Kyriakos Komvopoulos

Kyriakos Komvopoulos is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.  His research is at the interfaces of mechanical and electrical engineering, materials sciences, surface physical chemistry, bioengineering, and biology. His work is characterized by a multidisciplinary nature and the combination of analytical and experimental techniques used to analyze complex surface and interface phenomena. His research is based on the integration of fundamentals from mechanics, materials, surface chemistry, and biology, and spans a broad range of scales, from the mesoscopic down to the atomic and molecular levels.

His current research is in: surface nanostructuring, tribology, elastic-plastic contact and fracture mechanics, mechanical behavior and structure characterization of single and multi-layer thin films grown by RF sputtering and filtered cathodic vacuum arc methods, mechanics and materials aspects of hard-disk drives, reliability of nano-/micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS), wearable electronics, plasma-assisted surface functionalization for cell adhesion and proliferation control, scaffolds for tissue engineering, finite element analysis of thermomechanical surface contact problems.