Professor Richard James Featured in CSE Magazine

The University of Minnesota's Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Professor Richard James has been using origami to find solutions to design problems in fields ranging from aerospace to medical devices. 

“The classic application of origami design is in space structures,” said James. “You have structures, like solar cells, that you want to deploy into space. You have to fit them inside a rocket so they take up the least amount of space. One solution? You fold them.” 

To build interest in this line of research to students in AEM and beyond — including an intrepid student from the College of Design — James recently gave a graduate course in origami design methods. “Origami design is a challenging subject.  Almost nothing is learned by linearizing the models, but, in the end, one can actually fold a paper model of a predicted structure,” said James. He has also published multiple papers on the topic. In particular, James has done extensive research on a subfield known as curved origami, a technique used to create complex three-dimensional objects. 

In 2022, his research attracted the attention of Eckhard Quandt, vice president for research at Kiel University in Germany, who was interested in using curved origami to design stents used to treat brain aneurysms. James, whose research focus is phase-change materials, worked closely with aerospace engineering and mechanics graduate student Huan Liu to help with Quandt’s request. Through their collaboration, they created a design for an implant inspired by origami made of thin-film shape memory alloy. 

James and Liu were recently featured in the Fall 2024 issue of the College of Science and Engineering’s magazine, Inventing Tomorrow. Read more about their work on the CSE website

Huan Liu and Professor Richard James creating origami objects
Huan Liu with two of her origami creations
Richard James and grad student Huan Liu hold a prototype of their origami-inspired wind turbine

Photos by Rebecca Slater/By Rebecca Studios

Share