gao Young Investigator Medal (SES), the 2024 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award (ASME), an ERC Consolidator Grant, the 2022 EML Young Investigator Award, the 2022 Zwick Roell Science Award, the 2022 Paul Roell Medal, and the AIMETA Junior Prize (2017). He has also been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship – Research Scholar Award and a Westlake Distinguished Fellowship. In 2025, has been elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the Technical & Environmental Sciences class. His contributions to teaching have been recognized with the DICAM Teaching Excellence Awards (2018, 2023) from the University of Trento. His expertise spans architected materials, metamaterials, and origami-inspired engineering, with a focus on static and dynamic responses, flexible structures, buckling, and structural instabilities. His research also explores wave propagation control, cloaking, vibration suppression, and energy harvesting. His findings have been featured on several covers of international journals, including Advanced Materials, Advanced Science, Materials Today, Extreme Mechanics Letters, and Proceedings of the Royal Society A.