Prof. Dr. Dennis Kochmann

Dennis M. Kochmann is Professor of Mechanics and Materials in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. He served as Head of the Institute of Mechanical Systems from 2018-2020 (and as its Deputy Head from 2020-2022), and he was Deputy Head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering from 2019-2023. Since 2022, he serves on the ETH Research Commission.

Professor Kochmann received his Diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) in Mechanical Engineering/Applied Mechanics from Ruhr-University Bochum and a Master's degree in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he spent one year as a Fulbright fellow. From Ruhr-University Bochum he also received his Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2009. After his doctorate, he first moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Engineering Physics, after which he went on to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in September 2010 as a postdoctoral scholar in Aerospace and as a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In September 2011, he joined the faculty of Caltech's Aerospace Department (GALCIT) in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science as Assistant Professor of Aerospace and in November 2016 became Professor of Aerospace. He has been Full Professor of Mechanics and Materials at ETH Zurich since April 2017.

Under his direction, the Mechanics & Materials Lab investigates the mechanical properties of a variety of materials and uses theoretical, computational, and experimental techniques to understand the link between a material's microstructure and its macroscopic properties. A particular focus of his work is on architected materials or metamaterials: these are man-made, carefully engineered materials with as-designed properties exceeding those of natural materials.

For his research, he has been awarded the CAREER Award by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Bureau Prize in Solid Mechanics by the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), the Richard von Mises Prize by the International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM), the Thomas J.R. Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the John Argyris Award by the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM), and an ERC Consolidator Grant. He was the Vice-Chair of USACM's Technical Thrust Area on Nanotechnology and Lower-Scale Phenomena and the Recording Secretary of ASME's Applied Mechanics Division. Since 2022 he has been the vice-chair of the Swiss Community for Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (SWICCOMAS). Since 2020 he has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Engineering Science (SES). He serves as Associate Editor for the journals Applied Mechanics Reviews and Archive of Applied Mechanics, and he is on the editorial board of, among others, the International Journal of Solids and Structures as well as Computational Mechanics.

Professor Kochmann enjoys teaching and continuously adjust his course offerings and educational materials. He was glad to be a two-time recipient of the Caltech Graduate Student Council's Teaching Award (selected by the Caltech graduate students) and a winner of the Golden Oal 2021 (selected by the ETH Mechanical Engineering students).