Julián J. Rimoli
Dean's Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research Interests
- Computational solid mechanics
- Architected materials
- Aerospace structures
- Machine-learning-based constitutive modeling
Biography
Julián J. Rimoli is Dean’s Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and the principal investigator of the Computational Solid Mechanics Lab. Born and raised in Argentina, he earned his degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and his Ph.D. in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. After a postdoctoral appointment at MIT, he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011, where he rose to Full Professor and held the Pratt & Whitney Endowed Professorship in the School of Aerospace Engineering. He joined UCI in 2022 as the Henry Samueli Faculty Excellence Endowed Professor and was appointed Chair in 2023.
His research spans computational solid mechanics, architected materials, and aerospace structures, including contributions to tensegrity metamaterials and machine-learning-based constitutive modeling. His work has been supported by NASA, DARPA, NSF, the Air Force and Army research offices, national laboratories, and industry, and has produced five U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of ASME and an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, and his honors include the NSF CAREER Award and several teaching awards. As an educator, he created Truss Me!, a structural simulation app with more than one million downloads in 150 countries that is used to teach structural mechanics in high schools and leading universities around the world.
As Chair, he leads one of the Samueli School’s largest departments, with approximately 33 faculty and 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Working with faculty and staff, he has led strategic recruitment in hypersonics and space systems, strengthened graduate student funding, and secured industry support for instructional laboratory improvements. He previously served as an elected member of the school’s Executive Committee and completed Georgia Tech’s Provost Emerging Leaders program. He maintains close ties with the engineering community in Argentina and across Latin America.