Origami engineering

Chronicle of Higher Education (May 19) -- Everyone remembers origami. It’s that thing you did in grade school where you folded a piece of paper into the shape of a bird or a fish. Increasingly, however, it’s also the stuff of serious science. As director of the Mechanics of Materials program at the National Science Foundation from 2009 to 2011, MechSE professor Glaucio Paulino led the development of a program, known as Odissei, that financed research based on origami principles. Last month, Paulino hosted a conference last month at the University of Illinois campus, where participants included Sergio Pellegrino, a professor of aeronautics and civil engineering at the California Institute of Technology, who has used origami techniques to design high-precision retinal implants, and Yihui Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, who has used origami concepts to develop a flexible lithium-ion battery that patients can wear without being connected to a bulky power supply.