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Science on Tap

 

We are organizing a Science on Tap outreach event starting Spring 2026. The idea is simple and engaging: bring scientists and the public together in an informal setting (local pub or café TBD) to talk about research in a relaxed, accessible, and interactive way. Short presentations are followed by open discussion, encouraging curiosity, dialogue, and community connection around science. This series aims to make cutting-edge research approachable and to strengthen ties between the university and the broader Boulder community.

mechnet26

 

Dates:May 11-14, 2026

Place: Boulder, Colorado

Organizers: 

  • Franck Vernerey, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Taher Saif, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
  • Catalin Picu, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Sponsors: University of Colorado-Boulder

  • Mechanical Engineering department,
  • College of engineering and applied sciences
  • Research innovation office.

 

Boulder Workshop on Mechanics of Active Networks 

From Biology to Engineering to Medicine

May 11-14, 2026 Boulder, Colorado

The goal of the MechNet Workshop is to bring together researchers from mechanics, biomechanics, and mechanobiology by using networks as a common language and modeling framework. 

Vision

Mechanics and biomechanics share many foundational questions, yet they often evolve in separate direction, i.e. mechanics focusing on soft material behavior, fracture, and multiscale modeling, and biomechanics tackling medically relevant challenges in tissue growth, healing, and mechanobiology. Network mechanics offers a powerful common framework: biological structures are inherently organized as dynamic networks, from cytoskeletal filaments and fibrous extracellular matrices to multicellular tissues and organoid architectures, while engineered soft materials are increasingly designed with similar network principles. By leveraging this shared perspective, we can uncover how local force transmission and remodeling at the cellular scale give rise to large-scale mechanical and functional behavior in living systems. The goal of this workshop is to identify key open problems and foster new collaborations that integrate fundamental mechanics with biological applications to advance both fields.


Workshop objectives
  • Identify grand challenges. The workshop will include breakout sessions for participants to identify the grand challenges and critical knowledge gaps at the interface of mechanics and biomechanics/mechanobiology. The outcome will be a community-authored review paper that will propose a research roadmap for advancing predictive modeling in biological and non-biological network-based systems.
  • Build sustainable cross-disciplinary momentum. We aim to generate lasting activities and partnerships that will sustain interactions between the mechanics and biomechanics communities beyond the workshop. This includes establishing working groups, creating shared platforms for exchanging data and organizing follow up workshops in the future.
  • Initiate new collaborations. We hope that this workshop will bring together researchers from mechanics, biomechanics, and mechanobiology, as well as industrial experts to seed new interdisciplinary collaborations.