Paulino, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, is an expert in computational mechanics, engineering mechanics and topology optimization. His research focuses on the design of robotic systems that fold like origami and behave like natural organisms, such as worms or octopus tentacles.

Established in 1976, the medal honors Ahmet Cemal Eringen, the society’s founder and an engineering professor at Princeton from 1966 to 1991. Announcing the award, the society recognized Paulino “for sustained outstanding contributions in geometric mechanics associated with origami and tensegrity engineering, which led to the creation of multifunctional structures and configurational metamaterials with unprecedented properties.”

Paulino’s work encompasses a number of disciplines, including the application of origami to robotics and other engineering tasks. He also has worked extensively with metamaterials, which are materials designed with properties different than those found in nature. In one recent project, Paulino’s research team created a disordered material with microstructures of tiny holes that can be arranged to alter properties such as stiffness, strength and flexibility. (Here is another creative solution to the problem, but this time with ordered materials.) Strong and lightweight, this type of material could prove useful in making aircraft, buildings or medical implants.

Paulino came to Princeton in September 2021 from Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Previously, he was a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Paulino received the 2022 Melville Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the society’s highest honor for best original paper. He also has been recognized with ASME’s Belytschko and Drucker Medals, as well as the 2020 Raymond D. Mindlin Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Reddy Medal from the Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures Journal. Paulino received a 2015 Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences for the best engineering paper of the year. He is a former president of the Society of Engineering Science.

Paulino is scheduled to receive an award of $2,000 and deliver the Eringen Medal Lecture at the society’s annual meeting in October in Minnesota.