Biography
Fani Derveni is an assistant professor in Cornell Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research group, the Scalable MetaStructures Laboratory (SCALE Lab), develops and characterizes innovative, scalable (meta)materials toward sustainable and resilient infrastructure. As a postdoc in mechanical engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, she investigated the stability and mechanics of thin spherical shells, entangled elastic rods and bio-inspired structures. Prior to this, Derveni obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. in structural engineering and mechanics from University of Massachusetts Amherst, focusing on the mechanics and performance of thin-walled metallic structures: from plate-lattice architected materials to cold-formed steel shear walls. Previously, Derveni received her diploma in civil engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and spent six months as an exchange student at Cracow University of Technology, Poland.
Research Interests
Derveni and her team focus on enriching traditional civil and earthquake engineering with innovative metamaterials, aiming for structural performance objectives while prioritizing resilience and sustainability in infrastructures, starting at the micro-structure level and scaling up.
Specifically, Derveni’s group explores the properties of renewable and sustainable (hybrid) materials as viable engineering materials, the design of new, lightweight metamaterials with (buckling-induced) high energy dissipation properties, and the large-scale response of these materials, as components embedded in the lateral resisting force members of traditional building blocks and eventually as structural components.
Derveni’s lab develops and employs a combination of experimental, computational, and probabilistic methods including X-ray micro-computed tomography, bridging the gap between the micro- and macro-scientific realms and paving the way for a new generation of resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems.
- Structural Engineering
- Engineering Mechanics
- Architected Materials
- Sustainability
- Earthquake Resilience
- Structural Stability
Teaching Interests
Derveni’s teaching experience and interests are primarily centered around engineering mechanics. Along with pedagogy, adaptability and communication with the students, her approach to teaching is guided by active participation rather than passive observation, theory correlation with practice, and technology usage as a learning tool.
- Statics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Structural Analysis
- Solid Mechanics
- Structural Dynamics
Select Publications
-
Derveni F., Choquart F., Abbasi A., Yan D., Reis P.M., (2024), The most severe imperfection governs buckling in multi-defect hemispherical shells, Mechanics of Materials, Elsevier, 204, 105295.
-
Derveni F., Abbasi A., Reis P.M., (2023), Defect-defect interactions in the buckling of imperfect spherical shells, Journal of Applied Mechanics, ASME, 1-10.
-
Derveni F., Gueissaz, W., Yang, D., Reis P.M., (2022), Probabilistic buckling of imperfect hemispherical shells containing a distribution of defects, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 381, 20220298.
-
Derveni F., Gross, A., Peterman K.D., Gerasimidis S., (2021), Postbuckling behavior and imperfection sensitivity of elastic-plastic periodic plate-lattice materials, Extreme Mechanics Letters, Elsevier, 50, 101510.
-
Derveni F., Gerasimidis S., Schafer B.W., Peterman, K.D., (2020), High-fidelity finite element modeling of wood-sheathed cold-formed steel shear walls, Journal of Structural Engineering, 147 (2), 04020316.
Education
- Ph.D. in structural engineering and mechanics, University of Massachusetts Amherst 2021
- M.S. in structural engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst 2019
- Diploma (5-year degree) in civil engineering, specialization in structural engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 2017