Andres Arrieta leads the Programmable Structures Laboratory. He joined Purdue University in August 2015 as an Assistant Professor of the Mechanical Engineering School and in May 2017 as an Assistant Professor (by courtesy) in the Aeronautics and Astronautics School. Prior to joining Purdue, he held the Compliant Systems Group Team Leader position of the Composite Materials and Adaptive Structures Laboratory (CMAS) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland for 3 ½ years. While in Zurich, received the prestigious ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship from ETH Zurich in 2012, enabling him to conduct his research independently. Before this, he was a Marie Curie Early Training Fellow and Research Associate at the Dynamics and Oscillations Group of the Technical University Darmstadt in Germany between 2010 and 2012. He received his Mechanical Engineering degree in 2006 from Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia; Ph.D. in 2010 from the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Prof. Arrieta’s research focuses on investigating the interrelation between shape-property-function of material systems and structures with a focus on exploiting nonlinearity to generating multifunctional systems. His work lies at the interface between structures and vibrations uncovering and applying nonlinear phenomena, such as buckling and multi-stability, to engineering applications. These ideas are applied to programmable structures, light-weight morphing structures, time-varying metamaterials and energy harvesting systems. Dr. Arrieta has graduated 3 Ph.D. and 10 M.Sc. students, and currently advises 9 Ph.D. and 2 M.Sc. He has published 36 journal papers and 43 international peer-reviewed conference papers.

Chris Goldenstein is the Avrum and Joyce Gray Rising Star Professor in Purdue University’s School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics (by courtesy). His research focuses on the development and application of optical diagnostics for studying non-equilibrium gases, hypersonic flows, combustion, and a variety of energy, propulsion, and defense applications. From 2009 to 2016, Professor Goldenstein conducted his graduate and postdoctoral research in the Hanson Group at Stanford University. There his research focused on the development and application of infrared laser diagnostics for studying detonation engines, scramjets, shock tubes, molecular spectroscopy, infrared photophysics, and chemical kinetics. Prof. Goldenstein has published over 100 articles and 1 textbook. He received a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Young Investigator Award in 2016, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Award in 2017, the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2019, and a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Early Career Faculty Award in 2020. In 2024 he received the Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award from The Combustion Institute and Elsevier. He is a senior member of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He is a member of the Combustion Institute and Tau Beta Pi (TBP). He is also one of the founding developers and co-owners of SpectraPlot.