Abstract: During development, instabilities develop in the brain, giving it its characteristic wrinkled shape. Other soft tissues, including skin, the bladder, and the airway mucosa, also exhibit instabilities and the resulting folds, wrinkles, and creases. Instabilities in these soft tissues, which often contain multiple layers with distinct properties, are very complex and still not well understood. The focus of this talk will be on the unique features of instabilities in soft layered materials, including their sensitivity to different sources of compression, the interactions of adjacent layers and interfaces, the influence of boundary conditions, and the emergence of heterogeneous layer thickness as a result of wrinkling. I will share results from theoretical, computational, physical, and imaging approaches, and discuss their implications for the study of the developing brain.

Biographical Sketch: Maria Holland is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, IN. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with Prof. Ellen Kuhl, and her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Tulsa, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Her research is in computational biomechanics, using solid mechanics and computational tools to address important questions about complex soft materials, including the brain. Through collaborations with clinicians and experimentalists, she aims to understand the development of the human brain and how it relates to the brain’s form and function. Additionally, she works to extend the functionality of traditional engineering methods to encompass soft, growing materials.

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