Benedetto Marelli 

Benedetto Marelli will join the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in November. He received a BE and an MS in biomedical engineering from Polytechnic University of Milan and pursued his doctoral studies in materials science and engineering at McGill University. His dissertation focused on the biomineralization of tissue-equivalent collagenous constructs and their use as rapidly-implantable osteogenic materials. As a postdoc at Tufts University, Marelli worked on the self-assembly and polymorphism of structural proteins, particularly silk fibroin. Marelli’s research at MIT will be in the area of structural biopolymers, biomineralization and self-assembly, mechanical and optoelectronic properties of natural polymers, biocomposites, additive manufacturing, and emerging technologies. By combining basic material principles with advanced fabrication techniques and additive manufacturing, he has developed new strategies to drive the self-assembly of structural biopolymers in advanced materials with unconventional forms and functions such as inkjet prints of silk fibroin that change in color in the presence of bacteria or flexible keratin-made photonic crystals. Using biofabrication strategies, his group will design bio-inspired materials that act at the biotic/abiotic interface to reduce or mitigate environmental impact.